“Customer service is a series of activities designed to enhance the level of customer satisfaction – that is, the feeling that a product or service has the customer expectation. In our case, that our service meets and exceeds the expectation of our clients through what we do, say, and portray in our day to day service and ultimately our company’s results.” – slideshare.net
This exposition probably goes back to the basics of customer service. Simply put – customer service is about caring about your company’s customers, their needs, and meeting their expectations. It is about delivering on promises, offering them assistance, staying professional yet empathetic, and ensuring that they receive top class experiences before, during, and even after the company may have met their current needs. Given that every customer is different, it would make sense for a company to have different ‘types’ of customer service – we will talk about this as we go along.
Customer service is the act of taking care of the customer’s needs by providing and delivering professional, helpful, high quality service and assistance before, during, and after it meets the customer’s current requirements. The top ‘characteristics’ of service excellence are many. Customers expect prompt and efficient responses on their queries, and in the delivery of the products and or services, they may have ordered. They hate to wait, and unwarranted and seemingly unnecessary delays lead to frustration, annoyance, and ultimately churn. Customers expect to be treated with value and respect and they demand politeness and courtesy – the lack of these leads them leave a company and post negative comments on the highly visible social media platforms. In addition, customers expect companies to know and understand them, such that they can receive personalized service and customized products. Customers love the feeling of ‘being recognized’, and companies that make the effort would be able to address customers by name, and know exactly when and what the customers would need.
Anyone running a company would know that customers form the basis of their business – without customers there would be no company. The power of balance has shifted in favour of customers – they are in charge and in control of every company-customer relationship – at least they should be. Companies that are unable to concede this power, soon find themselves out of business. It is, after all, the customers, who are the end users of a company’s products and or services, hence it is common sense that these offerings should be in accordance to their needs and expectations. When companies make the effort to do things as per the wishes of their customers, they not only attract, but also retain customers for the longest time. These long-standing customers then become profitable and extremely potent brand ambassadors. We are talking about types of customer service simply because customers are all different. In order to serve each one with the best, it would be prudent for a company to make segments / groups within their customer base. These ‘segments’ should be made basis obvious similarities in the customer lives, their needs, demographics, and other aspects – which in turn would enable a company to serve customers in the most appropriate manner by determining the ‘type’ of customer service they would prefer.
The types of customer service would depend on the kinds of customers, the nature of the company’s business, the products, and or services offered by the company, the needs of the customers, and the kinds of problems / issues the customers may have. Since there are so many distinctions and dissimilarities, even within a single customer segment, it would be prudent for a company to provide different types of customer service, distinct information, and different content to suit each individual segment. It would seem counter-intuitive that companies would try to palm off an ‘umbrella’ type of service to all their customers. Even if the customer service a company provides may seem great, it may not be perceived as so if a customer does not see value in it.
Customer service may be the overriding principle – but the types of customer service that a company offers would be different. The most basic is the type of service that forms the foundation – that is the support service. This is the type of service where a company’s representative would respond to ordinary queries, provide answers, note down orders of products, offer guidance to sign on new customers, help new customers with a basic understanding of the products or services, activation of new accounts, listening to and passing on complaints / grievances, and other such routine and bottom line tasks.
The next of the types of customer service would be the sales and marketing efforts. These are the direct interactions that a company would have with prospective and existing customers, to help them understand the products and or services. In addition, this would also be the promotional stage where these representatives would let customers know the benefits of associating with the company and in buying the products. These representatives would meet customers, stay in touch with them through calls and or emails, and even conduct some on-line research for customers. Another of the types of customer service is the technical support ‘type’. This set of representatives are sought to help customers with regard to the technical difficulties of a product / service, support for certain system / application related problems, and other issues that would fall under the purview of ‘technical’. Another of the types of customer service would be to help with analytics and reports for the company – analysis of number and types of queries and complaints, the quality of service and response provided by the company – and other such analytical based support.
With regard to the different kinds of customers, research has revealed that these would be the ‘high maintenance and high-end type’, the on-line kind, the price sensitive type, the understanding kind, and others. Obviously then, the types of customer service would need to vary in order to meet the expectations of each kind of customer. The high-end kind of customers, are the ones that spend a lot of money with the company – the high net worth customers. They obviously expect preferential and top class customer service at all times, and companies must comply since they would be major contributors of the company’s revenue. This is possibly one of the toughest of the types of customer service since these customers are the least patient and possibly the most demanding. However, when done right, this type of service could gain many and sustainable benefits for the company.
Irrespective of the kind of customers or the types of customer service that may be required, the underlying fact is that the service provided must be top class, professional, and display the core and essence of a company. Customers do not care how great the offerings of a company may be, or about the qualifications and abilities of the leadership and employees – they care only about how a company treats them and makes them feel. The direct interactions and service they receive is what would make or break a relationship between a customer and a company. True and unfeigned service is what customers want to see, and the better a company can do it, the stronger relationships it would be able to form with its customers. Irrespective of the kinds of customers and types of customer service, the foundation of a great company would be top class service – a company that is constantly finding ways to improve its service and give customers more than they expect or thought possible.
