Have you ever felt like when you enter a long, dark corridor, you call someone and you only hear the echo of your own voice? Have you ever felt abandoned to your fate after buying a product? Have you ever sent an email asking for assistance about a product that you bought and have responded to you after several days, even weeks? Has your request ever been left unanswered?

I am particularly struck by the difference that exists in the service before and after the sale. EYE: Again, it’s not about generalizing, but unfortunately it’s something that happens too often to not comment on it.

Before the sale, and depending on the product you buy, of course, generally everything is smiles, energy, positivism. The seller takes pains to make sure that you are going to make a good decision, because it is the best product for you and shows you, to your complete satisfaction as your product will satisfy your needs, from top to bottom; He even got you a great financing plan that relieves the initial outlay load … Great! Reasons to complain? Well, you do not have any, because until now, everything is going great.

You make the decision, you buy the product and you already have it at home. What now? Where did everyone run? Is there still between you and the company the same energy and positivism as before? Generally not, and it’s regrettable. Just in this moment in which you have the opportunity to share with the company your satisfaction (or not) with the use of the product, because now there is no energy, enthusiasm, or contact.

What changed? Is it that the transaction is already made, the payment discounted from your bank account, the seller has already generated your commission and one more sale for the month, and even there everything remains? Is it that the objective of the company was simply to sell you the product, generate your profit and nothing else?

“Companies spend 90% of their budgets on addressing the customer instead of listening to them.” And the problem is there. Once the sale is made, little effort is made to continue next to the client. Sometimes for fear of the customer who complains, sometimes for fear of the customer who changes his mind and no longer wants the product … and you can keep citing reasons, some better than others, but ultimately they are just excuses that justify the lack of importance it is given to the after-sales service.

A few days ago I was with my mobile phone company making a query and it caught my attention to hear a message that said something like the following: ‘At the end of your consultation, we will give you the opportunity to assess our service’, and although the initiative is great, really different that the company allows me to assess how I was treated, it is interesting that they give me the opportunity to evaluate the service I received.

It should not be something like ‘At the end of your consultation, we will have the opportunity to know your opinion about our service’, because really the opportunity is not for me, but for them.

If I do not have the opportunity and the service is bad, I’m going to the competition and that’s it. It’s very simple, is not it? If you, as a company, think that what I think about my experience with you is an opportunity for me, I think you’re misbehaving. Or at least, there is something that you are not interpreting in the right way: after-sales service is not a favor that the company makes to the customer, it is an obligation.

Only through the after-sales service you as a company will have the opportunity to know what the customer experience with your product is like, if you like it, if you do not like it, if you would recommend it to your friends, if you would buy it again, etc. Anyway, that opportunity is for you, not for your client.

I think it is important to understand that a satisfied customer is not generated before the sale, but later. If this is well understood, the value that you really have will be given to the after-sales service and you will stop thinking that serving your customers well is a favor that you do to them.

It is the other way around, it is the opportunity that you have of winning a client for life.

Do you agree? Do you make a real effort to offer a better service after the sale and not before? Have you noticed before how important the after-sales service is?