Companies Need to Come Down from Their Ivory Towers and Talk to the People with Whom They Hope to Create Relationships

From the assigned reading, I found below statement the most important and relevant to my direct experiences. Even the article was published in 1999, but the ideas and logics are still valid until today.

“Companies need to come down from their Ivory Towers and talk to the people with whom they hope to create relationships.”

This statement appears to be true when we look at how we, as a customer wants to contact the company regarding service, after sales service, product knowledge, delivery schedule, and etc. The company that seems to be too far from customers to contact will end up with negative brand images. Even the product is a high quality or premium, but people love “attention.” The retailers cannot answer all the questions from customers but company must also support both retailers and customers directly by making itself “touchable.” Customer care or customer service is the function that helps customers when asking general questions on products or services, solving problems, and also receiving feedback from customers. Today, most companies launch their social media and online portal to support customers. By using all the online and social media portals, customers can contact and seek for support from companies, and it is faster than other sources because they can write the review online which more than thousand people can see it within a second. The most sustainable solution for all companies is to connect and make themselves touchable to “end users.” They are also called “consumers” who truly use products and directly experience product features.