By offering meaningful and interactive after-sales services, electronics businesses can position themselves as customer-friendly brands and boost brand loyalty
Electronics are increasingly getting more embedded into our lives. However, increasingly, innovation, R&D, and maintaining a robust supply chain are no longer enough to attract customers, whose preferences are shifting towards after-sales support as a key metric of choosing a product.
The importance of an efficient after-sales procedure is imperative for businesses to not only become a trusted brand but also create an immersive user experience that includes end-to-end support. From a customer’s point of view, ensuring the return on investment of any particular product includes metrics like longevity, efficiency, affordability, and many others. Falling short of these metrics can lead to customer dissatisfaction, a critical factor for achieving success in a business.
Furthermore, difficulties or challenges pertaining to electronic devices can be extensive and a common factor faced by a significant number of customers. By offering meaningful and interactive after-sales services, electronics businesses position themselves as customer-friendly brands. Technology can be a critical enabler in optimizing after-sales services, however, manual interventions to support customers remain equally crucial. While it is an aspect that helps establish a loyal customer base, it could adversely impact a brand’s market presence and lead to a crisis.
Streamlining after-sales service
In the electronics business space, after-sales service is offered by all. However, the differentiating factor remains its quality. For example, if an air purifier is not operating as per its standards and the customer brings it in to diagnose the problem, any after-sales team would look to address the customer’s concern. However, parameters such as pleasantries, affordability, and efficiency become the key talking points in this process. In many developed countries, technology has emerged as a critical enabler of this process. This aspect has been mechanized by countries such as Japan, South Korea and China, where fully automated service centres address customers’ concerns. While the role of technology as a critical enabler of this process cannot be overstated, a manual touch becomes a catalyst in the endeavour.
This notion is further backed by statistics—a recent prominent report reveals that 89% of customers are likely to make recurring purchases from a business following a favourable customer service experience. Another report suggests that up to 93% of customers buy from a specific brand only, based on its reputation for robust customer service.
Technology as a critical enabler
As the world turns towards mechanizing menial chores to enhance the quality of life, technology is expected to play a significant role — especially in after-sales service. As a catalyst to streamline after-sales service, electronics businesses are increasingly adapting to digital transformation using new-age technologies like Artificial Intelligence and others. The objective of this is not only to optimize the existing after-sales service but also to modernize and future-proof the process to garner positive customer feedback.
AI is spearheading this paradigm shift, simplifying interactions with customers with minimal service costs while reducing human dependency. For example, AI chatbots in select geographies are being deployed in service centres, helping customers with their queries. Other than this, service chatbots can also be used as an extended arm of professionals working in after-sales, helping with important data to make the most optimized decisions. Furthermore, AI’s predictive abilities can be used to analyse complex electronic devices, reducing the service delivery period.
The human element
To ensure a robust after-sales service, especially for electronics businesses, establishing a widespread supply chain network is critical as it ensures streamlined product and spare inventories, helping customers looking to replace defective parts. This also reduces the waiting period to replace spares and creates a highly versatile operationality. As spares arrive at targeted geographies in a hassle-free manner, customers’ concerns are addressed efficiently — enhancing customer satisfaction and reducing long queues.
Furthermore, employing highly skilled individuals to deliver the service helps to enhance customer satisfaction, ensuring products do not raise additional challenges for end-users. This not only creates ample job opportunities for India’s significant talent population but also assists in enhancing the general quality of after-sales service in the electronics industry, transforming the outlook to suit the growing demands of the customers.
