Several years ago, I worked for the French subsidiary of a US video game publisher listed on Nasdaq. The company had a particularly rigorous financial culture: every accounting entry had to be justified, every operation documented and every anomaly explained.
At the time, we worked with a point-of-sale materials supplier we genuinely liked. From a commercial perspective, there was little to criticise: the contacts were good, logistics worked, deadlines were respected and the relationship had become established. Then one day, the French finance manager decided that we would no longer work with that supplier. The decision had nothing to do with price, a failed delivery or a poor salesperson. It came from something far less visible: a credit note that had never arrived.
The money itself had been refunded, but the accounting document required to justify the entry was still missing. In our environment, that missing document created an internal risk the finance manager was no longer willing to accept. The supplier had therefore not failed to make the sale. It had succeeded in making the sale and then weakened everything that could come afterwards.
A customer who has bought is still a customer who decides
We tend to picture the commercial journey as a path with a finish line: the signature, the order or the payment. Before that line, the company tries to convince, reassure, demonstrate and facilitate; afterwards, it executes. This division is useful for organising functions, but it becomes much less relevant when we look at the situation from the customer's side.
A customer does not stop evaluating a company because a purchase order has been signed. In fact, they are discovering a new part of the relationship: they receive a confirmation, an invoice or a delivery, may contact sales administration, request a change, encounter a problem, wait for a refund or ask for after-sales support. At every one of these moments, they continue to learn something about the company they chose.
Research into customer journeys suggests that loyalty cannot be understood solely as the outcome of an initial purchase. Repeated experiences can contribute to repurchase loops, while an incident or a more attractive alternative can reopen a decision that previously appeared settled.
The first purchase is therefore not the end of the decision. It changes the nature of the question. Before the purchase, the customer is essentially deciding whether to choose this company; afterwards, another decision is already beginning to form: do I want to choose it again?
Product value is no longer enough when the experience becomes costly
The supplier in my story had delivered what was expected. Its product had not suddenly become bad. What had changed was the cost of the relationship, not necessarily its financial cost, but its cost in time, vigilance, follow-ups, uncertainty and risk.
Research on perceived value helps clarify this distinction. The value customers attribute to a relationship does not depend solely on the benefits of the product or service; it also incorporates the sacrifices associated with the experience, including effort, risk and difficulty. Convenience, efficiency, service excellence and relational benefits can therefore all contribute to overall perceived value.
An incomprehensible invoice, a poorly handled follow-up or a credit note that requires repeated calls are therefore more than administrative failures. They add cost to the relationship and can gradually change the answer to a very simple question: is this still the company I want to choose next time?
The back office does not sell. But it contributes to preference.
Telling an accountant, a sales administrator or a logistics specialist that they should sell would make little sense. Their job is not that of a salesperson, and there is no reason it should become one. The problem appears when we confuse two very different ideas: selling and influencing the desire to buy.
Salespeople are not the only people who influence that desire. A perfectly clear invoice can reinforce the sense that the customer chose a serious company; a quick response to a problem can reduce resistance; a well-managed delivery can strengthen trust; and a properly resolved issue can improve the way the customer judges the relationship. Conversely, the feeling of constantly having to monitor a supplier, chase them or repair what they failed to do can gradually reduce the value of the relationship.
This connects directly with Market[SELL]ing™. When selling is viewed from the buyer's side, the distinction between what is considered “commercial” and what is not becomes less important than the actual effect produced on the decision.
A good experience does not guarantee repurchase. A bad one can reopen the decision.
We need to be careful with shortcuts. Excellent after-sales service does not guarantee that a customer will buy again, just as a perfect invoice does not automatically create loyalty. Price, competition, future needs, changes within the customer's company and market developments can all play a role.
Research into customer journeys nevertheless suggests that a smooth and coherent experience can contribute to more habitual repurchase mechanisms, while an incident can call into question a relationship that previously appeared secure. Research into perceived value adds another important nuance: the relationships between overall value, satisfaction, word of mouth and repurchase intention vary according to context. There is therefore no universal mechanism that transforms a good experience into a loyal customer.
This is precisely why I prefer to speak about the desire to buy again rather than guaranteed loyalty. Loyalty is an outcome observed afterwards; the desire to buy again is a state of the decision that the company can try to understand.
An administrative incident can become commercial information
Consider the missing credit note again. From the supplier's perspective, the problem was probably administrative: the money had been refunded, so the issue may have appeared financially resolved. For our finance manager, the problem was entirely different because the accounting entry could not be properly secured. The same event therefore had a very different meaning depending on the point of view.
This is often where companies make a mistake. They assess an incident through their own process and consider a problem finished when the refund has been made, the ticket closed, the parcel eventually delivered or the error corrected. The customer may still be evaluating something else entirely: the energy required to deal with the situation, the trust they can still place in the company, the risk of another problem or simply whether they want to go through the experience again.
Research into service recovery shows that the way a company responds after a failure can influence satisfaction, trust, forgiveness and future behavioural intentions. These effects are not automatic and depend on both the nature of the failure and the response, but they confirm that a service failure cannot be reduced to its technical resolution alone. Market[SELL]ing™ invites us to observe this second reading.
After the purchase, the Gauge™ does not return to zero
This is also where the Desire-to-Buy Gauge™ takes on another dimension. It is not only useful for observing what happens before a first purchase. A decision may have tipped and the purchase may have taken place without the dynamic disappearing; another decision gradually begins to form, whether about repurchase, renewal, recommendation or simply continuing the relationship.
This does not mean assigning a real numerical value to every interaction. The Gauge™ is not a scientific measuring instrument, and level 80 does not mean that a purchase is automatic. After the purchase, an experience can continue to strengthen adhesion or, on the contrary, create new forms of resistance.
A missing credit note does not “remove twenty points”. Such precision would be artificial. What it can do is create something much more useful to observe: a loss of trust, increased perceived effort, doubts about reliability or a desire to look for an alternative. The useful question therefore becomes: what has this interaction just changed in the customer's next decision?
Silos become visible when we look at the whole decision
From the supplier's salesperson's perspective, our company was probably a satisfied customer, and there were good reasons for believing that: the contacts were happy, orders were running smoothly and products were being delivered. Then a function that was probably not considered “commercial” created a disruption significant enough to alter the customer's decision.
This is exactly the type of situation that explains the value of the Market[SELL]ing Manager. The purpose is not to add another manager between finance, sales administration, logistics, marketing and sales, but to ask a question that each function, confined to its own perimeter, may struggle to ask alone: what is the combined effect of our interactions on the desire to buy and buy again?
Marketing may have done its job perfectly, sales may have done the same and logistics may also have performed well, without the sum of those performances necessarily creating a coherent experience. Conversely, no single function owns the whole experience, but each owns part of it.
The real challenge is not to turn everyone into a salesperson
When an administrative team is told that its work influences the customer relationship, it can easily hear something else: another commercial responsibility is being imposed on it. That would be precisely the wrong conclusion. The goal is not to ask accounting to sell, but to give greater economic meaning to what it already does.
The accuracy of an invoice, the speed of a response, the quality of a delivery and the way an anomaly is handled all protect something: the possibility for the customer to continue seeing the company as a desirable, credible and sufficiently simple option to choose again.
This distinction also changes the way we speak to employees. Instead of asking how they can help salespeople sell more, we can ask a question that remains closer to their actual work: in what you do, what could make the customer more — or less — willing to continue with us? This second formulation does not deny their profession; it gives it a place within the overall decision.
A successful sale can still become a poor decision
This may be the most uncomfortable part of the story. At the moment we chose that supplier, our decision was probably a good one. Then the experience provided new information, that information changed our perception of risk and the next decision was no longer the same.
A company therefore cannot focus solely on being chosen. It must also understand what allows it to remain choosable. Being chosen depends largely on what the customer believes before the purchase; remaining choosable also depends on what they discover afterwards.
An earlier reflection explored why selling too soon can prevent a purchase. The next examined how a company can become preferable by giving the customer a reason to choose it. This reflection adds a third idea: a reason to choose can disappear after the purchase when the experience contradicts the promise that originally made the choice desirable.
Market[SELL]ing™ therefore does not stop when the customer buys, because the customer never completely stops deciding.
Research references
Customer journeys and repurchase. Siebert, Gopaldas, Lindridge and Simões examine customer journey dynamics and the way successive experiences can contribute to repurchase loops or, conversely, interrupt them. Read the publication →
Perceived value, effort and future behaviour. The meta-analysis by Blut, Chaney, Lunardo, Mencarelli and Grewal examines components of perceived value, the sacrifices associated with the experience and their relationships with several customer outcomes, including repurchase intention. Read the publication →
Recovery after service failure. Empirical research examines how a company's response following a service failure can influence trust, forgiveness, satisfaction and intentions to continue the relationship. Read the publication →
Post-purchase services. Other research examines the role of after-sales services, returns, refunds and support in building trust and satisfaction after purchase. Read the publication →