Customer Service Excellence: Strategies and Implementation
The Service Policy
Customer service has become a first-order competitive tool, providing added value to the basic benefits offered by an organization. Competitive advantage is achieved when the customer perceives greater satisfaction than with the competition. Nowadays, businesses offer a global product, a combination of essential product attributes and additional services.
The Service Program
It’s about excelling in what matters most to customers. This commitment requires consistent implementation of a coherent customer service program, integrating at least the following aspects:
- Evaluation of customer satisfaction.
- Managing perceptions: adequacy of overall product attributes.
- Definition of standards and quality norms.
- Knowledge of competition.
- Monitoring supplier performance.
Evaluation of Satisfaction
Therefore, any satisfaction study must define:
- The criteria influencing the choice of a supplier: Identifying expectations.
- The relative importance customers attach to each criterion: Managing expectations in terms of importance.
- Perceptions about how the company meets the criteria: Measuring how customers perceive the overall product.
Customers compare their expectations with what they receive. Possible outcomes:
- If what the client receives is worse than expected, it generates dissatisfaction.
- If what is received is identical to expectations, satisfaction occurs.
- If what is received exceeds expectations, total satisfaction is achieved.
Customer satisfaction surveys classify company performance as perceived by customers.
Perception Management
Ascertaining the most important expectations enables the company to focus on optimizing customer-recognized value. It involves incorporating identified expectations into the company’s offerings as specific, expected, valued, and recognized attributes.
This translates into practical terms the dimensions customers use to evaluate company offerings. In any global product, we identify two types of attributes: hygiene and satisfiers.
Hygiene Attributes:
- Credibility
- Reliability
- Accessibility
- Tangibles
- Security
Hygiene attributes are expected as part of the essential product. Their absence increases customer dissatisfaction. The same applies to customer delivery processes.
Satisfier Attributes are central to customer service. They exceed basic expectations, generate a unique competitive advantage, and increase satisfaction. High satisfaction levels are achieved when hygiene attributes meet expectations and satisfier attributes surpass them. Increased customer satisfaction primarily depends on personal and emotional aspects. A negative personal interaction has a significant negative impact, while success is highly appreciated. A company’s image and reputation influence staff performance during direct customer contact. Satisfier attributes should focus on providing excellent personal attention, managing staff knowledge and attitudes.
– Expertise is fundamental for organizational credibility. Lack of personal knowledge causes mistrust and rejection.
– Attitudes: Staff may possess technical knowledge but show disregard for the customer. Negative attitudes are a persistent source of dissatisfaction and are difficult to change. The company must analyze factors influencing staff attitudes and decide on the tolerable impact on customers. Positive, service-oriented attitudes include smiling, eye contact, observing the client, starting promptly, using a pleasant tone of voice, showing empathy, offering help, using the client’s name, and ending interactions positively.
C. Definition of Norms and Standards
Controlling service delivery requires developing and implementing service and quality standards, defining expectations, and making quality measurable. An enterprise’s quality is measured by its effectiveness in meeting customer needs. Many companies seeking a competitive advantage deploy a total quality management system, a strategic decision aimed at maximizing customer satisfaction. This system is based on two principles: employee responsibility and listening to the customer.
- Employee Responsibility: Quality is everyone’s business and affects the entire organization. Improvement requires staff participation.
- Listening to the Customer: The company must meet customer wishes, considering user needs, as perceived satisfaction determines organizational quality.
Establishing a total quality management policy often requires a cultural shift. Training for quality management and staff is crucial. Consider that:
- Workers resist imposed changes; if implemented, they may lack commitment. Changes should be desired and accepted.
- Cultural change is only possible if existing habits are considered.
D. Knowledge of the Competition
A good customer service program includes benchmarking activities. This management tool involves identifying, comparing, and learning from best practices of other companies to improve our business. The aim is to enhance competitiveness. Discovering competitors’ success factors and reshaping competitive strategies are vital for organizational survival.
E. Control of Suppliers
Clearly defining requirements for all suppliers is a priority. Choosing reliable suppliers and achieving workable compromises are vital for developing the service strategy.
13.3 Merchandising
Most shops allow customers to choose independently, relying on visual interaction with products. Merchandising encompasses window dressing, point-of-sale promotion, and shelf placement. It aims to actively promote sales through presentation and environment. Two key elements are:
- The Assortment: The range of products offered for sale. It must be implemented rationally to:
- Guide customer journey and visual items.
- Simplify product replacement.
- Utilize space efficiently.
- The Linear: Shelves displaying items. They should showcase products and attract attention. There are three shelf levels:
- Eye level: Most important for attracting customers.
- Reach level: Second in importance.
- Ground level: Least commercial importance.
Product appearance on supermarket shelves should be neat and attractive, harmonizing colors, shapes, and quantities.
Basic Concepts
- Good service means offering what the customer wants, when they want it, at a price they are willing to pay. It’s about doing what matters most to customers.
- Developing a customer service program, as part of the engagement strategy, involves continuously seeking satisfaction improvements.
- Global output includes everything the organization does, contributing to customer satisfaction or dissatisfaction.
- Evaluation of satisfaction is crucial for identifying what matters most to customers.
- Satisfaction measurement investigates how the customer perceives the overall product at delivery, compared to expectations (expected results from the supply). Expectation levels are determined by:
- Mass communication or company customs.
- Personal experience with the company and competitors.
- Quality fully satisfies customer expectations profitably.
- Perception is the feeling resulting from internal processing of sensory data and impressions.
- Customer quality perception equals the difference between expectations and delivery. In any global product, we identify two types of attributes:
- Hygiene.
- Satisfiers.
- Customer satisfaction often depends on the treatment received from personal contact.
- A good customer service program must include external benchmarking activities.
- Quality norms and standards become guidelines and measurable activities.
- Merchandising: Management techniques for commercial establishments:
- Window display.
- Point-of-sale promotion.
- Shelf placement.
- Product marking.