2020-11-16

What is your definition of Aftersales & Service? 🤔

We all seem to have a different understanding of what is meant by Aftersales & Service… Companies, employees, and even customers mean sometimes completely different things when the topic of Aftersales & Service comes to mind. First of all, there is no good or bad definition for Aftersales & Service, but it can lead to issues where there is a difference in understanding of the wording used. 

Is that a huge problem? Well… sometimes it is. It could potentially escalate to levels which under normal circumstances you want to stay away from, like a lawsuit with your suppliers or customers. 
Fortunately, most of the time it just leads to situations where it becomes apparent that there is a mismatch between, for instance, your offering and a customer expectation… You even might have an employee voicing that ‘doesn’t belong to my responsibilities!’.
But even those situations lead to the fact that you have to put in an extra effort to manage those expectations and match them again, is consuming resources you could probably use elsewhere with more constructive results.

I wanted to highlight in this initial blog what is meant by Caresult when Aftersales & Service is mentioned – to make sure the definition from our side is out there.

Firstly, when you look for a common understanding of the word ‘Service(s)’, it will be difficult to find one. Caresult has therefore deliberately added the word ‘Aftersales’ in front of it, to ensure that we mean the Service that is needed after a sale.
Most of the time it is connected to the sale of a product, in our case technical in nature and in need of ‘caretaking’ during its life cycle. It takes care of what is installed in the market, the so-called iBase. 
So, you could now already establish Aftersales & Service is a process, one that is targeted to maximize the use of a product sold.  For the sake of further elaborating on the above definition, the process point of view is also taken into consideration.
This leads to ‘our’ definition:

‘It is the process around providing support to an iBase – consisting of hardware and or software – to sustain, repair or to improve the functionality of that iBase and to support the customer’s workflow/process optimization in order to maximize the use of that iBase.’

Taking this definition, you can extract that it includes – from an Aftersales & Service offering point of view – Hours, materials, maintenance, repair, installation, relocation, updates, upgrades, spare parts, Aftersales & Service contracts, testing, commissioning, digital services and so on. In these posts, Caresult will take you to other aspects of this process’s responsibility and share ideas/thoughts for you to leverage.

Having a common understanding of Aftersales & Service is also important when you want to build a business out of it and at the same time increase your customer satisfaction. 

It is only possible to improve what you measure, so you’d need to have a clear sight of your operational and financial key performance indicators (KPIs) of your Aftersales & Service process.
You can only manage your Aftersales & Service if you have the roles and responsibilities clearly defined in structures that can act upon them.
You’d need stable, scalable, and common processes if you want to be able to grow, be effective and efficient in addressing your customer satisfaction and your own business results.

These three statements above start with a common understanding of the definition of Aftersales & Service. The one Caresult will use is delivered with this blog and will be addressed from all different sides in the upcoming ones!

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts, comments, questions, and statements about your definition of Aftersales & Service!

Stay safe, 
Peter van Altena – Caresultant