How do Indian customers actually find my product? 

Customer surveys in India – an important tool for your strategy and quality management 

Why do we, as a company with an excellent product, actually perform only modestly in India? It is often difficult to get an accurate answer to this question, as the reasons for the lack of resounding success can be very different.  

One reason could be a lack of customer satisfaction. However, customer satisfaction is the cornerstone of customer loyalty and customer retention and therefore of your long-term business success. 

While you have in-depth knowledge of your target customer group in Germany or Europe, your own attempts at interpretation from the German/European parent company perspective do not always hit the mark in India.   

 Customer survey as a strategy tool 

In the past, we have had very good experiences with the “customer survey” tool, among others – be it in the form of the classic questionnaire, in the form of online surveys or telephone surveys and, of course, especially in the form of personal interviews.  

The understanding that customer feedback is a valuable opportunity for optimizing processes and long-term customer loyalty is still lacking in many international companies operating in India. Interest and focus are more on short-term sales success than on the effort to create the appropriate conditions for long-term customer relationships.  

However, your sales success will only be achieved if you, as the parent company, know exactly what Indian customers expect in terms of sales approach, project management and service quality, and if your Indian subsidiary also takes these into account - no matter how high-quality and good your product may be.  

Ask yourself the following questions:  

  • How does the Indian consumer like my product? What does he dislike? Where is he still skeptical? 
  • Why does the customer prefer an alternative product from a competitor? Why did he switch to that product? 
  • How good (technically, in terms of time, etc.) is my local service structure? 
  • How did a customer perceive my employees, e.g. in sales? Was he satisfied with their performance?  
  • Was my management seen as competent? Was their commitment appropriate? 
  • How do customers view distributors/dealers? Would they prefer to speak directly to the manufacturer or something similar? 
  • Is something missing, such as a dedicated hotline number, WhatsApp contact, etc.? 
  • Is the price really too high, as one often hears with imported/premium products, especially from the company's own sellers? 
  • ... 

The significance of such surveys is of course fundamentally linked to the neutrality of those conducting them. Embellished or filtered feedback results are useless and not very useful. 

Feedback culture in India 

In India, the challenge for you to achieve such neutrality lies in the cultural context. As you can imagine, the feedback culture in India differs considerably from that in Europe. The "direct manner" that Germans in particular cultivate in dealing with each other, with work colleagues or even with the boss is not common in India. Europeans, for their part, often misunderstand the subtle criticism of Indian people. 

These cultural differences make it difficult for European companies to receive honest feedback.  

Customer surveys by our own people 

The idea that your own employees working in the subsidiary could receive unfiltered feedback through a corresponding customer survey is almost naive. The Indian employees' own interests play too much of a role in a possible survey result. The customer also selects his feedback, as he usually classifies the exchange with your local sales team as an indirect sales conversation.  

Customer feedback as a monitoring tool 

Get help from neutral third parties for honest feedback.  

Due to our many years of experience in India, we carry out customer surveys for you based on methodically sound data collection measures. This takes place cyclically during sales or as an integral part of every purchase.  

This way you can constantly monitor your customers’ mood and shorten your time-consuming and costly “India learning curve”.  

Please feel free to contact us without obligation and benefit from our many years of cross-industry experience.