Customer service

Customer service is the set of behaviors that a business undertakes during its interaction with its customers. It can also refer to a specific person or desk which is set up to provide general assistance to customers.

Related Topics:
Behavior - Business - Interaction - Customer

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The notion of customer service as a tool of competitive advantage started to gain ground in the United States in the 1980s, and has become a worldwide phenomenon.

Related Topics:
Service - Competitive advantage - United States - 1980s

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In Service America! (1985), Karl Albrecht and Ron Zemke wrote that we live in a service economy where organizations must perform as well as produce, and physical products are distinguished by the quality of the service that go with them. Management gurus started to talk about the customer driven business, and they argued that the "Customer is King". Jan Carlzon of Scandinavian Airlines claimed that he had transformed his business by paying attention to what he called Moments of Truth, where the subjective and fragmentary experience of customers on the phone or speaking to front-line staff led them to form firm judgements – good and bad – about that company.

Related Topics:
Service America! - 1985 - Karl Albrecht - Ron Zemke - Service economy - Quality - Management - Guru - Jan Carlzon - Scandinavian Airlines - Company

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Tom Peters grew to prominence by proclaiming the message that organizations need to be turned upside down to serve the customer. That is, the familiar organization pyramid should be reversed, with attention and status given to front-line customer contact employees. British Airways improved its image and service through an internal campaign called Putting People First – aiming to take time to satisfy the customer and seeing service as internal as well as external, with everyone working together to serve the customer. The US department store Nordstrom is often held up as an example of superior service, with staff going to endless trouble to satisfy the needs of customers. It became a goal to not just satisfy the customers but also to delight them by going beyond expectations.

Related Topics:
Tom Peters - British Airways - Nordstrom

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Techniques for managing in a customer-focused environment include revisiting strategy, processes, organization, motivation, and incentives, as well as conducting research to find out what the customer actually wants. Other techniques focus on empowering and energizing customer service employees who, despite the rest of the organization being in good shape, can let a company's image down.

Related Topics:
Strategy - Process - Organization - Motivation - Incentive - Research

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Currently, most organizations claim to treat customer satisfaction as an important issue. This extends to government departments, hospitals, and care workers as well as businesses. Targets and service standards are commonplace, and customer expectations have increased.

Related Topics:
Government - Hospital - Care worker

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Many organizations have attempted to automate some routine interactions with their customers, because face-to-face customer service is the most labor-intensive, expensive, and risky way to do business with consumers. As is often demonstrated in movies and television shows, one bad employee or one bad consumer can ruin a day for many other employees and consumers. This is why banks encourage customers to use ATMs, many gas stations have self-service pumps complete with built-in credit card readers , and many supermarkets have self-checkout stands.

Related Topics:
Movie - Television - ATM - Gas station - Credit card - Supermarket

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Despite all these efforts, it is still argued that many organizations are not good at service and that large organizations in particular are frustrating for the customer to deal with. For example, automation can go awry if not executed correctly, as shown by widespread dissatisfaction with voice mail systems.

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Certain entire classes of organizations are well known for generally bad customer service, such as DMVs.

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Virgilio Y Paralisan in his ebook "The Six Dimensions of Customer Service" and his blogsite http://customerservicetools.blogspot.com said that "Customer Service is a concept that is usually presented as a collection or patches of complementing activities done by an individual or a group of individuals.

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It is seldom presented as a process or a system that an organization manages to seamlessly and effectively deliver solutions (product or service) to customers.

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The conventional approach is to teach people to respond to customers using the telephone or handle a live person-to-person interaction specially when there is a dissatisfied or complaining customers.

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Most of the customer service programs are actually damage control or image protection ploys. I am also a customer for many services and most of these customer service programs are really just cheap scams or are downright shameful tactics to evade doing additional after-sales commitments.

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All the things that you will do to build your customer service program will most likely be within the realm of the following dimensions: The Customer, The Service Concept, The Service Process, The Tools, The Business Plan and The Team."

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