News: Customer Service/Care
Strike "delicate" business balance with customer service training
27 October 2008
Businesses may be focused more on survival than customer relationships during the economic downturn, but that does not mean customer service training should be ruled out, it has been suggested.
Writing in the Financial Times, Rob Walker from California-based customer interaction specialist Chordiant claims leaders must strike "a delicate balance" between managing risk and customers' experience in order to retain their business and emerge from the crisis unscathed.
"Customer needs are changing dramatically as expectations of service levels rise and more channels of communication become available," observes the organisation's head of decision management solutions.
"Product and price used to be the deciding factors in attracting and retaining customers," he adds, singling out competition and "market saturation" as key to the lessening influence of such aspects.
Echoing the results of last week's Retail Eyes report, Mr Walker also notes that customers' expectations of the treatment they receive from companies have heightened.
As a result, consumers now consider their relationship with an organisation to be the critical factor in determining brand loyalty and profitability, he concludes, underlining the perennial benefits of customer service training.
In the aforementioned report, it was revealed the majority of financially stretched consumers are still prepared to pay for high standards of customer service.
