Well, you invested in the creation of a great product, earmarked a healthy budget for marketing, and made the sale. Now what? In todays economic world it is entirely possible that even a company with moderately high sales revenue may have to consider one or all of the following: shrinking margins, loss of market share, customer attrition, or simple loss of profitability. Certain factors are completely out of the control of most businesses, things like government regulation, supplier price increases, or a drop in discretionary consumer spending. In such a world, it is ever more important to recoup the investment your business makes in acquiring a new customer or client especially if your business is a niche market or involves large, infrequent purchases. But, in all cases, it is a truism that positive word-of-mouth and repeat business are the hallmark of most successful businesses.

Unfortunately, most companies adopt a Field of Dreams philosophy, an “if we build it, they will come” model of customer satisfaction. The it being, of course, a high-quality product or service. No one will argue that quality and value engender referrals and repeat buying, but what happens when youve engaged a fleet of six-sigma gurus, created layers of stringent QA processes, and then a third-party, like a distributor, dealer, or other channel partner drops the ball? Lets face it, mistakes in manufacturing and services occur, businesses experience loss of talent pool, or partner vendors arent as quality oriented as they could be, so, knowing that even an unhappy customer can be saved by a quality follow-up process, what do you do? Even more critical, how do you even uncover if there are problems or obstacles to repeat business or referrals within your sales process?