7.7 The rise of the service society
Anyone who still thinks a customer isn't important, should try doing without them for 60 days! The idea of customer service is not new, so why all the attention which seems to be focused on the customer? There are a number of reasons why organisations are taking a closer and more critical look at the service they provide. Hard economic times, increasing competitiveness - both domestically and from overseas - deregulation and, in the public sector, corporatisation and privatisation are some of the reasons.
People talk about the importance of service and customers go into the marketplace expecting to receive it. Today, customers are much more sophisticated than they were even a few years ago. Customers today are better informed and more aware of alternatives than they have ever been. Any company that wants their money for a service or product, let alone their loyalty, must understand and meet their needs and wants. Customers expect that expressing their unhappiness will result in a positive response. Service excellence is the element that keeps current business coming back. When a person goes out of his or her way to provide excellent service, work is more rewarding and positive relationships with others develop.
Keeping customers happy and coming back is the best defence against competition. If your organisation works at keeping its customers happy it is likely that your customers are more loyal, buy your service increasingly often. Certainly customers today are better informed and more aware of the alternatives offered by different companies and more likely to be "selective".
Society has been undergoing changes that have led to new values and behaviour patterns. The next reading looks at the current status of customer service and the new trends.
Reading 7.4
Harris, E. 2000, extract from "What is customer service?"
There is much emphasis in business on anticipating and meeting the needs and wants of customers. Highlighting the importance of a customer orientation ("to find out what customers really want when they purchase a product/service is vital"), Peter Drucker (1974, p. 61) drums home this point very well:
It is the customer who determines what a business is. It is the customer alone whose willingness to pay for ... service converts economic resources into wealth and things into goods. What a business thinks it produces is not of first importance, especially not to the future of the business and to its success. What a customer thinks he/she is buying, what he/she considers value, is decisive - it determines what a business is, what it produces, and whether it prospers.
The strength of the argument for building quality into the design and process can be seen when the costs of poor quality are examined. These include complaint handling, fines and claims investigations, waste, scrap, re-work, negative publicity, losing a customer and the cost of finding a new customer. In the transport sector, Grewal (1997) noted the following signs of poor quality could be identified:
- lack of punctuality in pickup or delivery
- high levels or returns or claims (for in-transit damage or breakages)
- poor communication, poor care of consignments, complex paperwork
- a lack of transparency regarding the movements of consignments
- poor traceability of consignments
- inadequately trained and motivated staff.
Reading 7.5
James, M. 2002, "The quality of service is not measured".
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