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Customer Service

The first and most important step towards outstanding service is developing a service strategy. Strategy sets the stage and defines the constraints for all the other steps. Overlooking strategy and rushing headlong to improve service is always a mistake. The elements of strategy sound simple to achieve. Developing a strategy means nothing more than segmenting customers according to their service expectations, finding out exactly what those expectations are, and adjusting customer expectations to match your ability to deliver service. With those three elements in place, high levels of customer satisfaction are much more likely. Without a customer service strategy, you don’t know exactly who your customers are, how much they value different aspects of service, how much you will have to spend to satisfy them and how big the payoffs are likely to be. Without a strategy you can’t develop a concept of service to rally around, or catch conflicts between corporate strategy and customer service, or come up with effective ways to measure service performance and perceived quality. (Davidow & Uttal, 1989)

Most companies invest far too little money and effort in hiring, training, and motivating their employees. Companies known for great customer service outspend their competitors to ensure that customer-contact workers do a superior job.

According to Davidow & Uttal (1989), they generally adhere to three principles:

Work ceaselessly to hire the right people. Service leaders take as much care in hiring customer service employees as they would in selecting business partners. Since altitude is more telling than experience, they look for people whose personalities predispose them to produce good service and fit in well with the service culture. The most sophisticated companies search out target groups whose life situations fit well

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