Customer
Service Training:
Customer Service Defined
Customer 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;
defective or broken merchandise can be exchanged, often only
with a receipt and within a specified time frame. Retail
stores will often have a desk or counter devoted to dealing
with returns, exchanges and complaints, or will perform
related functions at the point of sale.
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.
The experience a customer has of a product also affect the
total service experience, but this is more of a product
direct feature than what is included in the definition of
customer service.
Customer service is normally an integral part of a
company’s customer value proposition. From the point of view
of an overall sales process engineering effort, customer
service plays an important role in an organization's ability
to generate income and revenue. From that perspective,
customer service should be included as part of an overall
approach to systematic improvement.
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. Others, like Headsets.com
CEO Michael G. Faith (Mike Faith), believe that providing a
high level of customer service, which he refers to as
Customer Love, is the only way to grow your business in
these times. Faith recently spoke at the Inc. Growco
Conference on the subject of using customer service to grow
your business.
Instant feedback
Recently, many organizations have implemented feedback
loops that allow them to capture feedback at the point of
experience. For example, National Express, one of the UK's
leading travel companies invites passengers to send text
messages whilst riding the bus. This has been shown to be
useful as it allows companies to improve their customer
service before the customer defects, thus making it far more
likely that the customer will return next time.
Setting the right KPIs
A challenge working with Customer Service is to ensure
that you have focused your attention on the right key areas,
measured by the right Key Performance Indicator. There is no
challenge to come up with a lot of meaningful KPIs, but the
challenge is to select a few which reflects your overall
strategy. In addition to reflecting your strategy it should
also enable staff to limit their focus to the areas that
really matters. The focus must be of those KPIs, which will
deliver the most value to the overall objective, e.g. cost
saving, service improving etc. It must also be done in such
a way that staff sincerly believe that they can make a
difference with the effort.
Standardization
Currently, the standards regarding this topic are not
many. However ISO and The International Customer Service
Institute (TICSI) have published a several standards which
are listed as follows:
ISO 9004:2000 which is about performance improvements
ISO 10001:2007 which guidlines the code of conduct on
customer services
ISO 10002:2004 which addresses the quality management on
handling of customer complaints
ISO 10003:2007 which is about dispute resolution
The International Customer Service Standard (TICSS)
In addition to the above, there is a standards of service
management for Information Technology, which is ISO/IEC
20000:2005, which divides the first part for specifications,
and the second part for the code of practice.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer_service
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