Customer Expectations, Satisfaction & Loyalty

Cindy King — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 23:00:40 +0000

More than ever businesses are looking at the tactics they use to get and keep their customers. Rohit Bhargava wrote Customer Satisfaction Doesn’t Matter because most customers will go after the best offer no matter what you do to keep them happy. Today customer satisfaction is not as important as customer loyalty.

This is true generally in international sales too. But there is one area where customer satisfaction needs your utmost attention. In international sales you need to pay special attention to customer expectations.

Customer Expectations

Different cultures have different expectations. International business success can be made or lost depending on how well you appreciate these differences in expectations.

An example of how differences in expectations can lead to a loss of business is the Schindler elevator incident in Japan. An elevator accident happened in 2006 killing a teenager in Japan. In Japan people expected an immediate public apology from the Swiss company. The incident is still under investigation and the Swiss company thought an early apology would amount to accepting their fault.

This leading elevator company has been struggling to make sales in Japan since the incident.

Becoming Acquainted

In order to find out what your foreign customer expectations are you need to become acquainted with them. This is a process that can take some time when dealing with different cultures. Customer satisfaction is a good barometer of how well you are doing.

Loyalty In Different Cultures

Customer loyalty is a critical issue for most businesses in today’s world of globalization and down economies. The company with the better offer will always win.

But if you are do sell to international clients you also need to be aware of cultural differences in loyalty.

Here in France for example, face-to-face meetings are almost always essential for a good business relationship. There is a more personal element to loyalty.

In other cultures this personal element in loyalty is stronger. You can expect to see differences in loyalty between cultures with high scores on these cultural behavior scales:

Customer Centric Marketing

Before this customer centric trend, businesses learned to adapt to these differences as they proceeded to develop into different countries. It is true that with more experience throughout different countries you acquire certain “international skills”. What are these international skills? They are centered around flexibility… flexibility to others.

The current customer centric marketing environment should make it easy for businesses to go international. The strategy, processes and tactics exist for adapting to different customer expectations. At least within a basic format.

Cindy King's International Business Blog » customer loyalty

Customer Expectations, Satisfaction & Loyalty