Marketing And Management: Marketing Tool

The competitive advantage is the marketing tool that helps to understand the position of any organisation in the market in respect to their competitors. According to Hatch and Howland (2015), competitive advantage is the property of business that helps to determine an organisation’s position in the market whether it is outperforming its competitors or not. It is said that the organisation, which can understand the needs and expectations of their customers can achieve the competitive advantage quickly. Therefore, the online organisations, such as Amazon, e-Bay, Alibaba, are using the feedback process to know the reactions of the customers that they can improve their competitive advantage (Hollensen 2015). However, understanding the customer is not enough to get the competitive advantage but can be the first step to develop a profitable customer relationship. Therefore, in this essay the importance of customer feedback will be discussed. It helps to analyse the way in which the organisation can gain competitive advantages.

The customers are the most important element in a business and for an organisation, it is very essential to gain the customers’ trust. The organisations want to build the trust with their consumers to increase their number of loyal customers as well as to retain them. This will indirectly increase their business profitability. Therefore, the organisations can use the customer feedback systems to know the views of the customers about their products or services. According to Trainor et al. (2014), the customer feedback process can be helpful for the online business processes to understand the views of the customers as they cannot interact with their consumers directly.

The organisations use the feedbacks of the customers to guide their business strategies and for decision-making process. These feedbacks can be collected in various ways from the customers. The online organisations cannot get the opportunity to interact directly with the customers, therefore this customer feedback is very helpful for them to understand and measure the customer satisfaction about their products or services. If they cannot get the feedback of the consumers, then the management of the company never can be able to understand the expectations and dissatisfaction of them. Moreover, the management will not get the option to change their products and services according to the customers’ choice (Saeidi et al. 2015). Therefore, as a result, the business will suffer for this and their profitability will decrease gradually.

These feedbacks can be acquired from the customers with implementing a well-planned system. The organisation has to implement the speedy response process that will encourage the customers to give the feedback to them. If the customers are not been responded soon after placing complain or will not be rewarded with their good product or services, then they will stop co-operating with the company. This will decrease the reputation of that company. The customer feedback generation processes are following –

Email and consumer forms – The organisations can use the personal email system for getting their customers; feedback. It is the simplest way to get the feedbacks from the customers through personal email system. According to Strohmeier (2013), it is reported that most of the people think that the feedbacks are less important for the organisations and therefore they do not give their feedback to the company. However, the companies that are selling their products online always give an option to the customers to comment after using their service and products. It will help the management of the company to evaluate their feedbacks to improve their own products and services. Many online companies such as, Amazon, e-Bay use this feedback process to know the customers’ view on the products and service they are providing to them. Additionally, the companies can use the customer feedback form to fill up by the customers after using the service of the organisation. This will help the company to know about the detail descriptions about any particular product or service. It helps the organisation to know their customers well and then they will able to change according to the feedback.

Surveys – Survey is a very dependable process to gather the feedback from the customers. The organisations can start the online survey to collect the views of the customers. According to Goetsch and Davis (2014), surveys are very reliable process to understand the customers views on any particular topic. Surveys can be two types, on is short type survey and the other one is full-length surveys. In the cases of short type surveys, the company can use a very simple question to ask the views from them. It is a process of using brief poll with goal of gathering responses from the customers, who are active in the web regularly. On the other hand, the full-length surveys are the complete set of questions that have to be answered by the customers. If the customers do not answer the full set of questions then the survey will not be completed. It will help the company owner to know the need of the customers.

Social feedback – The most popular platform in the present time is the social networking site. The organisations can get the true response of the new generation in this platform. If the organisations open their facebook pages, then the customers leave comments for the products and services they provide. Therefore, it is a very beneficial process of collecting feedbacks from the customers. The ‘comments’ and the ‘likes’ for the products and services make the management to understand what the customers like about their service (Davenport 2013). They can ask for the feedback from the customers before launching any product or service in the market. Additionally, they can introduce themselves in the Twitter, Instagram to promote their business. It will help them to promote their business as well as to get the reactions of the customers. As these are very popular among the young generation customers, therefore the organisations are able to know about the choices of this generation.

Exploratory customer interview – This exploratory customer interview is a very helpful process to get the direct feedbacks from the customers. The interview makes the process easier to ask the questions about the company’s products and services and the customers feel free to express their views directly. This is not possible for the customers to express in the forms and the feedback polls of the companies. Therefore, the interview process is very helpful in improving the services as well as the products to get customer satisfaction. These interviews enable the company to understand what they are liking or not.  For instance, Amazon has a mobile application in which they have a feedback process for each product they sell; along with this, they can introduce a new chat option to interact with their customers directly at the time of buying any product (Tanpure et al. 2013). They can get feedbacks from the chat too and later can use that information for their improvement.

Comment Box – There are another creative process called comment box that is the process of getting the feedbacks from the customers. It will enable the customers to write about their experience about the service and product. Therefore, the company can evaluate those comments for the betterment of the company. According to Kärnä (2014), it was noticed that the live chat sometimes lose the flow of interaction. It always requires a person to reply the customer about the queries. In contrast, the customers can easily write their views in the comment box to express their feedback.

The customers are the assets of the organisations and their main aim is to retain their customers along with increasing the competitive advantage. Therefore, to know the customers choices and expectations will help them to analyse about their business plans and strategies. The feedbacks will enable the organisations to know whether the customers are getting satisfied with their products and services or not. As opined by Hatch and Howland (2015), the best way to outperform the other companies from snatching the customers is to give the customers to experience some new and innovative products and services that the customers cannot resist to be attracted. However, it cannot be possible for the organisation to know the choices of the customers without getting the feedbacks from the customers. Therefore, the feedback processes are very essential for any organisation to improve their performance. The main reasons for which the companies should use the feedback systems to get the customers’ views are,

It will help the company to know the customers views on any particular product or service. If any product or service get very good comments and feedbacks from the customers then the product or service must be very beneficial for the company as well as customers. Therefore, the company should launch the product in the places where they want to expand their business. Expansion of business requires a product or service that can attract the customers to become their customers without any hesitation. It can be possible with the help of evaluating the customers’ feedbacks. Therefore, the customers’ feedbacks are very essential to know about the customers’ views as well as to improve their own profitability by using that information about the products and services. Additionally, the innovative companies are always value the customers feedbacks to improve their products. Apple, Virgin, Dell etc are the most popular companies working on the innovative products and ideas (Davenport 2013). Therefore, they check their customer’s views about their products and services to understand the customers’ satisfaction. If they find any kind of dissatisfaction, then they change the issue from the product or service. Therefore, indirectly it will help the company to develop their product and services to provide a better treatment to their loyal customers and retain them with their company. It will help the organisation to get the competitive advantage from the competitors. The feedbacks are also helpful to create a bonding with the customers to measure their satisfaction level. This bonding should help the company to improve the business policies and products that will attract the customers to come back again in the company to experience the good process. For instance, in the Amazon website when a customer order some product and get a very fast delivery of the product as well as the customer have a very good experience in the payment procedure then he customer will be happy with the service of them. This good experience will be shared by the customer in his or her acquaintances. Therefore, it will help the company to gain the competitive advantage from the other companies of same category.  

Therefore, the important part of building a good relation with the customers is can be the first step obviously to understanding their views about the company. It is very difficult for the companies to develop the consistent and personalised experience for individual customer. However, this is very important to gather the information about their own business to over perform the competitors who are offering a better option for them. However, this is the firt step to develop a good bonding with the customers to know their feedbacks about their products and service but the companies have to use this information to improve their business. If the feedbacks are not used to improve the products and services then the information will not be helpful for the organisation. Although the feedback processes can help to improve the product and service quality, along with this it can also help to take better decisions about the business according to the choices of the customers. Online organisations are the most helpful of this feedback process as for them this is the only way to understand their customers.

While concluding it can be said that the essay has discussed the feedbacks procedures of the companies to gain the views of the customers. It has explained that the customers’ feedbacks are very essential for the companies who want to improve their relationship with the customers to retain them for long time. Therefore, they use the information to improve their product and services to satisfy their customers. It is helpful for any organisation dealing with products and services but it can be more beneficial for the online business organisations as they have no other option to get the opinions of their customers about their products and services. Therefore, building a good relationship is the base to improve the business of any organisation and getting the competitive advantage with implementing the information to satisfy the customers.

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