Digital media is profoundly transforming consumer behaviour and traditional communications models. While creating new opportunities, its influence has been accelerated by not only the proliferation of hand-held devices, but also the speed at which these devices allow the user to connect, send and receive messages, images and videos. Apple claims up to 30 frames per second for its 3GS iPhone, which is the same as a high definition television!

Continue Reading...

Businesses have long realized that sustainability with regards to customer service is crucial to their success. Reaching a desired level of service excellence has to be combined with efforts to stay at that level or even improve. For this, many firms dedicate precious human resources in order to continuously track and improve service quality levels. With the help of technology and innovative players in the field of customer service training and consultancy, new and improved products have been developed to assess a firm’s customer service capabilities.

Continue Reading...

We live in a world of innovation. Most of the companies today aim at creating new and improved products and services, of which they are sole providers. In this era, competitor information is highly sought for and in the midst of the battle to get ahead of the competition, benchmarking seems to be evolving as the latest management fashion.

The word ‘benchmark’ originally refers to a reference point to compare measures against. There are several theories about where the word ‘benchmark’ came from. In previous times benchmark may have been used in fishing contests where the length of a fish is marked on a wooden bench or it may have originated through a cobbler’s effort to measure size according to a predefined one (Andersen & Pettersen, 1996). In an organisational setting, benchmarking originated with Xerox Business Systems in the late 1970s. But at that time benchmarking was used to make the organisation aware that their performance was not up to the mark as compared to others in the industry. Also, it set an example for Xerox showing them that someone had already made the improvements. Today, organisation performance benchmarking can perhaps best be defined as the practice of being humble enough to admit that someone else is better at something and being wise enough to learn how to match or even surpass them at it (APQC, 1993).

Continue Reading...

It’s common in the customer service business to be asked “how does service and customer satisfaction affect the bottom line of a business”. The answer is undoubtedly that it affects each business differently, but it certainly has an impact. Entertainment destinations such as theme parks and cinemas prove to be an interesting case study in the correlation between customer satisfaction and the bottom line.

Service is often overlooked in the world of entertainment destinations. A common afterthought when marketing, product delivery and maintenance take hold of most internal spending. Staff training is geared at getting people in and out, keeping lines to a minimum rather than bonding with guests. You rarely if ever hear of someone jumping from one attraction to another because of service or a particular staff member like you might see in a restaurant. However, staff training and service can still have an immense impact on the bottom line. To understand this we first need to get a grasp of customer satisfaction scores and what they mean in real terms.

Continue Reading...

After a long, arduous and humbling recession, it’s fair to assume that organisations seem to have finally learned that customer retention is interwoven into the very fabric of an organisation’s success. No longer can organisations invest vast sums in customer acquisition and expect to maintain healthy profits. If the recession has taught us one thing, let it be that excellent customer service is the keystone in the longevity of a fruitful organisational existence.

As with the business environment, customer expectations are constantly changing and evolving. If you sit back and enjoy the fruits of your hard work – your business will die a slow death. The fatal mistake in customer service is to disregard the changing circumstances that are brought about by our customers every day.

Continue Reading...