Essay: “The importance of customer service. How can customer service be improved?”

Customer service is the overall activity of identifying and satisfying customer needs. There are factors of quality of service: the material elements- space and equipment; reliability- the ability of services in a reliable, accurate and consistent way; the speed of response to provide services and willingness to help; self-confidence- the staff’s knowledge and skills, courtesy and the ability to create atmosphere of trust and confidence; empathy- customer care and personal attitude. Measuring service quality and service excellence are important in a competitive organizational environment. Customer service is one of the most important aspects of having a successful business. There are many as well as various methods of improving the quality of service.

First of all, there are different ways of measuring the quality of service excellence. One of them is The SERVQUAL – service quality model is one of the widely used tools for measuring quality of the service on various aspects. The five attributes of this model are: reliability, responsiveness, assurance, tangibles, and empathy.One of the most crucial part of any business is to make and keep customers happy. Most of the reputation is built by the customers. If somebody would like to have a good rating across the Internet it would be a good idea to make sure that the quality of customer service is high. What is more, customer service says a lot about how long will the business last. If the quality is high, the probability of long-term durability is also high. Due to good customer service not only one can gain trust with current clients, but can also become a wonderful referral system as they spread the word about the business to other prospects.

Many of the companies make constant improvements. At the first stage it is extremely important to identify the problem. It would be interesting to take into consideration the experience of the quality made by the guru- Edward Deming. In his circle of quality he proposes to undertake of four steps: plan- a better plan of action; do- to realize the plan as a test; check- to examine whether the new mode of operation gives better results; act- if a new mode of action is more effective. Another possible way of improving the customer service would be conducting a CATI interview (Computer Assisted Telephone Interview)- it is a telephone surveying technique in which interviewer follows a script provided by a software application.

To sum up, “the customer is always right”. Understanding the importance of good customer service is essential for a healthy business in creating new customers, keeping loyal customers, and developing referrals for future customers. High quality of customer service leads to many benefits. Not only there is a possibility to gain new customers, but also keep current customers more loyal towards the company. It is crucial to constantly improve the quality, for example by conducting a CATI interview or by using “Deming cycle”.