Marketing Management Assignment help on : CUSTOMER SERVICE EXCELLENCE
Excellency in delivering the customer service has become an important factor for the success of every organization today. If organizations have excellence in delivering the customer services then there is no chance of losing anything beneficial for the organization. With the excellence in services customers win and satisfaction of customers leads to the success of employees. Obviously if the employees of the company are successful, the company itself will become successful. Organizations today have included customer satisfaction in their strategic objective and customer service excellence has become a successful strategy for every organization today. There are many strategies made by companies to get their customers satisfied. Organizations use many techniques to deliver a better customer service. For delivering a better customer service an organization needs to identify the needs and wants of the customers and based on that it can make strategies and use technology to get its customers satisfied. A fully satisfied customer shows loyalty for the organization and also helps in making new customers by suggesting the name of the brand or the company to his or her friends or relatives (Welcome to excellence n.d.).
Hence, for the success of an organization customer loyalty is important and for gaining customer’s loyalty organizations needs to deliver excellence in its services. And for delivering a better customer service companies use many strategies and technologies. Further in this paper we would be discussing why the customer service excellence has become so important for the organizations today and how technology helps the companies in delivering better customer services. We would also be discussing some underpinning theories of customer service excellence in the paper.
Before entering into the details of customer service excellence we need to understand what really the customer service is. Every organization is based on the needs and wants of the customers and meeting the expectations of the customers can be considered as customer service. We can say that ability to fulfill the demands of the customers is called customer service. But here we are talking about the excellence in delivering the customer services and we find that exceeding the needs or expectations of the customers consistently and continuously is called as customer service excellence. It is very important for the organizations to know whether the customers of the company are satisfied with the product and services or not. To identify the level of satisfaction a company can use many tools and techniques. There are moments of truths which speak about the satisfaction level of customers. A moment of truth is the moment when a customer makes a call to the organization, he or she places an order, and he or she visits the website of the organization. These moments of truths are the opportunities for the organization and if the organization is able to solve the queries of the customers then it becomes able to gain the loyalty of the customers (Intelligent dialogue n.d.).
For delivering a better customer service excellence an organization is required to fulfill many things for example an organization needs to identify the things which it needs to offer its customers, a better understanding of the customers and their needs and expectations is also required, the key elements of the customer service excellence, creating a positive impression of the company on customers and making a good image into the mind of the customers, understanding the behavior of the consumers to deal with the different situation of the customer service excellence. If the customer expectations are not met the organization needs to deal with this situation effectively. Also the organizations need to review their performance continuously and are required to plan for the improvement in the customer service.
Customer service excellence has become very important for the survival of many public and private sector organizations today. Every organization gets opportunities to interact with its customers every day and organization is required to make this connection a meaningful connection. If the customer service team of the company is committed and serving the customers in an advocate manner by providing exceptional value to them it will obviously bring the customer loyalty for the organization and will enhance the revenue of the business. But developing the better customer service excellence is not that easy it requires work. People always like to buy from those people whom they know and trust and in this manner winning the trust of the customers becomes important for the organizations which can be done by customer service excellence (Lieberman, M 2011). Why customer service is so important can be described with the help of the figure given below: (Source: The Times 100 n.d.)
An organization can make new customers as well as retain its present customers. We can describe the importance of good customer service in financial terms as to make a new loyal customer a company needs to spend five times more than to retain its present customers. Also the maximum part of the profit that a business earns is from the repeat purchase of the products about which the customers know very well. If customer service of the company is not good the customer of the organization will shift to the rivals of the company and it will not only be a loss of present customer but also the strengthening of the rivals. Also the company needs to understand the type of customers as customers of a company can be internal as well as external. Internal customers of the company are the people of the company and external customers are those people who purchase the products and services of the company (The Times 100 n.d.).
Companies generally design their customer services excellence strategy and it mainly works at three distinct levels. Customer service excellence works as a driver for the organization’s people and it motivates them towards continuous improvement. In order to deliver an excellent service to the customer employees of the organization assess their own performance and try to improve it. For satisfying the customer’s needs employees always try to search new methods of improvements in the delivery of services. Efforts for better customer service also develop skills in the employees of the organization. Teams and individuals within the organization try to explore the new skills for the customer satisfaction and acquire those skills too. In this manner customer service excellence improves the capability of the employees. Another most important achievement of customer service excellence is that it provides an opportunity to the employees to validate their success independently i.e. when an employee becomes able to make his or her customer satisfied he or she feels success which motivates him (Customer Service Excellence n.d.).
There are many underpinning theories which we need to understand for understanding the customer service excellence. These theories mainly include customer experience, relationship marketing, customer relationship management, impact of technology on customer service excellence etc. All these theories are described in brief one by one in this paper.
Let us first take customer experience. It is made up of all the interaction between the all the people of the company and customers. There are many touch points exist in between the product and services of the company and customers. Sum of all these touch points make the customer experience. We can better understand it with the help of a diagram given below:
(Source: Lieberman, M 2011)
Customer service is a broad term which includes customer service experience in it. Customer service experience is different from the customer experience. Customer service experience is the sum of all the interactions which has taken place between you and your customer. It is basically related to those interactions which are done for resolving the issues of the customers or we can say that when a customer is not satisfied with the product or services of the organization he tries to connect with the company and tells his problem to the company personnel and then the company personnel tries to solve it. All these interactions are considered as the customer service experience. The methods of interaction could be different for example a customer can interact through phone, mail, or by clicking on the websites of the company (Lieberman, M 2011). The things which are required by an organization to have a better customer service experience are: Awareness about the product and services of the company, active listening, strategic preparation, problem solving skill and empathy.
After customer experience the next theory is of relationship marketing. Relationship marketing is very helpful in providing customer service excellence. Relationship marketing is nothing but the strategy made to build strong long term relationships with the individual costumers. Relationship marketing forces the organization to focus on the customer retention and for that customer satisfaction is required. Generally companies focus on gaining new customers and they do not notice that they are losing the current customers which become costly for the companies later. A mid size company loses approximately 10 to 30 percent of its customers each year. But the companies must understand that there is a correlation between the profit of the company and customer retention. Relationship marketing helps in the retention of the old customers and enhances the profitability of the company.
In the development of relationship marketing a company tries to make a relationship with individual customers and in this manner it becomes able to retain them. It can also be considered as customer relationship management. While developing relationship marketing strategy a company focuses on the commitment and keeping of the promise which it made to the customers. Another important benefit of relationship marketing is that when a company becomes able to retain its customers it becomes able to reduce the customer turnover as we discussed above that acquiring a new customer is five times costly that retaining the existing one. There are many examples available through which we can understand the relationship marketing easily. Conducting surveys and polls by the organizations is done for relationship marketing; companies also work on the feedback given by the customers to improve the equality of the product and services of the organization. Today social networking websites have become a very important tool for relationship marketing and it helps in interaction with the customers (Smith, M 2011).
Apart from above techniques there are other techniques for the better customer service excellence is customer relationship management strategy made by the organizations. In the effort of providing better services to the customers companies focus on the training and development of the employees which obviously enhances the skills of the staff of organization. Similarly there are many examples available of better customer service experience. Free tickets offered by a Jet Blue officer to a customer, if you book a flight in the united airlines it save your seat; Starbucks wants its customers to have an experience “nothing short of fantastic”, delivery of pizza within 30 minutes of the order and many more. All these examples clearly explain the efforts that the companies made for better customer service.
Technology is another important factor of customer service excellence. As we have already discussed that customer service excellence depends on the interaction between the employees of the organization and the customer and we all know that technology is very helpful in making these interactions easy. Initially companies were using old traditional methods of communication like phone calls, direct mails, or one to one marketing. But today with the help of technology interaction with the customers has become very easy. Internet is one example of the technology which helps in communication. We also discussed about social networking websites like Facebook and Twitter. Enterprise resource planning, human resource information system etc are the things which help the organization in customer relationship management and without advanced technology these system and their implementations are not possible. Our concern here is how technology helps in customer service excellence.
If the technology is not available it will make the interaction of the staff difficult and will frustrate them as well. And if employee or the customer of the company are frustrated it will lead to the decrement in the shifting of the customers to the rivals or inadequate performance of the employee which will surely reduce the revenue of the organization. Not only the availability of the technology is enough but the proper use of technology is also necessary. Sometimes employees of the organization are not able to use the technology properly which again harms the organization but if it is utilized well it will enhance the effectiveness of the customer service effort. There are many way through which technology helps in the customer service excellence.
The contact centers in the companies use call – routing and voice recognition technologies. First customer talks to a system and then following the instructions it connects the customer to the respective department so that the customer will be able to solve his queries. With the help of call routing technology customer directly talks to the required person in the company. By using call routing technology an organization becomes able to save money and customer becomes able to save time as he does not require repeating his queries again and again. Not only automation but technology also helps in empowerment of the customers. With the help of technology a customer becomes able to get exactly what it needs from the company. For example we can discuss the self check – out line in the retail stores. A customer enters into the store and takes the stuffs of his need and he does not need to get association from the staff of the retail store. With the help of this technology a customer becomes able to get the exact products and pays the required amount. The customer is now satisfied with the retail store as he did not have to spend much time in purchase and he selected his items himself (Taylor, H n.d.).
Apart from above benefits that technology provides to the customers and organizations, it also educates the customers. We can better understand it with the help of example of colleges and universities. For colleges and universities customers are the students studying. These institutions provide online education to their students with the help of technology. Technology is also helpful in airlines and hospitality industry. Hotels and airlines companies send reminders to their customers about the reservation of rooms or tickets which uses technology. With this customer becomes able to remember their plans and it also makes a positive impression of the company into the mind of the customer which leads to the customer service excellence (Taylor, H n.d.). Technology also helps the organizations in providing more channels of ordering. Like phone calls, e mails, internet and social networking websites are playing very important role in placing the orders. Technology also helps in reducing the cost for delivering the services. In this manner technology becomes highly important for the organization if it wants customer service excellence.
In conclusion we can say that customer service excellence has become key success factor of every organization today. A satisfied customer is a benefit for the organization as he will purchase your products again and again. Therefore retention of a customer is highly important for the company. And if a customer is not satisfied with the services with the company then it is a danger for the company as he will tell his dissatisfaction to his friend and relatives which will lead to a bad image of the organization into the mind of the customers. Hence, customer service excellence becomes an essential part of the strategic objective of the organization.
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