User:Jcanaan/Customer service

Instant feedback[edit]
Many organizations have implemented feedback loops that allow them to capture feedback at the point of experience. For example, National Express in the UK has invited passengers to send text messages while riding the bus. This has been shown to be useful, as it allows companies to improve their customer service before the customer defects, thus making it far more likely that the customer will return next time.

The A.C.A.F. Customer Feedback Loop is a system used to collect and implement customer feedback. This system has four phases:

1.Ask

Asking for customer feedback helps organizations to understand overall trends, identify customer service issues, and to uncover product issues. Popular ways to measure overall customer satisfaction are Net promoter score (NPS), Customer satisfaction (CSAT), and Customer Effort Score (CES).

2. Categorize

Organizations categorize the customer feedback in three main categories: product feedback, customer service feedback, marketing and sales feedback.

3. Act

The feedback is acted on by sharing with the organizations product team, customer support team, and marketing and sales teams.

4. Follow-up

Organizations follow-up with customers who gave feedback.

Criticism
Michael Dall and Adam Bailine wrote in 2004 that the quality and level of customer service had been decreased in preceding years, and attributed this to a lack of support or understanding at the executive and middle management levels of a corporation and customer service policy. To address this argument, many organizations have employed a variety of methods to improve their customer satisfaction levels, and other key performance indicators (KPIs).

Customer service is the provision of service to customers before, during, and after a purchase. This makes it an important part on the value chain of clients. Each industry requires different levels of customer service, but at the end, the idea of a well performed service is that of increasing revenues. The perception of success of the customer service interactions is dependent on employees "who can adjust themselves to the personality of the customer". Customer service is often practice in a way to reflect the strategies and values of a firm. Good quality customer service is usually measure through customer retention. Customer service for some firms is part of the firm’s intangible assets and can differentiate it from others in the industry. One good customer service experience can change the entire perception a customer holds towards the organization.

Customer service does not only focus on the external aspect of the organization, but also the internal relations that facilitate the business activity. For service firms, customer service plays a vital role due to the close interaction with clients, like in the healthcare, or legal industries.[2] When close interaction is not required, there are different methods to still provide individuals with a sense of attention. For instance, when withdrawing money from an ATM, or skipping the line in an amusement park. Customers still receive the service they are looking for in a direct level, without face-to-face interaction.

The evolution in the service industry has identified needs from consumers. Companies usually create policies or standards to guide their personnel to follow their particular service package. A service package is a combination of tangible and intangible characteristics a firm uses to take care of its clients.

Automated customer service[edit]
Customer service may be provided by a person (e.g., sales and service representative), or by automated means, such as kiosks, Internet sites, and apps. An advantage of automation is the ability to provide service 24 hours a day, which can, at least, be a complement to face-to-face customer service. There is also the economic benefit to the firm. Through the evolution of technology, the costs of automated services become less expensive as time passes. This helps provide services to more customers for a fraction of the cost of employees' wages. Automation can facilitate customer service or replace it in its entirety.

A popular type of automated customer service is conducted through artificial intelligence ("AI"). The customer benefit of AI is the feel for chatting with a live agent through improved speech technologies while giving customers the self-service benefit. AI has the capacity of learning through interaction to perform a personalized service. The exchange the Internet of Things (IoT) facilitates within devices, allows us to transfer data when we need it, where we need it. Each gadget catches the information it needs while it maintains communication with other devices, and this is also accomplished through advances in technology in both hardware and software. Another example of automated customer service is by touch-tone phone, which usually involves IVR (Interactive Voice Response) a main menu and the use of the keypad as options (e.g., "Press 1 for English, Press 2 for Spanish", etc.).

However, in the Internet era, a challenge has been to maintain and/or enhance the personal experience while making use of the efficiencies of online commerce. "Online customers are literally invisible to you (and you to them), so it's easy to shortchange them emotionally. But this lack of visual and tactile presence makes it even more crucial to create a sense of personal, human-to-human connection in the online arena." An automated online assistant with avatar providing automated customer service on a web page.

Examples of customer service by artificial means are automated online assistants that can be seen as avatars on websites, which enterprises can use to reduce their operating and training costs. These are driven by chatterbots (also called "chatbots"), and a major underlying technology to such systems is natural language processing.

Adversely, automation has created a need for information that can sometimes affect privacy in a negative way.