What is customer service Excellence?
Customers are those individuals or groups whom a business targets or who purchase products and services from a business organization. Customer service is the series of activities that aim to deliver the products, services and satisfaction to the customers, this involves before the purchase, after the purchase and during the purchase period. Customer service excellence is a very vital issue in this recent competitive and global world because the business world has become intensely competitive. This post will analyse How to deliver excellent customer service
Customer service is the degree to which an organization can meet the expectations of customers regarding customer service. The success of an organization in the highly competitive global market is highly influenced by excellent customer service as it ensures good publicity, satisfied shareholders, higher profits, increased employee pride and motivation, increased responsibility, saving money, reduction in staff absenteeism and turnover, reduction in wastage, enhanced efficiency (Kotler and Keller, 2009).
The success of a business depends on the level of emphasis that a business organization makes on developing customer service excellence, the more a company is interested in developing the level of customer service excellence, the more satisfied the customers will be. When a customer is satisfied with a company, his or her satisfaction level goes beyond the expected level and thus he or becomes a loyal customer to the company and makes a repeated purchase, moreover, there is a chance that he or will recommend the company to other people. The factors that contribute to developing customer service can be illustrated in a graph:
A company needs to emphasize the factors that contribute to the development of customer service excellence. They also added that if a company is successful in addressing the customer service excellence affecting factors seriously, then the level of service develops and satisfaction among the customers develops too. As a result, there will be more sales in the company and the market share will grow too (Kotler and Keller, 2009).
From the above analysis, this can be claimed that if the company is reluctant to address the issues seriously, then there will be a negative impact on the sales performance of the company. The customers will be dissatisfied with the behaviour of the company, and they will move to another company. As a result, the company will lose its market share, and sales revenue will decrease.
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There are some factors that affect customer service or that make the customer service level. The author further explained that if a company wants to develop the level of customer service then it must emphasize more on the factors that develop customer service excellence. Customer service cannot be built overnight rather it takes time to build a good base of customer service. But once a company builds a good base of customer service, it should be more concerning to monitor that so that it can continue. The factors that affect the customer service level can be illustrated in a graph:
The factors illustrated above are very much significant to develop the level of customer service in an organization. To develop the above issues, the company needs to emphasize on the vision of the company, it needs to make a vision that customer satisfaction is the main concern of the company. Listening to the employees will enable the company to look at the preferences of the customers and this will enable them to offer products and services according to the needs of the customers.
The major factors that contribute to the development of customer service level are the products or services that the company provides and the after-sales services and the services during purchase. Product quality refers to the fact that the product is able to meet the demand and needs of the customers. They further explained that if a company can ensure the basic needs for customer service then it goes far to the achievement of full customer service excellence.
From the above discussion, this can be asserted that addressing the satisfying factors thus helps a company to build a good customer satisfaction base that contributes to the development of sales and market growth.
Importance of an excellent customer service
Customer service is one of the most important factors for a long-term vision of a company. Customer service helps to build customer satisfaction (Piskar and Faganel, 2009). When a customer is satisfied due to an increased level of customer service, the customer makes repeated porches from the company and recommends to other customers about the products and the company as well. As a combined effect the company gets more sales, and the market share grows. The importance of customer service can be illustrated in a graph, the graph is illustrated below:
Customer service level is very significant for any organization, and the author farther added that if a company ensure that the services are at a satisfying level, then the customers will be very much interested to the company as well as in the services and products too. On the contrary, if the customer service level is below the expectation, then the customers become depressed to the company and as a result, customers move to other companies and the previous company loss sales, and market share.
But the company concerned in this particular research has failed to avail all the advantages illustrated in the above diagram because M&S has failed to deliver the required level of customer satisfaction and thus the company cannot avail of the opportunities derived from satisfied customers.
From the above discussion, this can be followed that customer service is important because this is vital to retain the existing customers, if a company takes care of the existing customers, then the customers will continue to purchase products from the same company. it can further be asserted that getting a new customer is much tougher and more costly than retaining the existing one. Thus a company must be careful so that customer service is completely followed.
Building a strong customer service base
Customer service cannot be made strong overnight rather, a business organization needs a lot of time to develop a customer service level. To build a good customer service level a business organization needs to take care of the factors that contribute to the development of customer service levels. To build good customer service, the business organization needs to provide good products, after-sales services, better customer feedback etc. Providing these services cannot be ensured within a short period of time rather it needs to invest time and money to make sure that the company is careful about making customer service level excellent. Some of the factors that contribute to developing a good customer service level can be illustrated in the graph which is illustrated below:
A business organization needs to have some strategy and approach to develop the customer service level, and he also referred to some strategies that may develop the customer service level in any organization. The author has recommended that a business organization must define the vision of the company and accordingly, it will develop the strategies to meet the needs of the customers. Communication with the customers is one of the most important strategies for getting to know the demand and perceptions of the customers. If a company communicates to its customers, it can better serve the customer service level. According to Cooper (2012), employee empowerment is a very strong strategy to develop customer service levels in the organization. M&S has failed to follow all the steps in building a group of satisfied customers because the company does not listen to the customers, and it is not as adept at bringing new products and services as the competitors can.
From the above analysis, this can be established that when a company empowers the employees to make instant decisions to satisfy a customer, the employee does not need to wait for the response of the higher-level employees. Thus satisfying the customer becomes easy.
Process of building customer service Excellency
According to Linton (2015), there is a process of developing a good base for customer service, and if a company follows the steps and the process of the steps, then it will be easy to develop a good base for customer service excellence. The process is illustrated below:
According to Linton (2015), the factors given above are in step by step basis. A company should first develop a vision to determine the level of customer satisfaction the company. addressing the above issues will help the company to build a good customer service level in the company, on the other hand, if the company is careless about developing good customer base then the customers will also be careless to the company, and they will switch to the competitors.
There are some vital features of customer service excellence at a company, the main feature of customer service at a company is to satisfy the customers by information, products or by, service or by any other means possible relevant to the business. Other features that a business needs to address are the quality of the products and after-sales services. One significant feature of customer service excellence is that it leads to customer satisfaction which is a good contributor to the increase of sales at a company.