Winter Service Leaves SA Customers Cold
by Staff Reporter on 14/06/12 at 12:23 pm
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Winter sales – local retailing’s annual missed opportunity – are with us again, highlighting how easy it could be for customer service hotshots to win market share from competitors.
The hot tip comes from Aki Kalliatakis, managing director of The Leadership LaunchPad, a consultancy called in by many corporate clients that need to warm up the relationship with their customers.
Winter’s a great time to light up the flagging relationship, says Kalliatakis, but the norm is for local retailers to run a humdrum winter sale with one or two specials and leave it at that.
Kalliatakis and The Leadership LaunchPad team identified the opportunity to snuggle up to customers at this time of year during research into service performance in various sectors of the customer-facing economy. For example, Builders Warehouse in South Africa gives free popcorn to children and their parents – knowing warm gestures are appreciated when the South African chill sets in.
“In fact, the winter season is the time to hot up service-led competitive activity by delighting customers with warm human gestures that cost very little to implement. There are plenty of international precedents for this, but many local businesses simply stick to the annual winter sale formula and do nothing more.” Service-led activity in winter doesn’t have to involve hot drinks and food,” says Kalliatakis. “In South Africa, any initiative that brings a warm glow to the customer relationship will stand out because you rarely see red hot serviceacross our competitive landscape.
Ideate is one of South Africa's biggest business blogs, with a team of authors all of whom have had entrepreneurial experience. Ideate is read by entrepreneurs thinking BIG. Follow us on Twitter here. View more articles by Staff Reporter.
Tags: customer service, Customer Service in South Africa
