The purpose of customer service in the business world has changed.
Service is no longer a “nice to have”. It has become an absolute commercial necessity. In the past, giving good service was a merely a hygiene factor, something you must provide to avoid getting complaints and to keep the customers you’ve already got.
Customer service was often treated like a caboose at the end of the train. It came after marketing, sales, operations, and logistics…and was only something you needed to provide if something else went wrong. In those cases, upsets customer would be referred to “the customer service department” where low level employees would try to close the case with least possible effort and lowest possible cost.
But that view of service is now completely obsolete.
Today, providing excellent service is a differentiator, a way of winning in the market, earning higher margins, securing greater loyalty, claiming greater share of wallet, and bigger market share.
Today, companies are taking action to build a strong service culture as a sustainable competitive advantage. They are using service to stand out from the competition, distinguishing themselves with a company culture and a commercial reputation for superior service.
The world is flatter today than in the past.
We all work in a more global context and must respond to new competition with better communication, innovation, flexibility, and speed. In today’s world, people simply need to work more effectively with each other. And not by merely going to work and doing their jobs, but by actually helping each other – customers and colleagues – to succeed.
Helping someone else succeed is uplifting service.
When your people focus on improving what they do for other people, and not just on meeting their metrics or following procedures, a passion for serving others can become a driver for success. When this happens across an entire organization, when everyone commits to uplifting their service to each other, then a service culture can take root and grow. The culture grows more attractive for customers and more rewarding for employees. The culture becomes a differentiating advantage that is difficult for other organizations to copy.
Great article Ron.
I agree today we really need to work more efficiently and effectively and great customer service is one way to do so.
Whatever happened to the customer first mentality of yesteryears?
This what I am doing and I really agree about the importance of this. Why is it so hard for managers to appreciate?
I definitely agree with you. The reality is our is often less than desired. We all have to do lot more than we are doing today. We should strive to deliver “Service with a Smile” always, anywhere and everywhere.
Yesterday I called up the service center of a reputable company known in the country for quality air-conditioners. The company accredits service centers to render diagnostic and repair services, who are not organic staff but these service centers are spread out and strategically located, closest to the customers in need, for convenience. This is the thing, when this service people came to my house, they did not meet up to my expectation of the kind of service I thought this reputable company would send. I was so disappointed and frustrated, and because I am a customer service trainer and a fan of yours Ron, i called up the company and reported my experience… so far I have already received 2 follow up calls from the company, (not the service center) with apologies, and I was glad I did not just pass up an opportunity to improve a service, and hopefully to improve service quality of this company..thank you.
Thanks for the article, it is indeed helpful to understand changing needs of customer service standards, we need to look beyong our areas of responsibilities to have a winning culture in our organizations, where we are always ready to extend unconditional support to all around us.
Ron is genuine thinker, each and every topic is so original and meaningful to uplift service culture. Some of the organizations have started taking initiative to uplift their service culture, some are living in the past and facing problems. Now a days Customers are expecting quality services and quality products and are ready to pay premium for excellent service experience, its up to organizations how to get benefit of the situation.