Socially Responsible Marketing and Customer Service

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Table of Contents

Characteristics of goods and services; customer service and service offerings
Conclusion
Works Cited

Characteristics of goods and services; customer service and service offerings

Introduction

In any business, competition exists as customers tend to buy goods or services from a company they feel has the best services or goods at a good price; compounded with excellent customer care. In order to attract an optimum number of customers, companies have to engage in high end socially responsible marketing while at the same time ensuring that their products are the best for customer satisfaction.

A combination of these two provides a formula for success that gets more customers and keeps them for a long time through sustainable product adjustments to match society’s dynamic wants.

Therefore a company that succeeds in winning the confidence of society as responsible and provides the best customer services will equally succeed in business, since society gets to approve it as a company of choice. Not many companies manage to maintain a socially responsible competition, implying that those that get to do it well will have a leading advantage over the rest.

Stakeholders

Stakeholders are extremely instrumental for an organization’s success because these are the parties that have the company’s interests at heart. Both internal and external stakeholders are important at an equal level and a balance in attention given to them ought to be struck for best performance. External stakeholders who include customers, suppliers, lenders and even the wider society indeed have an influence on an organization’s production of goods and services.

On the other hand, the internal stakeholders like employees, directors and stock holders are essential in implementing the organizations’ objectives. To achieve this, organizations need to bring both the internal and external stakeholders together in such a way that they can share in the effort of maximizing the bottom line of the company.

Organizational Structure

The essence of an organizational structure is to have the best arrangement that drives organizations to their overall objectives and expectations. Exclusive focus may not be the best approach for an organization that aims at standing out as best. Flatter organizations will tend to be focused on and more responsive to the customer and the process while hierarchical structures focus more on the product.

A pure adoption of either focus is not healthy in the long term for some firms especially those whose business domains tend to be oriented to one side. For example a company that manufactures goods cannot afford to focus solely on the customer and ignore the product functions. On the other hand, a company that is oriented towards service production ought to maintain a reasonable sensitivity towards the customer.

Outsourcing

There is an increasing need for organizations to focus on their core business, meaning that other supportive functions of the business will have to be handled by other parties. This ensures that costs are cut down while efficiency is boosted as a result of concentrating on the business itself. Drivers for outsourcing include focus on core competencies, skill gaps, economies of scale, diversion of internal energy to higher priority tasks, fixed costs, and reduction of internal risk.

In order for outsourcing to be effective, certain factors must be present. However this outsourcing must be done carefully by ensuring that only functions that don’t relate to the core business in any way are outsourced. Otherwise, a disconnection can result between an organization and its product processes which can have a complicated impact on the marketing of the company’s products, quality, customer orientation and attitudes (Tayntor, 2001, pp 84-91).

Quality

Quality is the measure of accomplishment in an organization as regards to the goods or services it provides to its customers. A good example to demonstrate this is when quality cars lacked in the American market and suddenly Japanese cars flooded it, forcing American auto makers to respond by manufacturing quality cars.

This really demonstrates how quality is such a power that can immediately turn a huge market upside down. Any consistent effort worth honest appreciation is indicated by quality and nothing noble can ever replace this. Actually it is extremely easy for a long term business relationship to be terminated on grounds of quality than factors like price, meaning that quality overrides cost (Powell, 1987, p. 67)

Customer Service

Customer service is highly considered as the next big move in business which resulted from the quality movement. It has gradually become an important ingredient for any successful organization whether specializing in goods or services. Customers must be served in a manner that makes them feel appreciated and recognized as crucial people for an organization to proceed on with its own business agenda.

This calls for leaders to be extremely cautious even as they focus on giving out products that come out to satisfy the demands of the customer. Even when the demands are met, a company must still go an extra mile to ensure that the service awarded to their customers while in the course of acquiring those products is of a state that leaves them excited and willing to come back again. This is where customer service becomes king (Nord 1997).

In the US, several companies have faced multiple quality problems and have had to settle lawsuits as a result, with billions paid. Recalls have equally been common where companies are forced to withdraw from the market products that have been found unfit for customer consumption.

Examples include Intel which recalled motherboards with its 820 chipset because they could cause a computer to intermittently reboot or hang up. A $2.1B lawsuit was settled by Toshiba over floppy disk drive microcontroller chips that corrupted user data. Hewlett-Packard has also been caught up in this recalls when it had to get back 540 Series Pocket PCs that displayed only a fraction of the hues expected by customers (Bartholomew, 2000).

Conclusion

The characteristics of goods and services have fundamental differences in terms of production, distribution and even consumption. However when it comes to platforms of quality, customer satisfaction, shareholder consideration, and functional organizational planning; they portray characteristics of the same level.

These must be met by any organization for the ultimate success of its business in any environment. The cost of not responding to the customers’ demand for quality, failure to consider the consequences of outsourcing and a lack of consideration in organizational structure will undoubtedly lead to problems that are far more complex and must always be considered and executed by leadership to the latter.

Works Cited

Bartholomew, D. (2000). E-business commentary: Quality is still job one. Web.

Nord, W. R. (1997, January). Reinventing the workplace: How business and employees can both win. Academy of Management Review, 22(1), 283-286.

Powell, W. W. (1987, Fall). Hybrid organizational arrangements: New form or transitional development? California Management Review, 30(1), 67.

Tayntor, C.B. (2001), “A practical guide to staff augmentation and outsourcing”, Information Systems Management, Vol. 18 No.1, pp.84-91.

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