Successful Marketing Jobs

Marketers have seen the customer service process evolve from an area that received only marginal attention into a primary functional area.  In response to customers’ demands for responsive and reliable service, companies are investing heavily in innovative methods and processes to strengthen their service level.  These innovations include:

Increased Customer Self-Service

A major trend in customer service is the move by companies to encourage customers to be involved in helping solve their own service issues.  This can be seen in retail industries where self-service ranges from customers placing their own grocery products in shopping bags all the way to having customers do their own checkout including scanning products and making payment.  Also, as we will soon discuss, customers needing information are being encouraged by companies to first undertake the effort themselves often by visiting special company-provided information areas (see Website and Phone Accessible Knowledge Base below).  Only after they have explored these options are customers encouraged to contact customer service.

Revenue Generators

Companies that maintain a customer service staff have found that these people not only can help solve customer problems but they may also be in a position to convince customers to purchase more.  Many companies are now requiring sales training for their customer service personnel.  At a basic level customer service representatives may be trained to ask if customers are interested in hearing about other products or services.  If a customer shows interest then the representative will transfer the customer to a sales associate.  At a more advanced level the representative will shift to a selling role and attempt to get the customer to commit to additional product purchases.

Out-Sourcing

One of the most controversial developments impacting customer service is the move by many companies around the world to establish customer service functions outside of either their home country or the country in which their customers reside.  Called out-sourcing, companies pursue this strategy to both reduce cost and also increase service coverage.  For instance, having multiple customer service outlets around the world allows customers to talk via phone with a service person no matter what time of day.  The ability to move service to another country is only viable in large part due to technological developments (see Internet Telephone below).  But such moves have raised concerns on two fronts.  First, many see this trend as leading to a reduction of customer service jobs within a home country.  Second, customer service personnel located off-shore may lack sufficient training and often lack an understanding of the conditions within the customers’ local market both of which can affect service levels.  At the extreme a poorly managed move to out-source customer service can lead to a decrease in customer satisfaction which in the long-run could affect sales.

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