Regaining Customer Confidence Through Customer Service and Service Recovery
Customer Service Refers to all customer-provider interactions, other than proactive selling and the core product delivery, that facilitate the organization’s relationship with its customers. Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Customer Service as a Strategic Function A marketing function applicable to services and goods. Traditionally for complaint handling and refund/exchange. Market and marketing research source. Provides valuable input for service design improvements. Proactive customer service better than reactive. Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Customer Service as a Strategic Function (cont’d) Prioritizes attention - most valuable (customers) relationships. Elevates status of customer service function within firm. Makes it everyone’s responsibility. Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Developing a Customer Service Culture When the customer service function is elevated to a strategic level, the service organization signals its importance to all employees. As a former CEO of American Express (http://www.americanexpress.com) noted, "A dissatisfied customer is an opportunity." Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Developing a Customer Service Culture (cont’d) Service organizations and manufacturing organizations are realizing that customer service is a major corporate asset. One significant function of customer service is to enable the organization to recover from failures that caused customer dissatisfaction and customer complaints. Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Service Recovery The effort an organization expends to win back customers’ goodwill once it has been lost due to service failure. Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
The Need for Service Recovery The High Cost of Lost Customers When Is Service Recovery Needed? Other Means of Identifying Recovery Needs Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Moment of Truth Any contact point with a service organization that the customer uses to evaluate the service delivery. Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
The Steps to Service Recovery Apology Urgent Reinstatement Empathy Symbolic Atonement Follow-Up Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
The Hidden Benefits of Service Recovery There are several ways systematic service recovery programs benefit an organization: The process can help improve the overall quality of service delivery as the service occurs. Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
The Hidden Benefits of Service Recovery Keeping track of the sources of dissatisfaction that create a need for recovery can help the organization. Service recovery can reduce the incidence of bungled moments of truth if information regarding customers’ dissatisfaction is put to good use. Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.