After-Sales Cannot Be an After-Thought
6 months ago
Ever since the government announced Make in India initiatives there has been a debate around prohibiting internationally renowned IT products to promote indigenous ones. Primary argument being, we must support Indian OEMs and brands by offering concessions in quality, increased price and lower expectations of services so that they attain scale to be able to afford the additional overheads to offer an equivalent product and after sales but the fallacy is that we are focusing only on domestic consumption.
If we were to look at a bigger picture and consider the world as our market then we need to push the envelope and innovate our way to compete with the existing providers head-on in terms of quality, after-sales and price. Instead of focusing on the approach ‘Make in India for India’, we should channelize our energies for ‘Make in India for the World’.
It is true that it would be difficult for each Indian manufacturer to be able to innovate across all aspects of this, instead the approach should be to collaborate and build a truly digital supply chain for manufacturing, shipping, after-sales and recycle.
Any industry’s maturity cycle consists of 3 phases
- Manufacturing : Govt starts incentivizing manufacturers to build indigenous products. Manufacturers would import basic components and eventually design to development becomes indigenous.
- Sales & Marketing : Every product would vouch that building a brand is a decade long journey. It takes so many aspects to work in favour to build a great brand. Once a great product is built you need to build the brand.
- After-Sales : Once you get the target customers to purchase the brand, the next step is to retain and grow organically. Every manufacturer would love to build the product as intuitive as they can, allowing the customer to start using it without on-field support but every time the product breaks or malfunctions any customer would want a prompt support. This builds trust on the brand and seriousness of the manufacturer. It cannot be bought by discounts or offers; it needs to be built over years. An omni-present after-sales network leads to trust and repeat purchase behaviour.
When starting Scogo, we had just one goal moving forward, to build a truly digital and dynamic after-sales network using the existing talent pools and a unified platform offering an end-to-end integration throughout a product’s post manufacture lifecycle.
Over years we discovered so many manufacturers in India who would prefer to let go of ownership of after-sales, positioning themselves as a commodity product. Following the usual approach of handing over their hardware to the customer and letting them figure out the after-sales works, as the worry about the associated overheads evaporates at the same time building a perception about Company’s inability to help when the hardware malfunctions. Having worked with few such manufacturers and by building a strong after-sales network together, we were able to win over their customers’ trust and create a recurring sales pipeline.
Yes, there are reasons to defer or completely avoid setting up the after-sales service network for your products. Think of a scenario where every time you had to ship your product you would have to set up your logistics network, the idea seems so alien and unnatural, right!?
At Scogo, we have worked over the last 4 years to build a truly digital after-sales platform for ICT products which, once subscribed, could set up your after-sales services from Day1 without incurring any upfront fixed costs. This way we could co-create the best solution for your customers from Day 1 and take on your competition whether from domestic or international brands right from the start.
As you build the Superior Product, Scogo builds the Superior Service and together we would build the best experience. Not letting after-sales be an after-thought anymore.
