The Customer Service Perspective - Essay Example

THE MOST VIABLE OPTION As the world turns into the global village melting all the cultures and blurring all the boundaries with the use of technology, competitive landscape is much tougher than ever before. Information is easily accessible to the customers, availability of substitutes has given more power to the customers and the only choice left to the suppliers is to; “delight their customers”. Thus the rule of the game is not only to meet the requirements of the customer but to step further in creating a value for the customer.

Here, Niven advises that; “companies need to offer all three – innovation, outstanding customer care and flawless execution – because of today’s hyper-competitive environment. Only then can companies meet customer expectations and succeed at performance management that translates into leadership in the marketplace and customer minds.” (Niven, 2004) Customers make the most important link in the chain of success. Companies have to carefully identify their potential customers, segmenting the right market and targeting the potential customers serve as competitive advantages to a company.

Innovation, customer care and execution along with quality offerings are required to maintain the customer base. Since now there are so many substitutes for a product that companies need to take a leap in satisfying them by providing the best customer care services. Bollen believes that customer complain is an opportunity for the company to win his trust, loyalty and long term commitment. Only if the company gauge it right and makes the customer feels that he is being valued an enduring relationship can happen.

(Bollen, 2008) Bollen has related the choice of a customer to his emotional attachment in order to make companies realize that no matter. No other perspective is given more importance than the customer perspective because no matter how good your product is if you are unable to translate its need to your customer one can’t earn the desired results. After thoroughly reading various articles from the web and examples of companies using balance score card with special important to customers perspective, I felt a lot of tilt towards innovation and value proposition of the product in order to satisfy the customer.

What more I would like to add is the “human factor”. Companies should divert their attention towards customer care; employees should be given a lot of important. But since it is an internet economy and a lot of transactions take place virtually all the aspects that are used to communicate or encounter with the customers should be carefully handled. Web sites and customer portals should be user friendly and incorporate all the answers to the customer. Strong emphasis should be placed on the communication strategy of the business.

The features and benefits of a product should be translated to the customers as per their needs and wants. Usage of jargons and words customers don’t know can be trouble shooting.