Service is the Answer

Whether you're selling products or services today, in the future the emphasis is likely to be much more on service. Your customers will buy your products or services because they get terrific service, not so much because of price or quality.

This office.com site gives what the Software & Information Industry Association considers the six main trends shaping the digital economy. The first four of these trends imply that service is going to be much more important. They are:

- software is moving from a product to a service-driven model of distribution;
- increasing value of information and the result that content providers will want to find a way to extract profit from providing it;
- the digitization of business, i.e. more and more businesses are being automated, either through in-house software applications or through the use of third-party hosted applications;
- customer empowerment.

For small businesses, this means that an emphasis on customer service now will pay big dividends in the future. It means, with respect to the four trends, that:

- the money is not going to be in software, it is going to be in delivering software to the user;
- profit will be made from actively delivering information rather than from making information available;
- business volume will not lie in providing business software applications, it will lie in using the software to provide business automation solutions for specific customers;
- in all areas of business, you'll get repeat business only by doing exactly what the customer wants.

Carrying out such changes in orientation is probably easier for a small business than for a large corporation and this can result in a competitive advantage. If you now start talking with your customers to determine what they will be expecting in the above areas of activity and if you start now to make adjustments to your way of doing business, then you'll be way ahead of anyone else when customers start insisting on that kind of level of service.

Particularly important in this respect are all areas of your company which come into contact with customers. This is not just sales and marketing. It includes after-sales service, technical support, spare parts and even the receptionist. Customer empowerment means that all customers will easily be able to find another supplier if they are not happy at any time in their relationship with you. A high service level means that your business has put resources into keeping your customers happy to try and make that relationship as permanent as possible.

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