Chapter 9 Review:
A study in the UK discovered that almost 2/3 of the respondents did not believe that customer service had improved much in the last 5 years.
• Top two reasons are to switch: poor service or product quality (61%) and lower prices (46%)
Customers Experiencing Problems (40%)
• Customers who do not complain (20%)
o 10% will not repurchase
• Customer who complain (80%)
o 25% dissatisfied
• 40% will not repurchase
o 35% mollified
• 5% will not repurchase
o 40% satisfied
• 0% will not repurchase
CRM helps to:
• Strategically manage large account customers
• Develop effective customer service systems
• Proactively identify customer problems and communicate resolution options
• Leverage customer information from the service process
• Prevent customer problems via customer education
Internet Provides:
• Comprehensive customer service and support at the same time technology enables companies to provide them in a cost-effective manner.
• Contribute to increasing customer expectations about service quality.
What do Consumers Want?
• Timely response to inquiries (45%)
• Informative content (22%)
• Communication with a real person (17%)
• Product displayed clearly and prominently (14%)
• 24-hour availability (14%)
The Internet not only is a key reason why expectations of both B2C and B2B customers are rising, but also can be a way in which their expectations can be met in a cost-effective manner.
• Push: Technology that allows preselected data to be distributed to the user’s computer at preselected time intervals.
Customer Service Evolution:
• Live Customer Service: Telephone, Call Centers
• Web-enabled customer service: with live assistance, automated
• Anticipatory Customer Service: Rules-based automation, Push Technology.
Call Center: Department within an organization that handles telephone sales and/or services.
Web-based Customer Service:
• Assistance of a live person: e-mail, instant messaging, chat
• Automate: FAQs, searchable knowledge bases, Flash or video demonstrations, Self service
Levels of costliness:
1. Most expensive: Telephone inquiry handled by live person
2. Email handled by live person
3. Live chat, representative handles many customers at the same time
4. Email in which a live person is supported by an automated email
5. Interactive Voice Response (IVR): with no human intervention
6. A web site inquiry
7. Automated Email
• 77% of customer interactions still occur through telephone call centers
• 13% were handed by IVR
• Self-service and e-mail made up 4%
Self-service customer service:
They like it when:
• When consumer expericned a sunned need
• When self-service performed better than alternative
• When it simply did its job.
They didn’t like it when:
• Technology failed
• When the process itself didn’t work
• It was poorly designed
• When the customer is responsible for the failure.
Customer Service Themes:
• Excellent customer service cannot be delivered by a single department acting in isolation from the rest of the organization
• Providing superior customer service is a long-term endeavor.
• The customer service culture should pervade the entire organization.
• Creating a culture of customer service is virtually impossible in an organization that does not follow at lease some of the tenants of quality.
• Quality programs emphasize collection of data about processes.
• Technology also makes it possible to offer customers multiple channels of accessing customer service.
Customer Service is an excellent way to control a sustainable competitive advantage.