Customer Service
The Characteristics of Customer Service
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What makes up customer service? What are the things that customers most often focus on when they discuss customer service? What are the unique dimensions or characteristic elements or activities involved in customer service? |
Firstly, customer service focuses on a number of things including:
- The availability of items
Satisfying the customer by properly planning for needed stock, and making sure that what the customer wants is available in the store, whether it be the latest iPhone, the sirloin steak as requested from the menu, or the most sought-after car part in a spares shop.
The availability of an item represents the ability of the supplier to satisfy customers’ orders within a time limit generally accepted by the industry for the particular item.
For example, a Bic pen should be immediately available from stock in the stationery shop; an expensive piece of equipment might be available from Europe in eight weeks.
- After-sales backup
Perhaps you have bought a laptop under a five-year warranty. How does the company treat you if the computer just refuses to work? Will they provide the promised backup that you need after the sale?
After-sales service and back-up include speedy replacement of defective or damaged items; replacing equipment if the customer experiences major difficulties; and subsequent follow-up to ascertain if the user is happy with the purchase.
- Handling of orders and queries
What is meant here is the accuracy with which a company deals with your requests and orders. If you order a Greek salad, do they serve you a French salad? Do they bring you tea when you have ordered coffee? These are actually small things, but in the mind of the customer they are big.
Efficient handling of orders and queries over the telephone includes the availability of personnel within the organization who can be quickly assessed for intelligent handling of customer queries, whether they are technical queries or simply requests for information about availability, price or the status of an earlier order. This also includes the training of an operator or receptionist to best recognize the right contact person to handle the customer’s call immediately.
- Order convenience
By enabling the customer to place orders through the Internet in an easy and speedy manner, many companies have seen significant increases in sales. One hotel group in California enables prospective clients to view their rooms on the Web, and even to see the room’s interior and view it three dimensionally before booking their stay.
The order is made easy for customers: all they have to do is provide their credit card details. The degree of order convenience can be assessed by looking at the efficiency, accuracy, and simplicity of the paperwork necessary to conform with legal requirements and interface with the firm’s and the customer’s business systems.
- Competent technical reps
When you are purchasing a high-technology digital video camera you need a competent, technically-minded sales representative to assist you in making your decision. Simply having a nice salesman with a nice smile (soft customer service) is not enough.
You need someone with the appropriate level of knowledge and skill to assist the customer. This person will probably have to have prior training to gain the needed technical skill and knowledge (the hard issues of customer service).
- Delivery time
Most customers care more about receiving their delivered goods on time (a hard strategic aspect of customer service planning) than whether the person delivering the goods has a cheerful face.
Successful companies try to under-promise and over-deliver in terms of delivery time. Calculating the correct delivery time involves understanding how lead times and lead time delays work.
Wise customer service analysts recognize that lead time delays from your supplier may result in poor delivery time for your customer. Making accurate predictions about estimated time of delivery requires a skill that is often learned in the specific industry or occupation.
Delivery time is the time taken for the normal ordering procedure between receipt of the firm commitment for an order by the firm’s supplier and receipt of the goods by the customer (lead time is the period between the time when the order was received, and the time when it was delivered).
- Reliability
There is an old proverb which says don’t chew on a loose tooth. So it is when one has to rely on an unreliable supplier. It is better to switch to a more expensive but reliable supplier than to rely on a relatively inexpensive but erratic supplier.
Customer service excellence is about reliability and consistency. These are not simple logistical skills to master. They take lots of time and effort. Reliability means the supplier’s commitment to maintain a promised delivery schedule and to advise customers if deliveries subsequently cannot be made on time.
- Demonstration of equipment
Sound customer service means performing many basic value-added activities, like demonstrating how a new DVD recorder works, or how the Alpha Romeo’s automatic steering gear change works.
Demonstrating equipment represents the supplier’s willingness to allow a prospective customer to examine a particular piece of equipment on his or her own premises before signing a purchase contract.
It also includes the willingness of the supplier’s staff to demonstrate equipment without any purchase commitment, and their competence to do so. People want to know how things work before buying them.
Competent technical representatives must be trained, and must develop background knowledge and representation skills before calling on customers (who will ask them lots of questions!)
- Availability of information material
Customers want to see and read about the product they are interested in buying from the dealer. Providing information may give a company the competitive edge.
We see, then, that many factors influence customer service. They include
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See also:
- J.C. Johnson, D.F. Wood, D.L. Wardlow, P.R. Murphy, Contemporary Logistics, seventh ed., Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 1999, pp. 1 – 21.
- A. Rushton, P. Crouche, P. Baker, The Handbook of Logistics and Distribution Management, third ed., Kogan Page, London, 2006.
- S.C. Ailawadi, R. Singh, Logistics Management, Prentice Hall of India, New Delhi, 2005.
- R.H. Ballou, Business Logistics/Supply Chain Management: Planning, Organizing, and Controlling the Supply Chain, fifth ed., Pearson-Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2004.
- J.R. Stock, D.M. Lambert, Strategic Logistics Management, fourth ed., Irwin McGraw-Hill, New York, 2001.
- G. Ghiani, G. Laporte, R. Musmanno, Introduction to Logistics Systems Planning and Control, John Wiley & Sons, NJ, 2004, pp. 6 – 20.
- M. Hugos, Essentials of Supply Chain Management, John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken NJ, 2003, pp. 1 – 15.
- H.T. Lewis, J.W. Culliton, J.D. Steel, The Role of Air Freight in Physical Distribution, Division of Research, Graduate School of Business Administration, Harvard University, Boston, MA, 1956, p. 82.
- D. Riopel, A. Langevin, J.F. Campbell, The network of logistics decisions, in: A. Langevin, D. Riopel (Eds.), Logistics Systems: Design and Optimization, Springer, New York, 2005, pp. 12–17.
- M. Browne, J. Allen, Logistics of food transport, in: R. Heap, M. Kierstan, G. Ford (Eds.) Food Transportation, Blackie Academic & Professional, London, 1998, pp. 22–25.
- J. Drury, Towards More Efficient Order Picking, IMM Monograph No. 1, The Institute of Materials Management, Cranfield, 1988.
