Trends in Customer Service What is happening out there?

In the December newsletter of the Toronto chapter of the International Customer Service Association (ICSA), the president highlighted some areas of focus. These are based on her conversations with many members over the past few months.

"There is no doubt that there is a growing strategic importance of customer service to an organization’success. As industries mature and organizations can no longer differentiate themselves by products or pricing, customer service becomes a critical competitive advantage. Every manager, regardless in which department they work, is coming to realize that service and support interactions are often theonly direct contact the company has with the customer. The quality of those interactions has a significant impact on long-term business success.

Management in customer service is facing increased pressure to do more with less, and also to contribute to top-line revenues. Many are being asked to provide service to more customers and/or support a wider range of products and services, even as budgets are reduced or remain flat.

There is a need seek ways to improve operational efficiency while building a world-class customer service organization. The best way it seems is to deliver the quality service to retain the loyalty of customers while ensuring KPI’s are met.

Another area of concern is the emphasis on common management of diverse customer service communications channels. This includes the phone, email, web, and chat. A need to integrate responses through these channels as a single, highly manageable queue to optimize overall efficiency and deliver consistent and accurate answers regardless of the channels is paramount."


What say you? Comments? Ideas?

Eric Fraterman
eric@customerfocusconsult.com
http://www.customerfocusconsult.com/