Customers are Important

No business can survive without customers. They are the very reason for our existence. Customers provide the revenue that ensures profitability, which in turn enables the business to employ people like you and me and to pay our wages and salaries! It is therefore essential that we not only attract customers, but that we ensure their satisfaction and turn them into loyal supporters of our business. We need to serve them in such a way that they keep on coming back and simultaneously spread the word about the great service they consistently receive.

Most businesses promise their customers products and service of a high quality. How many manage to keep these promises? Every one of us is a customer and we all had our share of bad experiences. Can you off-hand recall an exceptionally bad experience you as a customer had lately? Nine out of ten times, poor service or a service promise not being kept by the business caused that bad experience. If we want to focus on customer service, it is important to establish exactly how we make and keep our promises to our customers. That brings us back to the relationship between external and internal customers and our business.

Types of Service

Three types of activities need to be carried out successfully for a service to succeed:

External service - where promises are made to customers via traditional marketing activities such as advertising, sales and special promotions;

Interactive service - where promises are kept during the “moment of truth” or when the customer interacts with the organisation and the service is produced and consumed; and

Internal service - where promises are enabled by equipping the frontline service providers with the necessary skills, abilities, tools and motivation to deliver.

In order to improve customer service, we need to focus primarily on internal and interactive service, to fulfil those promises made in the external service.