A customer is a person who receives services from someone in exchange for a payment. In other words, the customer is the consumer of a product or service offered.

The most important issue in customer relations is to build prestige. Reputation is the value of the customer's behavior towards employees and the organization. Reputation increases when customers are satisfied and trust their organization.

Establishing prestige is the result of a long struggle. Performing customer visits in a planned and conscious manner requires patient and careful follow-up. In order to keep the customer's interest at the top, it is necessary to avoid offering a product or service that cannot satisfy the customer.

Customer focus means acquiring the habit of constantly keeping customer interests in mind. Thinking only about sales is a sales-oriented and sales-oriented thinking and practice.

The customer's expectations can be any of the following items;

• Knowledgeable and professional employees
• Promptness
• Keeping promises
• Understanding
• Confidence
• Following
• Consistency
• Communication
• Accessibility
• One-on-one interaction

Reputation is formed as a result of the realization of three important elements;

• Keeping customer interests at the top
• Constantly remembering customers
• Creating a personal introduction

Customers should not be remembered only when the sale event occurs. Even in the absence of sales, it is not very difficult to achieve continuous recall. It is a behavior that creates an important and positive impact. (Remembering customers by card or phone on special days, as far as possible) Reputation for the organization is that customers become "loyal customers" when purchasing products or services.

Who is the Customer?

To briefly define the concept of customer, the Customer is the end user of our service or product. The customer emerges at the last point in the chain of activities, starting from the formation of the product, after it becomes usable, and then offering it for consumption. Every buyer of the resulting service or product output is a customer and should be considered as an outside customer or end user. It is necessary to divide the customer into 2 main categories

1. Internal Customer
2. External Customer

1. Internal Customer: It is not possible for the employees who have a direct relationship with the customer to provide good service unless they are supported by others in the same chain. Our staff, who have direct links with external customers and end users, need to be trained in customer service skills. It is easier to identify the needs of your internal customers than external customers.

2. External Customer: Our customer is not just the end user. Clearly end-user should be happy as it's our source of revenue. However, there are other intermediary customers whose needs must be met and made happy. Agents, Distributors, Wholesalers retailers etc. The needs of all these customers must be met and the relationships maintained. It is more complicated to identify the needs of external customers, as we do not have the ability to find each customer and identify their needs one by one. The applications we will make in the following way will play an active role in determining customer needs.

1. Direct conversation with the customer
2. Feedback from our own staff
3. Analysis of customer complaints and comments
4. the market research
5. Question and answer forms
6. Telemarketing methods

Getting in touch with the customer and getting information by communicating. It will help us to obtain information such as customer requests and complaints.

How to Establish Appropriate Communication with Customers?

Developing communication skills starts with understanding the communication process. Communication occurs when the customer correctly perceives the sent messages. If this situation has not occurred, it is not possible to talk about an effective and positive communication. Three important issues can be mentioned in the formation of such a result.

1. First, the thoughts, ideas or feelings sent were not correctly coded and brought into the form of a message.
2. Second, the customer has not been able to organize and interpret the messages received correctly.
3. Thirdly, there are noises that negatively affect communication.

Communication barriers that prevent communication from being positive and effective can be listed as follows.

• Differences in perception: Lack of common understanding about the subject of conversation with the customer, slowness of perception and inability to focus can cause communication to be interrupted or difficult.
• Communication pressure: When aware of the existence of pressured, directive communication, it is natural for the client to defend himself by putting barriers to communication.
• Excess and irrelevant information: Excessive and unnecessary information bores the customer and reduces their interest. This is seen as one of the important factors in interrupting and stopping listening.
• Conducting the interview haphazardly: The client may be disappointed and show signs of anger as a result of regular and unscheduled meetings. The customer wants to be sure that the problem is well understood and information will be provided accordingly.
• Physical barriers: Noise during conversation and conversation (phone, visit, ringing and temporary disturbances, etc.) prevents and makes it difficult for the customer to show interest in communication.
• Bad listening: If the customer or you are a biased and careless listener, the effectiveness of communication will be adversely affected.

Short words and sentences should always be preferred in interviews. Long sentences and incomprehensible sentences should be avoided. Sending too many messages to the other person and using words like me and myself more than necessary make the other customer uncomfortable. We know what we mean in our speech and make the mistake of assuming that it is known to the customer as well. It is important that what we say is not what we say, but what we want to say and that it is fully understood by the customer.

Asking Questions

One of the indispensable features of successful and effective communication is to learn the needs and problems of the customer. Customers need to be persuaded to learn more about and inform them. By asking questions, important steps can be obtained in this regard. In this way, the customer is included in the conversation, his participation is ensured and his attention is sustained. As a result, the customer has more information about the company and the product. The issues to be considered while asking questions can be briefly summarized as follows.

• Long answers should be encouraged.
• There should be gaps between questions and the client should not feel like they are being judged.
• Short and simple questions should be asked.
• Questions leading to specific answers should be avoided.
• Questions should be asked to identify needs.

Listening

An important method in removing barriers to interpersonal communication is "'Effective Listening"'. Effective listening is hearing and understanding the thoughts, needs, and concerns of the other person. Unfortunately, we often fail to focus on listening, rather than listening in customer relations. your speech! There is a false belief that it is necessary.

• In order to develop listening ability, the following rules should be observed.
• For listening to be positive, it is necessary to create a physical atmosphere that will create trust.
• Clearly demonstrate your willingness to listen by focusing your physical and spiritual energies in listening
• Control your emotions.
• Focus on what is being said rather than who is saying it.
• Show interest and alertness to make the other person feel like you're listening.
• Try to listen closely to the meaning and content of the speech. Don't get hung up on misused words
• Be patient and help the client finish what they want to say.
• Examples of bad listening habits; I do all the talking I interrupt when people are talking. I don't look at my
• I start arguing before the other party finishes speaking. Everything said reminds me of my past experiences and I take a stand accordingly.

How to Create Value for the Customer?

The concept of customer value, in addition to satisfying the customer, examines how the offered product or service is selected among the competitors and examines the selection criteria, compares it with the criteria of the competitors and examines the degree of importance of each criterion.

Today, businesses face dynamic, changing and complex market conditions. Consumers-customers evaluate the companies from which they buy their products and services more intensively and meticulously, and demand more service with less payment. Thanks to the developing technology and communication opportunities, the advantages of products and services may be short-lived.

In such an environment, businesses are looking for new ways and strategies to capture and maintain their competitive advantages. One of these ways is the quality aspect. Thanks to the quality approach and quality-focused practices, managers are able to develop in-house activities and ultimately obtain quality products, services and processes.

In this context, the ISO 9001 Quality Management system and Total Quality Management approaches brought customer satisfaction to the fore. However, in order for it to be a measurable and manageable concept, customer satisfaction must necessarily be linked to the concept of "value for the customer".

The issue of quality is no longer an important competitive difference due to the successful implementation of activities and developments related to quality management by many organizations and the narrowing of quality differences. Customers tend not to even consider products that do not comply with quality standards. In general, the "quality" requirement is considered indispensable and the customer has sought the concept of value offered to him beyond that. Therefore, customers need applications that will bring other competitive advantages besides the quality requirement. Thus, it is seen that the quality created and the service provided can only be a tool, while creating value for the customer is the goal.

We are entering a period where those who do the right things will lose, and those who do the right things will survive and win.

Value creation for the customer is the approach to what customers want and what they get after purchasing and using the product.

Value creation for the customer includes the situation and meaning when the customer gets more than he expects for what he pays. More precisely, it is to offer additional benefits to the customer at no cost. The important point here is the expected, hoped, perceived situation. For example, when you buy a pack of salt from the grocery store, you don't expect anyone to carry it to your car or home. However, when you get gas, you can wait for the windows to be wiped or to be offered a coffee. Therefore, if the value created is not customer-oriented and oriented to its needs, it does not mean much. Because the value and benefits offered are determined by the customer himself. The value created creates an emotional bond between the customer and the organization. This, in turn, can lead to re-preference and purchase, and thus to customer loyalty.

The customer satisfaction obtained as a result of creating value for the customer will bring the following benefits to the organizations;

• Increased repeat purchases at a higher rate
• Increasing profit margins as a result of more conscious management of costs and expenses
• As creativity will be supported, the motivation of the employees will increase and the rate of leaving the company will decrease.
• High-value customers transfer their feelings to their relatives

How to Create Customer Satisfaction?

The proliferation of places where large masses shopped and the spread of mass marketing methods put an end to these relations. Instead of seeing customers as valuable, loyal customers and developing their loyalty, they made the mistake of perceiving them as unknown and not well known masses.

What does the customer want;

• To value yourself
• To ensure that the products and services offered to itself are low-cost but of high quality.
• Products and services are suitable for their own needs and expectations.
• Establishing and maintaining an honest, close, warm and trusting relationship with him.
• One-to-one relationship with the customer è creating loyalty è repeat sales

Repeated sales by creating one-to-one relationships and loyalty with the customer;

It is different for the marketing actions and division to gain importance within a company, and different for marketing practices and thoughts to dominate the entire company. The second approach requires the company to be customer oriented. A traditional marketing savvy company MANAGES PRODUCTS. A CRM-savvy company MANAGES CUSTOMERS, maximizing the value expected from customers. A traditional marketer aims to find more customers for their products than is possible, while a CRM-oriented company aims to find more products and services for their current customers. The traditional organizational structure is built on the logic of "silo".

Elements of Customer-Focused Strategy

• Emphasizing long-term relationships with customers, creating lifetime value
• High quality products and services
• Differentiate customers and spend more resources on more valuable ones
• Initiating and maintaining a dialogue with customers. Avoiding mass-market advertising
• Respecting and protecting the private areas of customers
• Using information about customers to better shape individual customers rather than making predictions for the mass market
• Trying to build customer share instead of building market share

Being customer oriented; As the company and all its employees, to try to plan every action and decision in a way that the products and services offered will create satisfaction that will give pleasure to the customers, and as a result, to be a preferred institution. An important component of being customer-centric is customer satisfaction and measurement. Customer satisfaction is the situation in which there is an overlap between what the customer expects and what he obtains.

The aim of customer satisfaction and service quality satisfaction research programs is to provide quality products and services to all customers. It is not about serving everyone at the same level. Acquiring new customers is much more costly than retaining an existing one. The longer a customer is retained, the more profitable it will be. Increasing the level of satisfaction and creating customer loyalty ultimately necessitates a good customer relationship management.