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Fundamentals Of Communication In Marketing
Several communication mechanisms are used to achieve customer retention and growth objectives. These
mechanisms take advantage of the customer’s need to minimize costs associated with purchasing, in
terms of both shopping behaviours and actual costs of processing purchases. Lowering costs raises the
value. Several principles are at work in designing communication elements to achieve customer retention
and growth (that is growth within current accounts) objectives. These principles include communicating
proactively, making it easy for customer to communicate, and making company’s response easy.
COMMUNICATING PROACTIVELY:
To avoid losing customers to competitors, marketers should communicate regularly and proactively
with their customer base. Direct lines of communication between functional areas of the selling and
buying firms should exist, thus building some form of partnership relationship as partnership encourages
proactive communication.
Proactive communication strategies first identify every communication opportunity such as when
invoices are sent, when a technician performs service or when a delivery is made. Then these opportunities
are incorporated into the overall communication strategy. For example, a new catalogue may be included
with the invoice, the technician leaves a customer satisfaction survey for the customer to complete and
mail in, or the delivery person notices a competitive product and asks when the company began ordering
that product. In each instance, a communication opportunity is seized and information is exchanged
that can lead to additional selling opportunities.
MAKE IT EASY TO RESPOND: The marketer should empower its employees to be receiver of
information from customers. When customer calls, the employee is given the responsibility for handling
the customer’s issue, even if the issue is outside that employee’s usual area of responsibility. This means
each employee of the marketing firm must have relevant and adequate knowledge about customer
relations management.
Another important element in making it easy to respond is the creation of internal communication
channels. For example, it is important to recognise that when the delivery person identifies a competitive
in road into a customer, that vital information has to reach someone who can respond. The most obvious
person to respond is the salesperson for the account, but the delivery person may not know who that
salesperson is or he may be ignorant about the crucial nature of such information. Open and regularly
used channels of communication between internal areas of the firm must exist for the company to learn
and make use of that knowledge.