Customer Fraud and Business Responses
A customer is a very important element in the chain of supply as he or she is the end user of goods and services provided at the market place. It is said that a customer is an asset to business owners and should be treated like a king or queen. Every individual is a customer as people are deemed to buy goods and services for daily use. The buying decisions of customers are very critical and are influenced by a number of factors (Wallace, K. 1999). Once the expectations of customers are not met he or she is turned off hence fails to buy goods or services.
As a customer I have experience in various issues that turned me off and opted to buy goods from another place. There are number of small insignificant turnoffs that have ever influenced my buying decisions. First, dirt store is one of the major turnoffs which influenced my buying decision as I could not withstand the bad smell from the store. The store had a lot of dust and its goods were dirty and this influenced my decision to buy from another place. A second turnoff was high prices of commodities as compared to other neighboring store markets.
Considering the economic hardships I had to move to a store that offered the same products at relatively lower price. Third, the location of the market place is out of way and this led to change of mind and considered a more accessible market place. Fourth, poor customer service is one main issue that has influenced my buying decisions in the past. Poor customer service in this aspect refers to unfriendly sellers, taking too long to respond to customer needs and being unhelpful.
This has been one of the worst experiences that influenced my decision to buy from another place. 2. Describe in your own words the three categories of customer turnoffs. Give five specific examples of each. Satisfaction of customers is one major achievement of an organization or business entity as it results to creation of good trading environment (Keep, B. 2002). There are three main categories of customer turnoffs such as value, systems performance and people.
Value of service or goods offered to customer is important because once customers are not satisfied with what is offered they change their buying decisions. For example defect goods, expired products, charging high prices for poor transport services, non-functional machine parts and Inferior goods. Systems performance is another customer turnoff especially when customer expectations are not met in provision of goods or services. The customer always expects to get the best but in certain occasions the centrally happens.
For example, medication provided by a qualified doctor which does not result to treatment of the illness, buying of a laptop hence turning out to be non-functional or entering a motel in expectation of good services but its condition turn out to be pathetic. Another example is a busy bank that has a few number of tellers or promotions whereby customers expects more but they get unworthy goods. A third category of customer turn off is People which relates to a situation on how customers are handled within organizations or any other business entity.
Examples in this category include failing to address a client well in an organization, failing to greet a customer or client, use of abusive words to clients, defrauding of clients by hiking prices of goods or services and taking too long to respond a customer for any clarification. References Wallace, K. (1999). Why People Don’t Buy Things: Five Proven Steps to Connect with Your Customers and Dramatically Increase Your Sales, Perseus Publishing. Keep, B. (2002). Customer Fraud and Business Responses: Let the Marketer Beware, Quorum Books.
