Abstract
Customer
service is a key component in the success of any organization. Service quality and
customer satisfaction are very important concepts that companies or
organization must understand if they want to remain competitive and grow.This writing is to describe and explain how
service employees create services through improving the customer’s experience
by being proactive in their work and continuously running the service
interaction.
Keywords: customer service, quality service,
business organization
Introduction
Nowadays, business organizations are
challenged by rapid changes due to globalization. They also increasingly
engaging in international trade as to gain competitive advantage. Customer
service which is the ability of an organization to fulfil or meet customers’
expectations and needs, is seen very crucial to almost all businesses. The
excellent quality of customer service is preferable and important because it
can offer many advantages and benefits to an organization such as customer
satisfaction and loyalty, subsequently widening customer base as well as
increasing profits, sales or income. Although a number of firms realized and
invested much in customer service, there still some that do not take it very
seriously or ignoring a must for quality customer service which may then
results in several disadvantages, most obvious one is customer’s satisfaction
and loyalty. The quality in customer service is considered to be very important
it can affect or influence customer satisfaction and loyalty, subsequently
economic activities of a firm. It is therefore crucial for firms to provide
good quality of customer service which can be done in many ways and by
considering several things. Other than that, it is also significant to measure
the quality of customer service provided so that the firms know how well or bad
they are doing, specifically in customer service. There are few service quality
measurement tool which can be used to measure service quality. Therefore, this
paper highlights and discusses the topic of quality customer service by
discussing what customer service is, the importance of customer service
quality, suggesting ways on how good quality of service can be provided, and
the measurement of customer service quality.
Customer Service
A
customer is a person who buys or purchases goods or services. Customers are
viewed as a person with whom a business person must deal with in exchange of
value, on a regular basis. Meanwhile, a service is a contribution to the
well-being or interest of others. Customer service in this sense can be
understood as anything that is done for the customer which enhances the
customer experience. It is a relationship with people who are critical to the
business, meeting the customer’s expectations and needs and is used to create a
relationship with mutual benefit between the business and those it serves
(Fleming, 2002). It is the ability of an organization in supplying their
customer’s needs and wants. According to Kimando and Njogu (2012), customer
service involves task oriented activities other than proactive selling that
involves interactions with customer in person. The function of service should
be designed performed and communicated by focusing on both operational
efficiency and customer satisfaction.
Customers can be divided into two
types, internal and external customers. External customers are those who are in
need of service or help, while internal customers are the co-workers’ and
employees of other department in the organization. It is believed by quality
experts that increased efficiency, productivity and satisfaction can be
achieved when top-notch service provided for these internal customers (Fleming,
2002). Jahanshahi
et al. (2011) stated that customer service is one of the processes in
organization that companies perform in consideration of an increasing
competition and also to attract entrepreneurial opportunities for profit
advantage and better access to the market, besides increasing customer
satisfaction and their loyalty level.
The Importance of Quality in Customer Service
Service quality can be defined as “a
rationale of differences between expectation and competence along the important
quality dimensions” (Loke, Taiwo, Salim & Downe, 2011, p. 24). Kahn, Strong
and Wang (2002) defined customer service as fitness for use, or the extent to
which a product serves the purposes of consumers successfully. ISO 9000 (2005)
defined quality as the extent to which a group of inbuilt features meet the
requirements. Customer
service has been an important factor for an organization because with good
quality service, it can result in increasing quality of product, gaining
profitable opportunities and competitive advantage, as well as increasing sales
and income. Excellent quality of customer service lies not only on knowledge
and skills of individual but also depends on the organization as a whole, from
top management downwards, work together towards a same direction and presents a
clear, positive message to consumers.
Customer satisfaction is one of the
most key results to be achieved by business organizations and is achievable
through quality customer service. It is a personal feeling which ranging from
pleasure to disappointment as a result of evaluation of services provided by an
organization to a customer in relation to expectations. Customer satisfaction
is linked very closely to quality of customer service. Usually, service
providers put customer satisfaction as their first priority, as it is seen as a
precondition of customer retention. Additionally, high customer satisfaction
may lead to positive outcome of marketing activities such as repeat visitation
to store and product purchases, as well as promotion through word-of-mouth to
others. They often stays loyal to the firm longer and very likely to support
the firm in future. On the other hand, low unsatisfied customer may result in
complaining behaviour (Loke et al., 2011).
Moreover, customer service has also
been linked to customer loyalty which can be divided into two types;
attitudinal and behavioural loyalty. Attitudinal loyalty can be in terms of a
favourable evaluation which motivates and enhances a repeatedly favourable
response on a product or a store. The behavioural loyalty are in terms of
word-of-mouth communication, repurchase intentions, and recommendations of the
organization. Customers’ loyalty are determined by factors such as trust,
positive perception on relationship and positive customer emotional attachment
(Jahanshahi et al., 2011). Customer loyalty is a vital factor to the growth and
performance of companies. It allows repeat business in which a loyal customer
makes frequent purchase of a product or service from a particular provider. It
is significance to firms’ continued survival as well as strong future growth.
Highly satisfied customers are very likely to remain with the firm which then
leads to future revenue for the firm. Business theory that says customer
retention optimizes profitability is very widely accepted too. Therefore, it
can be said that firms, especially ones that provide services should aim at
satisfying their customers which can help to stimulated them to repeat and
retain their purchases (Angelova
& Zekiri, 2011).
Quality
customer service is also important because of negative consequences associated
with poor service that are not favourable to the firm. Fleming (2002) reviewed
that poor service resulted in almost half of all customers disconnected
relation with a company or in other words, they stopped doing business with a
company. It is therefore highly suggested that firms provide good quality of
customer service.
How to Provide Good Quality Customer Service
As we know, it is crucial to provide
good quality of customer service in order to gain various advantages. Thus,
firms should continuously improve customer service which requires them to make
commitment in learning what are their customers’ wants and needs, and
consequently develop action plans to meet the demands which also implement
customer friendly processes. The most obvious thing is that customers like to
be treated nice and well because they perceive that they deserve it in return
of payment they made. Therefore, the front-line service providers should be
competent and well trained for attending customers, solving their issues and
processing and completing their transactions. Efficient and sufficient training
should be provided to the staffs. Muniu (2015) proved in a study that staff
training influenced customer service delivery in a positive way in which the
study reveals that customer care training helped them to adjust to the
personality of the customers as well as facilitates them to deal with customer
using different attitudes and ways. In addition, such training also helps the
staffs to appreciate customers’ time and to tolerate with customers’ behaviours
and it also allows staffs to develop strategies that aim to sustain desirable
relationships with customers. Besides helping to improve service delivery,
training also helps staffs to improve their knowledge and problem solving
skills so that they can attend to customers’ queries faster and correctly which
in turn create a pleasant customer experience (Muniu, 2015). It is also
important to ensure that the service providers deliver services to customer in
friendly manner, they are courteous, knowledgeable, helpful and provide quick
service (Singh, 2006).
Besides the front-line service
providers, the company as a whole, should also has clear customer service
standards and goals that can guide the staffs towards achieving good quality of
customer service. With clear set of standards and goals, employees have
clarification on desired performance and indication of goals. The determination
of goals are best to base on empirical data that are gathered from the
customers themselves. In that way, the management team knows actual needs of
their customers, and standards and goals can be set based on these and not by
their intuition alone. It is also important that the goals are measurable and
verifiable because measuring and verifying performance in reaching the goal is
crucial to determine how far they have achieved their set goals. For example in
a banking industry, they may set 2 minutes as a standard waiting time and it is
their time goal for each customer served.
Loke et al. (2011) include five
dimensions of service quality including tangibility, reliability,
responsiveness, assurance and empathy, originated from Parasuraman et al.,
(1988). Quality dimension of tangibles is defined as the physical facilities,
appearance of personnel, and equipment. Reliability quality dimension defined
as the ability in performing service accurately and dependably. Responsiveness
service quality is defined as the willingness to help customers and provide
prompt services. Assurance quality dimension can be understood as knowledge and
courtesy of staffs and their ability to inspire confidence and trust. Meanwhile
empathy can be defined as caring, individualized attention provided to
customers by the firm (Parasuraman, et al., 1988). These are summarized and can
be found in Figure 1 below.
Figure 1 Definition of quality dimension
Source: Karnstedt and Winter (2015, p. 24)
In the dimension of tangibility or physical
aspects: the customer service counter should be well-equipped with up-to-date
facilities; the staff dressed appropriately and appear neat; physical layout of
furniture and equipment should be comfortable that supports interaction between
customer and staff; information and material related to the service are
visually appealing at the counter. For
reliability dimension of quality service, elements such as fulfilling promises
to customers; sympathetic and reassuring staffs that attend customers’
problems; dependable staff; and staffs’ ability to keep transaction records
accurately, should be emphasized by the firm. Besides, the firm should also
focus on responsiveness in providing quality service for examples: the ability
to tell exact time for services to be performed; provide prompt service;
staffs’ willingness to help customers; and staffs appear well organized in
responding customer requests.
In
addition, assurance should also be focused in delivering quality service
quality in a way that the customer can trust the staff; they feel safe when
conducting business with the staff; the staff is polite; customer service staff
are well supported by the firm in doing their job. Lastly, there should be an
empathy in quality service such as an ability of staff to give individual
attention to the served customer; the staff knows actual need of the customer;
and operating in business hours that are convenient to major customers (Loke et
al., 2011). These are the examples of elements that can be looked into and
addressed, in order to provide good quality of customer service.
Measurement of Customer Service Quality
Tools for measuring quality of
customer service is essential so that firms know where they are at, how close
or far they are to good quality of service and so on. There are few survey
tools created since the mid-1980s such as SERVQUAL, EXQ, BSQ and SERVPERF (Karnstedt & Winter, 2015). SERVQUAL model was originated by
Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry (1988) with aim was to have a standard and
reliable tool which can be used for measuring the quality of service of
different service sectors. It is one of the tools that is used to measure
service quality in general, which was developed with ten service quality
attributes or dimensions but were simplified to five dimensions namely
tangible, responsiveness, reliability, assurance and empathy. In intention of
improving the SERVQUAL model, Cronin and Taylor (1992) develop a SERVPERF
measurement model stands for Service Performance, because they argued that
performance dimension is the only predictor of behavioural intentions.
Meanwhile, Bahia and Natel (2000) conducted a research that aimed to develop a
valid measurement of perceived service quality, but specifically for the retail
banking sector.
This new developed model is due to SERVQUAL
approach that was not free from criticism. Their model named as BANK SERVICE
QUALITY (BSQ) which contains 31 items that are categorized into six dimensions
namely effectiveness and assurance, price, access, tangible, accuracy and
reliability, and range of services offered. EXQ model which is also a customer
perception measurement was developed by Klaus and Maklan (2012) to measure
service quality as well. Karnstedt and Winter (2015) reviewed that most firms today utilize a
customer satisfaction survey as a measurement tool for service quality, but is
hard to formulate because of different quality dimensions applicable to
different services and that they might need to be adjusted to suit the specific
context. Besides these measurement tools, customer complaints can also be a
potential indicator of poor quality service as it can be used to identify
satisfaction and dissatisfaction. However, Karnstedt and Winter also reviewed
that customer complaints measure should be used with caution because it has
shown to be weak predictor of repurchase intention and loyalty, and also only
few dissatisfied customers are actually make complain and this makes the tool
as weak predictor of satisfaction. Karnstedt and Winter listed quality measures
and respective researchers of the tool as in Figure 2. These measurement can be
used to identify weaknesses or even strength of firm’s customer service in
order to continuously improve its service quality.
Figure 2 List of quality measures
Source: Karnstedt and Winter (2015, p. 23)
Conclusion
In
conclusion, quality of customer service which is the ability of an organization
to meet customers’ wants and needs is important which can influence and affect
customer satisfaction and their loyalty. Other good consequences also
associated with good quality of customer service such as quality of product, gaining
profitable opportunities and competitive advantage, increasing sales and
income, and other positive outcome of marketing activities. Meanwhile, there
are bad consequences associated with poor service. Therefore, it is highly
crucial to provide good quality of service which can be done by providing
effective training to the front-line staffs, setting clear customer service
standards and goals and keeping an eye on the five dimensions of quality service;
tangibility, reliability,
responsiveness, assurance and empathy. There are also few measurement models or tools which can be used to
measure quality service and that the data from the measures can be analysed in
order to continuously improve service quality.
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