So many people think that by having a great product they will have a great advantage in a competing market. Whether you are in a monopoly or oligopoly market, you surely need customer service. The customer is centric to your organization generating revenue or even aiming to generate higher revenue, you need to be customer focus. Customer service can either break a business or make a business, knowing the important of customer service Philip Kotler stated “good organizations will meet needs; great organizations will create markets”. As we go on, we will see why this statement is essential and how it relate to customer service.
Customer service is the act of providing support to both prospective and existing customers which could be through advocating, usage and troubleshooting of a product or service. All these are necessary so that the customer has an enjoyable and easy experience with the brand. You can use either the in-person, phone, email, chat and social media to interact effectively with the customer.
The customer centric role has evolved and still evolving as it isn’t just about the calls, emails, chat but when you use the previously stated mediums to deliver a proactive and immediate service to the customer is becomes essential.
IMPORTANCE OF CUSTOMER SERVICE
For your business to get ahead of the competitors having a great Customer Service is a fine opportunity to acquire, retain, or upsell. Good Customer Service is a great experience that aligns with the purpose of an organization. Let’s talk about some of the reasons why customer service is important in an organization.
1. Face of the organization
The organization’s customer service personnel represent the organization to prospective and existing customers alike. The way the customer service personnel portrays the organization will either make prospective customer decide to do business or not. Hence Customer service personnel must be well informed about the organization’s product or service while answering questions correctly
2. Mitigate Situations
Your job of a customer service personnel deals with mostly negative reactions to product or services and you need to find a way to turn things around so as to make the customer happy. This could vary from a faulty product to a confusing instruction either way, as a customer service personnel endeavor to calm the customer down and provide information that will please them, this will make them happy and bring about positive remark.
3. Reputation of ORGANISATION
As a customer service personnel you are usually the first to hear about faults in product and it’s your responsibility to alert the appropriate department the issue(s) before they are aware of it. Being able to pass relevant information about a product or service to the appropriate department in an organization can be cost effective as such product can be fix or removed to save the reputation of the organization.
4. REALTIME REVIEW
Whether it’s a positive or negative review the customer service helps to get that on a daily basis. This review can be showcase on the organization website, social media page and anywhere to create more visibility and publicity for the organization. Having a good and effective communication structure will go a long way to help the customer service department to provide feedbacks to the right department swiftly, as this is so important to the long-term success of the organization.
Understanding that customer service is the cornerstone of your customer experience helps you leverage on it as an opportunity to delight customer as you engage them in new and exciting ways.