Customer service (also known as Client Service) is the provision of service to customers before, during and after a purchase.
According to Turban et al. (2002) “Customer service is a series of activities designed to enhance the level of customer satisfaction – that is, the feeling that a product or service has met the customer expectation.”
Its importance varies by product, industry and customer. As an example, an expert customer might require less pre-purchase service (i.e., advice) than a novice. In many cases, customer service is more important if the purchase relates to a “service” as opposed to a “product".
Customer service may be provided by a person (e.g., sales and service representative), or by automated means called self-service. Examples of self service are Internet sites.
Customer service is normally an integral part of a company’s customer value proposition.
Some have argued that the quality and level of customer service has decreased in recent years, and that this can be attributed to a lack of support or understanding at the executive and middle management levels of a corporation and/or a customer service policy.
Customer service, especially in the shape of a call-centre - is to customers one of the most visible and significant aspects of organizational performance.
To many organizations however customer service is one of the most challenging and neglected areas of management, including those with modern call-centres.
For customers the quality of customer service determines whether to buy, and particularly whether to remain a customer.
Think for a moment how you yourself behave as a customer. You can perhaps think of an occasion when poor customer service or an unhappy exchange with a call-centre has driven you to leave a supplier, even if the quality and value of the product or service itself is broadly satisfactory.
The significance of customer service eludes many senior executives, let alone the methods of establishing and managing customer service standards and quality. Our own experiences as customers demonstrate all the time that many large organizations fail particularly to empower customer-facing and call-centre staff, and also fail to design policies and systems to empower customer-facing staff and enable effective customer service. Often these are defensive strategies because staff are not trusted, and because competition is feared, or because simply the policy-makers and systems-designers are too far removed from customers and their customer service expectations.
Pricing strategy also plays a part on customer service - especially strategies which effectively discriminate against existing customers in favour of new customers, which in certain situations borders on the unethical, never mind being stupid in a customer service context.
This is strange since by any reasonable measure or criteria - in any market or industry - it costs far more to gain new customers than to retain existing customers. Neglecting, constraining or failing to optimise customer services capabilities is waste of great opportunities.
Instead many organizations and their leaders are habitually fixated on sales, marketing, advertising and promotion - desperately striving to attract new customers - while paying scant regard to the many customers that are leaving, just for the want of some simple effective customer service and care. We see this particularly in highly competitive and profitable sectors such as communications and financial services, where new customers are commonly extended better terms and attention than existing customers. No wonder customer turnover ('churn') in these industries can reach levels exceeding 25%. Leaders and spokespeople will blame the competitive market, and the fickleness of customers, but ultimately when a customer leaves a supplier it's because they are unhappy about the service they are receiving - otherwise why leave?
According to Turban et al. (2002) “Customer service is a series of activities designed to enhance the level of customer satisfaction – that is, the feeling that a product or service has met the customer expectation.”
Its importance varies by product, industry and customer. As an example, an expert customer might require less pre-purchase service (i.e., advice) than a novice. In many cases, customer service is more important if the purchase relates to a “service” as opposed to a “product".
Customer service may be provided by a person (e.g., sales and service representative), or by automated means called self-service. Examples of self service are Internet sites.
Customer service is normally an integral part of a company’s customer value proposition.
Some have argued that the quality and level of customer service has decreased in recent years, and that this can be attributed to a lack of support or understanding at the executive and middle management levels of a corporation and/or a customer service policy.
Customer service, especially in the shape of a call-centre - is to customers one of the most visible and significant aspects of organizational performance.
To many organizations however customer service is one of the most challenging and neglected areas of management, including those with modern call-centres.
For customers the quality of customer service determines whether to buy, and particularly whether to remain a customer.
Think for a moment how you yourself behave as a customer. You can perhaps think of an occasion when poor customer service or an unhappy exchange with a call-centre has driven you to leave a supplier, even if the quality and value of the product or service itself is broadly satisfactory.
The significance of customer service eludes many senior executives, let alone the methods of establishing and managing customer service standards and quality. Our own experiences as customers demonstrate all the time that many large organizations fail particularly to empower customer-facing and call-centre staff, and also fail to design policies and systems to empower customer-facing staff and enable effective customer service. Often these are defensive strategies because staff are not trusted, and because competition is feared, or because simply the policy-makers and systems-designers are too far removed from customers and their customer service expectations.
Pricing strategy also plays a part on customer service - especially strategies which effectively discriminate against existing customers in favour of new customers, which in certain situations borders on the unethical, never mind being stupid in a customer service context.
This is strange since by any reasonable measure or criteria - in any market or industry - it costs far more to gain new customers than to retain existing customers. Neglecting, constraining or failing to optimise customer services capabilities is waste of great opportunities.
Instead many organizations and their leaders are habitually fixated on sales, marketing, advertising and promotion - desperately striving to attract new customers - while paying scant regard to the many customers that are leaving, just for the want of some simple effective customer service and care. We see this particularly in highly competitive and profitable sectors such as communications and financial services, where new customers are commonly extended better terms and attention than existing customers. No wonder customer turnover ('churn') in these industries can reach levels exceeding 25%. Leaders and spokespeople will blame the competitive market, and the fickleness of customers, but ultimately when a customer leaves a supplier it's because they are unhappy about the service they are receiving - otherwise why leave?
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