Value Chain Management – BUSI 1330

Week 25:

Customer Service and Customer Value

Customer serviceCustomer service

Customer RolesElements of a service provisionCustomer opinionCommitment to customer serviceCustomer service improvement programmesProtecting and informing the consumerUnderstanding customer serviceorder qualifiers and order winnersHorizontal customer service processes Attitude and behaviour of staff

Customer Roles

• Service provider

• Service specifier

• Quality inspector

• Trainer/role modelJohnson R and Clark G, Service Operations Management 2005

Customer opinion matters

Passenger comments about airports around the world.

• "I am French and ashamed of the impression we give to the world. Paris CDG airport is unfriendly and dirty. "

• "If there is an award for the world's worst international airport, then Bombay airport will take the gold with consistent ease, year after year."

• "Without a shadow of a doubt London Heathrow is the worst major city airport in the world."

Commitment to customer service

☺Customer service is not about smiles and complaints forms, it's about listening to what your customer wants, and delivering what they have asked for with a little bit extra.

Customer service starts from the boss, if they have poor customer skills, miss out on training, present themselves as not caring for the clients, then everyone else who works for them will present the same message and attitude. It's the old clique, 'lead by example,' your staff can be assassins or ambassadors.

Customer serviceimprovement programmes

"Our new policy will be that the customer is never wrong, and should be treated with respect and humanity,"

'We will no longer tolerate ineptitude'

"We have put new programmes into place to ensure we deal effectively with inefficiency and lack of understanding of problems by our staff. We will no longer tolerate ineptitude and mediocrity in the way we deal with matters.

Executive Mayor Amos Masondo, City of Johannesburg

Protecting and informing the consumer

7 simple steps to help you resolve complaints and delight your customers

• Wear the customer's shoes. • The best feedback we can get comes in the form of complaints. • If one person says it, then there may be ten others who are also

suffering • Manage perceptions • Communication only happens when the same message that is

sent, is received and correctly understood • Listen and act appropriately.

• Dazzle and delight your customer. Mr WOW

Understanding customer service- the six rights

• “the right product at the right place, at the right time, in the right quantity, at the right quality and at the right cost” (Dobler et. al., 1990)

• Providing the ability to:

• “qualify for orders” with customers and also to

• “win orders” through superior performance

qualifiers & winners

• order qualifiers – “ those criteria that a company must meet for a customer to even consider it as a supplier”- “the baseline” (Hill, 1995)

• order winners – those features that cement the marketing relationship that go beyond the base line level – to create high levels of customer satisfaction (Hines 2000)

Modern approach to customer service – focus on “key (horizontal)

business processes”

• “…not to allow the dominance of a single departmental “power player”, as this is short sighted and decisions taken using a dominant departmental perspective (such as Marketing) are difficult to sell within the enterprise” (Hines, 2000)

Attitudes and behaviours makes for the best customer service

• “……………a sales clerk at a department store runs after a customer who left a credit card at the cash register… ………………. because the organisation has a strong and cohesive organisational culture – that strongly influences employee attitudes and behaviours”

Jones and George (2004)Essentials of Contemporary Management