Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Is customer service back in vogue?

Customer service has long been a chant among managers, but somewhere along the way it kind of got sidetracked by more technological and complicated issues. The fact of the matter remains, that unless a company provides good customer service, it's products will not go the distance. After sales service is one of the most important factors for the majority of consumers and unless you have can provide it, your customers will soon go somewhere else.

If you excel at customer service, you will see the difference since loyal customers bring in additional customers at no additional cost of advertising or marketing and are great at word-of-mouth publicity, which is the best sort of publicity. Customer service is especially important for SMEs where owners take care of customer service instead of having a customer service department.

So how do you measure customer service or what really is good customer service? Well, it all depends on what your product or service is. Does your company treat its customers politely, do you offer to take faulty products back without hassle, do you follow up with new customers on how they rated your service and product? These are all questions that must be answered to know where you stand and develop a focus on the kind of customer relationship you want to build.

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