Service excellence is important to an organisation as it is the key to gaining new customers and customer retention. Any business must operate on the basis that customer service is the most critical aspect to a business’ success as happy customers are more likely to continue using the service provided and more importantly will pass their experiences onto potential new customers. This is becoming even more significant as customers are communicating their service experiences – good and bad – for all to see on the Internet.
Customers are more demanding now than ever before; they are cost-conscious, less loyal and have many more competitor choices to compare. If exceptional service isn’t provided they will proceed to take their custom straight over to the competition.
Customer service excellence is much more than attentiveness to customer satisfaction. Customers do not want to be merely "satisfied." They want the feeling that the organisation considers their business to be important, essential, and vital to its operation.
Providing excellent customer service is one way a small business can distinguish itself from the competition.
Task two
A company's weaknesses are the things it does not do well at or that other companies do better in. Four service weaknesses identified within our organisation and ways to upgrade them are;
• Many members of our Sales Office team pass over ownership of calls due to a lack of web knowledge - This weakness could be upgraded by training all staff to a knowledgeable level of the internet and hopefully this will empower the team to answer all web query questions.
• Production errors – products are missed out of orders and gift messages are placed with the incorrect gift - This weakness could be upgraded by re-training all our production staff to a knowledgeable level of our product codes and by introducing a complaint system which could address any problems that are diminishing performance within our production department.