Customer Service Overview
Larry J. Fontana
I highlight the importance of building trust, communication, consistency and availability and the five customer needs: Service, Price, Quality, Action and Appreciation. I provide examples of personal experiences, and I touch on the topic of expectations, which I find to be very valuable. Furthermore, the quote from Mahatma Gandhi echoes the essence of my sentiment on Customer Service, and I include it here to set a general tone for this essay (Harris, E. 2013).
Gandhi wrote: “A customer is the most important visitor on our premises. He is not dependent on us; we are dependent on him. He is not an interruption in our work; he is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider in our business; he is part of it. We are not doing him a favor by serving him; he is doing us a favor by giving us an opportunity to do so”.
I offer a distinction between what I am calling the activities of Customer Service, such as standards, practices, policies, procedures, pricing and technological systems. In contrast is the very important human factor; the intangibles which include assessing and applying our strengths and weaknesses, communication prowess, customer perceptions and expectations and exploring how we will consistently provide great customer service for a diversity of audiences, needs and concerns.
As I examine the five customer needs a bit closer (Service, Price, Quality, Action, Appreciation,) I surmise, they have elements that straddle both sides of my distinction. Service and Appreciation tend to be softer personal traits, where Pricing and Action tend to be more quantifiable; Quality can be both…
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