CUSTOMER CARE EXCELLENCE / التميز في رعاية العملاء

CUSTOMER CARE EXCELLENCE, We have become a service economy. Yet few organizations are truly delighting their customers.

This chapter introduces the concept of service quality and defines what this means to the customer.

At the end of this and subsequent chapters, a checklist is provided to allow you to take practical steps to develop and sustain a customer focus within your organization.

Service in a competitive environment

Over recent years organizations have placed increasing emphasis on customer service as a means of gaining competitive advantage.

Who would have imagined 15 years ago, for example, that organizations such as Amazon.com could capture market share from the high street by offering the customer a wide selection of value-for-money products backed by a quality service? Or that companies such as First Direct could fundamentally challenge the traditional way customers do business with their bank by offering a friendly, efficient service 24 hours a day, 365 days a year?

In 1954 Peter Drucker wrote in The Practice of Management: ‘There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer.’

He said that an organization’s ability to remain in business is a function of its competitiveness and its ability to win customers from the competition. The customer is the foundation of the business and keeps it in existence.

As competition has become more global and more intense, many organizations have realized that they cannot compete on price alone. It is in these marketplaces that many companies have developed a strategy of providing superior customer care to differentiate their products and services. Surveys suggest that service-driven companies can charge up to 9 percent more for the products and services they provide.

They grow twice as fast as the average company and have the potential to gain up to 6 percent market share.

Through undertaking a major change program which was

intended to focus on the customer, The Royal Bank of Scotland went from near to making a loss to a £200 million incremental profit within two years.

Through focusing on the customer, retailer Tesco managed to increase its profitability and market share, becoming the market leader in a highly competitive and cost-conscious marketplace.

Financial services is typical of many sectors in its change of focus towards customer service. The nature and number of competitors and

the ability of retailers, banks, building societies, insurance brokers, estate agents and other financial service companies to offer similar

products at similar prices has led to increasing emphasis being placed on personal service as a means of adding value to customers. However, like very many other market sectors, few organizations succeed in leading the way.