Customer Service in an Online World: Can Service and Technology Work Together to Achieve Service Excellence?



Customer Service in an Online World: Can Service and Technology Work Together to Achieve Service Excellence?

Introduction

During the past two decades, customer service has emerged as a strategic imperative for most firms, and service quality has been the subject of considerable interest among marketing academics and practitioners, spurred by the original work of (Kelley and Turley, 2001, 12-56). Today, there is general agreement among marketing scholars that quality customer service is not only the most important factor for achieving the paramount marketing outcome, namely customer satisfaction, but it is the principal criterion for measuring the competitiveness of the customer service process. At the same time, the increased emphasis on customer service has emerged as a key driver for IS priorities, reflecting the general recognition of the essential role IT plays in support of this process. However, while a number of case studies do highlight the critical role of IT in customer service, empirical research examining the link between IT and customer service performance has been lacking.

Customer service is what an organization does to meet the customer satisfaction and expectations. A lot of companies consider customer service as running the business. Customer service is either good or poor; it depends on the customers only. Customers are the judges of the organizations services. It depends upon how customers being treated, whether their expectations are being fulfilled, and whether their satisfaction level met or not. Customer is the most important visitor for any organization, as he is not dependent on it, but the organization is dependent on him.

Technologies to Improve Customer Service

Technology is improving many aspects of customer service. Offering self-service facilities for routine enquiries can improve convenience for customers and reduce waiting time. Personalization of website pages can also help customers search more effectively for products and services. Predictive tools linked to telephone call management systems provide a faster, personalized service for call center customers. Improved communications in the supply chain enable organizations to reduce delays and improve response to customer requests.

Self Service

Advances in technology, such as voice recognition, enable organizations to automate a number of processes that call center agents handled in the past. Customers answer a series of recorded questions to perform routine tasks, such as billing enquiries, online payments and service requests, without speaking to an agent. As well as improving convenience for customers, call center operators believed the facility can reduce call volumes by 30 percent to 40 percent, according to a 2006 article in "CRM Today" (Gammelgaard and Mentzer, 2005, 113-148).

Information

Voice recognition technology also improves convenience for the growing number of customers using mobile phones or other portable devices to search for information. An article in the July 2003 edition of "CIO," speech recognition was proving increasingly popular with mobile users struggling with small keyboards and displays.

Personalization

Personalized pages on a website make it easier for customers searching for product or service information, according to an article in ...