Personalized customer service

Personalized customer service

In today’s businesses around the world, the service and welcoming given to a customer is a great advantage of the success of that particular business. These excellent services offered to customers make them visit your store regularly, and this enables an individual to gain the customer’s loyalty. The customer service can be given out using different platforms like social media. If customer service is offered in a good way, this can help in retaining that particular customer since regular customers tend to spend more money on doing business with you that the first time customers. If a customer is satisfied with products offered from one’s business and if these products add some value to their lives, they usually refer other people to do business with you, and this will enable the growth and success of one’s business. Personalized customer service is an act of making an effort in one’s business to meet and satisfy the customer’s needs and expectations so that the customer can be comfortable and have a good reason of becoming your long term customer and to do business with you.

Importance of personalized customer service

Personalized customer service plays various roles in the success of one’s business. According to Griffin & Herres (2002), personalized customer service enables one’s business to gain the loyalty of the customer. This will make that customer be satisfied with everything that is offered in that business, and it will make the customer feel more connected to that business. By doing this, the business will get to gain the trust of the customer, and this will keep attracting more customers. Another role played by personalized customer service in one’s business is offering one with competitive approval. Since there exists a huge market, the same products are being offered by many people. So, one gets competition from many competitors. By offering a good and quality customer service to your customers, one stands a chance of gaining many customers despite the number of competitors selling the same product as yours.

This contributes a lot in making one’s business success. Another role played by this service is that it provides power to a certain business or company to meet the customer’s needs. The need and expectations of many customers in the market have currently gone up. So, one needs to work hard and make sure that these expectations are met. By meeting the customer’s needs and expectations, this will enable that kind of business gain the customer’s loyalty, thus making him or her a long-life customer. Personalized customer service also plays an important role in helping businesses deliver faster customer service. It enables customers to have full information on the customer’s information so as to help them deliver services in a faster and more efficient way. Different companies use sophisticated techniques in getting the best customer’s choices and personalize them to each customer. This technique helps individuals in attending to customer’s issues in a faster way, thus giving them an easy time in addressing the customer’s problems.

How businesses provide personalized customer service

Different businesses have different ways of how they provide personalized customer service. Many business representatives know their frequent customers by names, and during conversations and greetings, they use the customer’s real names in addressing them (Walsh & Godfrey, 2000, p. 90). By getting to know their real names, one will, therefore, know the interests of that particular customers and know how they will attend them so that they can meet their needs and expectations. Knowing their names will also help in communication through emails and other social platforms. Another way of providing personalized customer service is by creating many customer service platforms (Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2000, p. 85). There are customers who like asking for help in social media platforms like live chatting and others could like to ask for help by personally visiting that particular company. Therefore, one has to create different platforms so as to gain as many customers as possible. This will enable various customers to personalize their experiences in the way they prefer. Many businesses have failed because their employees are not friendly to customers. By providing quality personalized customer service, one has to maintain eye contact with the customer and wear some smile on the face when attending a certain customer (Surprenant & Solomon, 1987, p. 90). This can make that customer feel welcome and more appreciated, and this can make the customer visit that company regularly. This contributes a lot in making the business grow and can lead to success. Another way businesses use in providing good personalized customer service is by creating smooth references of customers. For instance, a customer may come to the office of the director, and he or she has issues which are being addressed by the manager. The director then has to smoothly transfer the customer to the manger by either making a phone call or personally taking the customer to the manager.

 

Hidden costs of personalized customer service

In businesses, there are usually hidden costs which are generated by personalized customer service. Many businesses do encounter success currently; this will cause the hidden costs in businesses to decrease greatly (Reijers & Mansar, 2005, p. 300). For an individual owning a business, he or she needs to start up a personalized customer service. This will need that individual to hire some employees who will be responsible for collecting some important data from customers. These employees will also gain some skills, oh how to communicate with customers in a friendly way. This will increase the kind of service offered to customers making that company popular. This will also increase the management cost, which is referred to as hidden costs. The personalized customer service may increase the composition of work in various businesses and companies. This comes as a result because many companies do take each customer as an independent market, and this causes some burden to the employees. This may lead to other customers being ignored by the employees, which can cause dissatisfaction to the customer. This can make that customer look for another company which offers the same products like this and prefer to do business with them. By doing this, companies may experience opportunity costs of losing some of their customers (Meyer & Schwager, 2007, p. 116). In the beginning, a company may encounter some hidden costs in employing workers and putting the management system in place. Once everything is done, the automation rates of that particular company will be advanced, and the costs lowered to maintain the business. In attracting more customers, the personalized customer service will have some hidden costs which it deserves. The hidden costs do not last for a long time, although it attracts many customers to the company who act as future assets of that business, and this will lead to the success of the business. However, the benefits outweigh the disadvantages.

How businesses have profited from personalized customer service

Many businesses, industries, companies and enterprises do use personalized customer service so that they can improve communication and interaction between the employees and the customers. Businesses that offer personalized customer service have attracted many customers who keep on visiting the businesses from time to time, and this improves the business in many, and it leads to the success of the business. The personalized customer services will enable the employees to get to know the priorities and interests of various customers so that they can be in a good position to serve them better (Berry, 1995, p. 240). This will make one’s business to stand out in many businesses. Online shopping which is offered by various businesses and companies is one of the personalized customer service. This service enables customers to do shopping online from their comfort zone. The company will be responsible for delivering the products to the customer. This will make the customer gain loyalty of the company and enable the company to retain the customer as the future asset of the company. Various companies also need to create a support centre for customers as a way of offering quality service to customers. This will enable answering of various questions from customers about various products offered by the company. By doing this, the business will grow and thus its success.

Challenges of personalized customer service

As much as this service has a lot of advantages to the customers and companies, it also has some drawbacks to the customer and to the business itself. To the company, the employees may commit some few mistakes like being rude to the customer, and this will ruin the name of the company making the customer stop doing business with that company (Barlow & Maul, 2000). This will pull down the company and make the businesses fail in one way or another. Since the company provides various channels and communication platforms which is open to everybody, some people may not have good intentions towards the company, and so they may publish spam messages which may cost the customers thus ruining the reputation of the company. To the customer, the information acquired by the employees about the customer may be too much, which may include the personal information of the customer. This may be insecure since the information may be shared with other people which can lead to the downfall of many customers. The company can also face additional costs either in packaging the products purchased by a customer or the costs of hiring more employees who can deliver the products after-sales service. The disadvantages as compared to the advantages of the personalized customer service are less, and this makes companies and businesses prefer this kind of service to its customers and retention of these customers.

Generally, this kind of service is worth in one’s business. According to Andaleeb & Conway, the personalized customer service makes the customer feel some kind of satisfaction as per the way he or she has been attended (Andaleeb & Conway, 2006). This service is also worth since it makes the company gain the loyalty of the customer. The customer will, therefore, act as the brand ambassador of the company or business by advertising the good and quality service offered at that particular company and the kind of products and treatment they do receive from the employees of the company. This will make the business rise and be successful due to the large number of customers visiting it. It will also make the business be competitive despite the number of competitors available in that place due to the large market. All the above benefits can motivate someone owning a business to start the personalized customer service in his or her own company, and this makes this service worth to be used in many businesses.

conclusion

Providing good and quality customer service in various businesses help an individual’s business to grow and to become successful. It also helps in strengthening an individual’s reputation and ensures that the customers visiting the business walk away with satisfaction. The personalized customer service ensures that it maintains a long term relationship with the customers since they seem to spend more on purchasing various kinds of products. It also ensures that the customer’s needs and expectations are met. Happy and satisfied customers tend to do more business as compared to the first-timers. Many researches have shown that various industries, companies and businesses tend to use personalized customer service since it generates many benefits towards the company. It helps them maintain their core competitiveness and in preventing them from losing out on their potential sales. The personalized customer service may generate the hidden costs which can be used by businesses in hiring more employees. As time goes by, the companies will get used to this kind of service, and this will lead to a decrease in the hidden costs. This leaves the companies and businesses with a high number of loyal customers, and this will enable the companies to gain a huge amount of profit. Due to the above findings and outcomes, companies and businesses are therefore encouraged to implement the personalized customer services in their companies. By accomplishing this, the companies and businesses need to maintain a good relationship with their customers and gain more revenue which will help in increasing their businesses. Therefore, for long term profit outcomes, the companies and many other businesses need to implement the usage of personalized customer service for their success.

 

 

References

Andaleeb, S. S., & Conway, C. (2006). Customer satisfaction in the restaurant industry: an examination of the transaction‐specific model. Journal of services marketing.

Barlow, J., & Maul, D. (2000). Emotional value: Creating strong bonds with your customers. Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

Berry, L. L. (1995). Relationship marketing of services—growing interest, emerging perspectives. Journal of the Academy of marketing science, 23(4), 236-245.

Griffin, J., & Herres, R. T. (2002). Customer loyalty: How to earn it, how to keep it (p. 18). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Meyer, C., & Schwager, A. (2007). Understanding customer experience. Harvard business review, 85(2), 116.

Prahalad, C. K., & Ramaswamy, V. (2000). Co-opting customer competence. Harvard business review, 78(1), 79-90.

Reijers, H. A., & Mansar, S. L. (2005). Best practices in business process redesign: an overview and qualitative evaluation of successful redesign heuristics. Omega, 33(4), 283-306.

Surprenant, C. F., & Solomon, M. R. (1987). Predictability and personalization in the service encounter. Journal of Marketing, 51(2), 86-96.

Walsh, J., & Godfrey, S. (2000). The Internet: a new era in customer service. European Management Journal, 18(1), 85-92.