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Customer service is the assistance and advice provided by a company to those people who buy or use its products or services. Each industry requires different levels of customer service, but in the end, the idea of a well-performed service is that of increasing revenues. The perception of success of the customer service interactions is dependent on employees "who can adjust themselves to the personality of the customer". Customer service is often practiced in a way that reflects the strategies and values of a firm. Good quality customer service is usually measured through
customer retention
Customer retention refers to the ability of a company or product to retain its customers over some specified period. High customer retention means customers of the product or business tend to return to, continue to buy or in some other way not defe ...
. Customer service for some firms is part of the firm’s intangible assets and can differentiate it from others in the industry. One good customer service experience can change the entire perception a customer holds towards the organization.
Customer service does not only focus on the external aspect of the organization, but also the internal relations that facilitate the business activity. For service firms, customer service plays a vital role due to the close interaction with clients, like in the healthcare, or legal industries.
/sup> When close interaction is not required, there are different methods to still provide individuals with a sense of attention. For instance, when withdrawing money from an ATM, or skipping the line in an amusement park. Customers still receive the service they are looking for in a direct level, without face-to-face interaction
Face-to-face interaction is social communication carried out without any mediating technology. It is defined as the mutual influence of individuals’ direct physical presence with their body language and verbal language. It is one of the basic ...
.
The evolution in the service industry has identified the needs of consumers. Companies usually create policies or standards to guide their personnel to follow their particular service package. A service package is a combination of tangible and intangible characteristics a firm uses to take care of its clients.
Customer support
Customer support is a range of consumer services to assist customers in making cost-effective and correct use of a product.[businessdictionary.com > customer support]
Retrieved March 2011 It includes assistance in planning, installation, training, troubleshooting, maintenance, upgrading, and disposal of a product.[ These services may even be provided at the place in which the customer makes use of the product or service. In this case, it is called "at home customer service" or "at home customer support." Customer support is an effective strategy that ensures that the customer's needs have been taken care of. Customer support helps ensure that the products and services that have been provided to the customer are satisfactory to their expectations. Given an effective and efficient customer support experience, customers tend to be loyal to the organization, which creates a competitive advantage of the organization over its competitors. Organizations should ensure that any complaints from customers about customer support have been dealt with effectively.
]
Automated customer service
Customer service may be provided in person (e.g. sales
Sales are activities related to selling or the number of goods sold in a given targeted time period. The delivery of a service for a cost is also considered a sale.
The seller, or the provider of the goods or services, completes a sale in ...
/ service representative), or by automated means, such as kiosks, website
A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Wi ...
s, and apps. An advantage of automation is that it can provide service 24 hours a day, which can, at least, complement face-to-face customer service.[ There is also economic benefit to the firm. Through the evolution of technology, automated services become less expensive over time. This helps provide services to more customers for a fraction of the cost of employees' wages. Automation can facilitate customer service or replace it entirely.
A popular type of automated customer service is done through ]artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech r ...
(AI). The customer benefit of AI is the feel for chatting with a live agent through improved speech technologies while giving customers the self-service benefit. AI can learn through interaction to give a personalized service. The exchange the Internet of Things (IoT) facilitates within devices, lets us transfer data when we need it, where we need it. Each gadget catches the information it needs while it maintains communication with other devices, and this is also done through advances in technology in both hardware and software. Another form of automated customer service is touch-tone phone, which usually involves IVR (Interactive Voice Response) a main menu and the use of a keypad as options (e.g. "Press 1 for English, Press 2 for Spanish").
In the Internet era
The Information Age (also known as the Computer Age, Digital Age, Silicon Age, or New Media Age) is a historical period that began in the mid-20th century. It is characterized by a rapid shift from traditional industries, as established during ...
, a challenge is, to maintain and/or enhance the personal experience while making use of the efficiencies of online commerce
E-commerce (electronic commerce) is the activity of electronically buying or selling of products on online services or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain manageme ...
. "Online customers are literally invisible to you (and you to them), so it's easy to shortchange them emotionally. But this lack of visual and tactile presence makes it even more crucial to create a sense of personal, human-to-human connection in the online arena."
Examples of customer service by artificial means are automated online assistants that can be seen as avatars
Avatar (, ; ), is a concept within Hinduism that in Sanskrit literally means "descent". It signifies the material appearance or incarnation of a powerful deity, goddess or spirit on Earth. The relative verb to "alight, to make one's appearanc ...
on websites,[ which enterprises can use to reduce operating and training costs.][ These are driven by ]chatbot
A chatbot or chatterbot is a software application used to conduct an on-line chat conversation via text or text-to-speech, in lieu of providing direct contact with a live human agent. Designed to convincingly simulate the way a human would behav ...
s, and a major underlying technology to such systems is natural language processing.[ ]
Adversely, automation has created a need for information that can sometimes harm privacy.
Metrics
The two main ways of gathering feedback are customer surveys and Net Promoter Score
Net promoter score (NPS) is a widely used market research metric that is based on a single survey question asking respondents to rate the likelihood that they would recommend a company, product, or a service to a friend or colleague. The NPS is a ...
measurement, used for calculating the loyalty that exists between a provider and a consumer.
Instant feedback
Many outfits have implemented feedback loops that allow them to capture feedback at point of experience. For example, National Express
National Express Group is a British multinational public transport company headquartered in Birmingham, England. It operates bus, coach, train and tram services in the United Kingdom, Ireland (National Express operates Eurolines in conjunction ...
in the UK has invited passengers to send text messages while 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.
See also
* Automated attendant
In telephony, an automated attendant (also auto attendant, auto-attendant, autoattendant, automatic phone menus, AA, or virtual receptionist) allows callers to be automatically transferred to an extension without the intervention of an operator/ ...
* Customer experience management
Customer experience (CX) is a totality of cognitive, affective, sensory, and behavioral consumer responses during all stages of the consumption process including pre-purchase, consumption, and post-purchase stages. Pine and Gilmore described ...
* Customer relationship management
Customer relationship management (CRM) is a process in which a business or other organization administers its interactions with customers, typically using data analysis to study big data, large amounts of information.
CRM systems data collectio ...
* Customer satisfaction
Customer satisfaction (often abbreviated as CSAT) is a term frequently used in marketing. It is a measure of how products and services supplied by a company meet or surpass customer expectation. Customer satisfaction is defined as "the number of ...
* Customer service representative
Customer service representatives, customer service advisors, customer service agents, or customer service associates interact with customers to handle complaints, process orders, and provide information about an organization’s products and servic ...
* Customer service training
Customer service training (CST) refers to teaching employees the knowledge, skills, and competencies required to increase customer satisfaction.
Audience
Any employee who interacts with a customer is a candidate for customer service training. I ...
* Demand chain
The term demand chain has been used in a business and management context as contrasting terminology alongside, or in place of, "supply chain". Madhani suggests that the demand chain "comprises all the demand processes necessary to understand, creat ...
* Interactive voice response
Interactive voice response (IVR) is a technology that allows telephone users to interact with a computer-operated telephone system through the use of voice and DTMF tones input with a keypad. In telecommunications, IVR allows customers to interac ...
* Live support software
A web chat is a system that allows users to communicate in real-time using easily accessible web interfaces. It is a type of Internet online chat distinguished by its simplicity and accessibility to users who do not wish to take the time to insta ...
* Privacy policy
A privacy policy is a statement or legal document (in privacy law) that discloses some or all of the ways a party gathers, uses, discloses, and manages a customer or client's data. Personal information can be anything that can be used to identify ...
* Professional services automation
Professional services automation (PSA) is software designed to assist professionals, such as lawyers, auditors, and IT consultants, with project management and resource management for client projects and utilization rate management for billable sta ...
* Public Services
A public service is any service intended to address specific needs pertaining to the aggregate members of a community. Public services are available to people within a government jurisdiction as provided directly through public sector agencies ...
* Sales
Sales are activities related to selling or the number of goods sold in a given targeted time period. The delivery of a service for a cost is also considered a sale.
The seller, or the provider of the goods or services, completes a sale in ...
* Sales process engineering
Sales process engineering is intended to design better ways of selling and make salespeople's efforts more productive. It has been described as "the systematic application of scientific and mathematical principles to achieve the practical goals ...
* Sales territory
A sales territory is the customer group or geographical area for which an individual salesperson or a sales team holds responsibility. Territories can be defined on the basis of geography, sales potential, history, or a combination of factors. Comp ...
* Service climate
Service Climate has been embedded in the research of social climate (see also: Social environment) which relates to the overall group influence of individuals who partake in certain within-group activities (i.e. Waiting staff). The group aspect o ...
* Service system
A service system (or customer service system, CSS) is a configuration of technology and organizational networks designed to deliver services that satisfy the needs, wants, or aspirations of customers. "Service system" is a term used in the serv ...
* Social skills
* Support automation
Customer support is a range of services to assist customers in making cost effective and correct use of a product. It includes assistance in planning, installation, training, troubleshooting, maintenance, upgrading, and disposal of a product. Reg ...
* Technical support
Technical support (abbreviated as tech support) is a call centre type customer service provided by companies to advise and assist registered users with issues concerning their technical products. Traditionally done on the phone, technical suppor ...
* Help desk software Help desk software is a computer program that enables customer-care operators to keep track of user requests and deal with other customer-care-related issues. It is what makes customer-care service efficient and enterprising.
Generally, help desk s ...
References
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Computer telephony integration
Services marketing
Telephony