CSTN4015 – HELP DESK AND CUSTOMER SUPPORT
DEFINING CUSTOMER SERVICE
Darren Boudreau w0241646
Assignment 1 – Defining Customer Service / Improving Service Quality
1. How would you define customer service?
Customer service is the process of customer satisfaction with a product or service which is an
extremely important part of maintaining ongoing client relationships that are very important to
continuing revenue. Excellent customer service is the ability of an organization to constantly and
consistently exceed the customer’s expectations. Service is a valuable action, deed, or effort performed
to satisfy a need or to fulfill a demand.
The earliest forms of customer service would be you told the shop owner your issue with what they
sold you, and they either decided the problem was for them to fix or your own fault. But then the
telephone was invented and everything changed. Since the end of World War II the services industry
has significantly increased to the point where statistics show that during the 1970’s the ratio of
services to goods were 2 to 1. Fast forward to 2005 and the statistic has now climbed to a 5 to 1 ratio.
Former Zappos (acquired by Amazon) CEO Tony Hsieh argued that customer service shouldn’t be just
a department. It should be the entire company. He suggested that if you got the culture right
everything else would file into place. The idea being that without a solid company full of employees
who actually enjoy working there and believe in the brand wholeheartedly your customer service
wouldn’t exist. This placed the company culture as a first priority and customer service second. A
companies’ employees enthusiasm and state of mind with regard to the products they sell would
extend to their customer relations.
The six components are Organizational Culture, Service, Human Resource, Delivery Systems,
Products/ Deliverables, and Customer.
2. Improving Service Quality
The single most important addition to the business world in my lifetime would of course be the
internet which has become an ever increasing economic force within the past 13 years. Social
networking like Facebook and Twitter add to the online service experience as well where people
have the convenience of interacting with one another as well as the companies themselves in a
more direct route to the customer which can of course be both good and bad depending on the
manner in which companies address obstacles, issues, or good fortunes that arise over time. The
internet has also added a few other key elements to the previous main phone driven experience of
customer support in the form of email and chat. From my own prior personal customer service work
experience it was encouraged to have up to 4 chat sessions going at once which can also be both
good and bad depending on an individual’s ability to focus on each customer.
Darren Boudreau – w0241646
Assignment 1 - Defining Customer Service
Page 1 of 2
CSTN4015 – HELP DESK AND CUSTOMER SUPPORT
DEFINING CUSTOMER SERVICE
Darren Boudreau w0241646
Another online element which can add to or take away from the view of a company are customer
experiences with a company in online reviews posted directly by customers directly on their
websites.
Since the internet is such a widely used medium to maintain a certain kind of rapport with the
public these days the more real the experience can be maintained I think the better people can feel
and or make decisions.
Darren Boudreau – w0241646
Assignment 1 - Defining Customer Service
Page 2 of 2