Hello friends, this is it, my tenth and final required blog post of the semester! There are less than two weeks left until the Fall 2015 semester is history and I will be on winter break relaxing with my friends and family. I am fifteen views away from my semester goal. ONLY FIFTEEN VIEWS!! That is practically nothing. Please help me with one final push to get the necessary amount of views! SHARE MY LINK: www.deanfromsiena.wordpress.com. I would also like to again thank Professor Scardillo for being innovative and pushing his students, for not only participating in this assignment, but really helping us excel with our writing and spreading our individual messages in our blogs. I have had so much fun with this assignment that I will continue to grow my blog and spread my ideas so that we can all learn together.
One of the reasons that I have really enjoyed this assignment is because of the praise and the compliments I have received from a lot of my readers. It is my job, as the writer of this weekly blog, to create not necessarily customer satisfaction, but reader satisfaction. I have really tried to write about both interesting and intriguing topics so that I could attract new readers and maintain repeat readers. Without readers, this blog would really lack a true meaning. Because of this, I would even try to engage with my readers to gain insights on topics they would be interested in or include some of my readers so that they could feel a sense of pride as they read along. I’m not trying to brag, but it would be really nice if businesses had a fraction of the customer satisfaction that I have displayed with my blog.
Customer satisfaction is such an underrated and underfunded form of marketing that, unfortunately, not enough businesses honor. Customer satisfaction can be defined as the measure of which a company’s products or services meet or surpass customer expectations. There is one easy saying that summarizes customer satisfaction, “the customer is always right”. It is essential to an organization’s survival that they have the ability to encourage repeat purchases of their product or service over their competitors. I just feels that companies do not honor or truly care about their customers today. There are always going to be those marketing “slime-balls” that will try to show the public that they sincerely care about their customers. These messages are made to be believable, but they are derived from ill intentions and frankly are not sincere.
Companies have to understand that customer satisfaction is a form of marketing. Marketing, typically, tends to cost money and sometimes a lot of money. However, customer satisfaction is worth every penny, since the cost to retain customers is about 80% cheaper than the cost of trying to gain new customers. Often times, it takes a small effort on the side of the firm to solidify a long-term relationship with their customers. For example, I was at a local Sprint store this past weekend and honestly, had one of the worst experiences. The service workers were rude, pushy, and did not care about my needs. This experience really diminished their chances that I will ever return to that Sprint store in the future. Not to mention, that I will tell others how my experience went (as I am in this blog). It is known that people are ten times more likely to tell people negative information than positive information. Word-of-mouth communication is already such a powerful tool. If the Sprint workers, provided a little bit of effort, I would feel completely satisfied, maybe have purchased more accessories, and ultimately would have come back. It is a shame that as consumers, we are shocked and relieved when we receive genuine customer satisfaction.
That concludes my last blog! I would like to thank all my readers for taking the time out of their busy lives to read my multiple blog posts. Please stay tuned as I may make special additional blog posts. Also, do not be surprised if you see me start my own customer satisfaction consulting firm in the future!
Best,
Dean Maloney from Siena College
Dean From Siena College 