Customer service is the assistance and advice provided by a company to those who buy or use its products or services, either in person or remotely. Customer service is often practiced in a way that reflects the strategies and values of a firm, and levels vary according to the industry. 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 ...

. Successful customer service interactions are dependent on employees "who can adjust themselves to the personality of the customer". 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. It is expected that AI-based

chatbot A chatbot (originally chatterbot) is a software application or web interface designed to have textual or spoken conversations. Modern chatbots are typically online and use generative artificial intelligence systems that are capable of main ...

s will significantly impact customer service and

call centre A call centre ( Commonwealth spelling) or call center ( American spelling; see spelling differences) is a managed capability that can be centralised or remote that is used for receiving or transmitting a large volume of enquiries by telephone ...

roles and will increase productivity substantially. Many organisations have already adopted AI chatbots to improve their customer service experience.Krishnan, C., Gupta, A., Gupta, A., Singh, G. (2022). Impact of Artificial Intelligence-Based Chatbots on Customer Engagement and Business Growth. In: Hong, TP., Serrano-Estrada, L., Saxena, A., Biswas, A. (eds) Deep Learning for Social Media Data Analytics. Studies in Big Data, vol 113. Springer, Cham. 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 attended to. Customer support helps ensure that the products and services that have been provided to the customer meet their expectations. Given an effective and efficient customer support experience, customers tend to be loyal to the organization, which creates a competitive advantage over its competitors. Organizations should ensure that any complaints from customers about customer support have been dealt with effectively.

Automation and productivity increase

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. A period during which goods are sold for a reduced price may also be referred ...

/ service representative), or by automated means, such as kiosks,

website A website (also written as a web site) is any web page whose content is identified by a common domain name and is published on at least one web server. Websites are typically dedicated to a particular topic or purpose, such as news, educatio ...

s, and apps. An advantage of automation is that it can provide service 24 hours a day which can 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 the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...

(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. This is also done through advances in hardware and software technology. 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, a challenge is to maintain and/or enhance the personal experience while making use of the efficiencies of online commerce. "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 assistant A virtual assistant (VA) is a software agent that can perform a range of tasks or services for a user based on user input such as commands or questions, including verbal ones. Such technologies often incorporate chatbot capabilities to streaml ...

s that can be seen as avatars on websites, which enterprises can use to reduce operating and training costs. These are driven by

s, and a major underlying technology to such systems is

natural language processing Natural language processing (NLP) is a subfield of computer science and especially artificial intelligence. It is primarily concerned with providing computers with the ability to process data encoded in natural language and is thus closely related ...

Metrics

The two primary methods of gathering feedback are customer surveys and

Net Promoter Score Net promoter score (NPS) is a 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 was developed by ...

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 Mobico Group, formerly National Express Group, is a British multinational public transport company with headquarters in Birmingham, England. Domestically it currently operates bus and coach services under brands including National Express. Th ...

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.

Customer support

Automation and productivity increase

Metrics

Instant feedback

See also

References

Further reading