Lecture #17: Customer Service
These lecture notes are provided as a study aid in preparation for examinations. Students should review their class notes, and compare to the outline presented below. To assist in reviewing for exams, students are advised to rewrite their notes in accordance with the outline.
Whether a business be offline or online, or both, customer service can make or break the business. While the types of customer service employed by offline and online merchants varies considerably because of the different business formats, it is imperative to remember that custoemr services is usually both the first and last things remembered by customers.
Customer service represents all of those activities undertaken by the retailer to improve the shopping experience of the customer. It runs the gamut from simply having the shelves stocked, to ease of returns, delivery, credit, and answering questions.
Customer service can provide strategic advantage over competitors. It can be the distinguishing mark in a industry populated by a homogeneous pool of competitors.
There are two ways to provide customer service:
The level of service offered by retailers can vary significantly, depending on the type of retailer, the nature of the product sold, the price of the products sold, the price strategy of the retailer, and more.
For example, most gasoline retailers provide zero service. Whereas thirty years ago "service stations" checked the oil, cleaner the windows, topped off fluids, and filled tires with air, current gas sellers make it possible to complete the transaction without ever making face-to-face contact with an employee.
Contrst this with an upscale retailer like Nordstrom or Neiman Marcus, where service is the rule rather than the exception. Salespersons come to know their regular clientele, and often arrange for private showings of garments at the home of the customer.
In the middle are all the other rteailers, ranging from minimal to considerable customer service.
Online retailers as well as mail-order retailers face added challenges with service because they do not have direct contct with their customers. But service is still an important variable for them. In fact, because the customer and retailer have such a large-scale separation, the service variable may indeed be more important than for traditional retailers.
Customes are often more skeptical and wary of distant retailers, because they cannot examine the product and do not want to be inconvenienced by returns. Thus, it behooves these retailers to make extra accommodations for service in their operations.
Some examples of online customer service enhancements:
Problems between customers and retailers occur whenever there is a service gap; in other words, some aspect of service between the retailer and the customer do not equal. There are 4 factors that affect service gap, as outlined in the text:
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