LANKATILES

Q: The need to provide holistic customer experiences is rapidly gaining importance. What is your interpretation of this?

A: The growing emphasis on providing holistic customer experiences reflects a shift beyond simply completing a transaction. Modern customers now expect much more – they seek to feel understood, valued and connected to a brand on multiple levels.

This goes beyond a one-off sale – it’s about fostering an ongoing relationship built on trust and personalisation.

A truly holistic customer experience involves considering every touch point and interaction across the entire customer journey. From the initial brand encounter to post-purchase support, every moment matters.

By ensuring a seamless, personalised and consistent experience, brands can meet the evolving expectations of today’s customers, creating deeper connections that drive loyalty and long-term engagement.

Q: Why should customer excellence always be a priority? And how does your organisation ensure this?

A: Customer excellence should always be a priority as it directly influences an organisation’s long-term success and growth. Satisfied customers are more likely to become repeat buyers, brand advocates and contribute to positive word of mouth, which ultimately drives business sustainability.

At LANKATILES, we ensure customer excellence by fostering a customer-centric culture. This is achieved through regular training programmes, internal communications and aligning performance metrics to customer outcomes, as opposed to merely focussing on sales targets. We also prioritise proactive communication with our customers, ensuring they are informed and engaged at every touch point.

Additionally, we’re committed to continuous improvement, constantly evaluating and refining our processes to better serve customers.

Q: What is your organisation’s approach to customer excellence?

A: LANKATILES’ approach to customer excellence is built around consistently providing high quality service, as quality is one of our core values. We believe that gaining trust is fundamental and we focus on creating lasting, positive relationships with our customers.

To ensure this, we offer frequent training and development programmes for sales staff, enabling them to excel at serving customers and delivering exceptional service. We also emphasise personalised, value added services such as offering design support through our team of designers.

This includes helping customers design their spaces using our products and sharing customised mood boards to inspire their vision. Our approach combines design-centric expertise with personal selling to ensure each customer receives a tailored experience.

Additionally, the LANKATILES distribution network – which includes showrooms, factory outlets, dealers, distributors, projects and exports – ensures our products are easily accessible.

Above all, we prioritise building longstanding relationships with our customers, aiming to be their trusted partner for years to come.

Q: How does your organisation harness the power of data and analytics to elevate customer experiences?

A: LANKATILES harnesses the power of data and analytics to elevate customer experiences by closely analysing customer behaviour and past purchase trends. This helps us understand preferences, anticipate needs and offer personalised recommendations.

We also analyse product performance by identifying fast-moving SKUs (stock keeping units) as well as slow or non-moving ones, and dive into the reasons behind these trends. By pinpointing the root causes, we can implement timely, effective solutions to optimise inventory and improve product availability. Our ERP system plays a crucial role in streamlining this process, providing real-time data and insights.

Furthermore, we extend the use of data analytics to our marketing communications including advertising, sales promotions and activations. By assessing customer data, we ensure that our marketing efforts are targeted, relevant and engaging.

This data driven approach enables us to continuously refine our strategies and provide a more tailored, seamless experience for our customers.

Q: What are the latest trends and innovations in customer excellence in your sector?

A: Some of the latest trends and innovations include the integration of augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) to enhance customer engagement. Since our products are highly aesthetic, AR and VR enable customers to visualise and experience LANKATILES products in a more immersive and interactive way.

Another trend is the use of geolocation targeted approaches where we personalise promotions and offers based on the customer’s location, creating a more tailored and relevant experience.

QR code scanning systems are also becoming more prevalent, allowing customers to easily access information about point-of-sale materials (POSMs) and other product details.

 

Q: And what challenges does your sector face at this time?

A: Our sector is currently facing several challenges – one being the recent lifting of the import ban, which has flooded the market with a large number of imported tiles. This creates a competitive disadvantage for local tile manufacturers.

Due to the country’s prevalent economic conditions, many customers are holding off on making purchase decisions. This uncertainty impacts their confidence in spending, which directly affects sales and customer engagement. We are also observing increased price consciousness among customers – understandably so in today’s climate. And volatile market conditions, such as fluctuating raw material prices and supply chain disruptions, contribute to a challenging business environment.

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Telephone 4526700  |  Email info@lankatiles.com  |  Website www.lankatiles.com