Importance of Quality of Technical Support and Customer Service

Customer service and technical support are important in the decision to purchase from one supplier over another for both instruments and consumables. However, the importance varies when considering customer service and technical support for instruments or consumables.

In a recent study, customer service for instruments is more important in respondents’ purchase decision than it is for consumables (73% vs. 46% highly important, respectively). Very few respondents indicate that customer service of their consumables or instruments is not important to their purchase decision. Technical support is even more important to respondents’ purchase decision, especially for instrumentation, where 90% of respondents indicate that it is highly important to their purchase decision. Technical support for consumables is also more important for respondents’ purchase decision than customer service, but not nearly as important as it is for instruments (53% vs. 89% highly important, respectively).

Life science suppliers can leverage and promote the quality of their customer service and technical support when attracting customers for their products and services. This level of differentiation may be an especially strong selling feature for purchases of new instrumentation.