It is apparent that today the meaning and interpretation of customer service has changed. Is less service regarded as better service? Good customer service as I knew it was all about communication, building rapport and hopefully a long term customer that new your name and you new theirs.
Today it has all changed, we live in the world where internet purchasing is becoming the norm, self serve checkouts are more accepted and encouraged as it is quicker to serve yourself than wait in a queue for a checkout operator. This change in the way we are doing business is making it increasingly hard for businesses to really know their customers and they way they want to be served.
For example here at Aeon Water filters we only used to offer 1 type of service, which was we changed the customers filters at their home or office. This allowed us to really get to know our customers and build strong relationships.
Now we offer 3 types
1) Full service
2) drop off service
3) postal service (with internet purchasing to follow).
With all these options opening up to consumers it also creates dilemmas with the business as they need to keep up with how their customers like to be contacted and purchase.
So to answer the question ultimately depends on how you want your business to operate and that your customers are happy with the types of services you offer, if they don’t marry up you will loose customers. I know if we were to slow to react to what customers wanted we would lose some clients to internet purchasing or other retail stores who dabbled in water filtration. We had to change our service offering or we would have lost customers. Since we have done this we have found that there were some customers who came back to having the full service and others who were happy doing it themselves, but knowing they had the back up of a full service company if they ever needed advice or any parts which were hard to find elsewhere. If anything, changing our customer service offering has strengthened our ability to serve our customers. We were also able to back this up with 2 online videos on how to change our water filters and direct customers to it appropriately. By finding out from the start which type of service your customers prefer, you should have a solid customer for many years to follow.
So what type of a customer are you? What type of service do you prefer? Hopefully we can meet your needs here at Aeon water filters now and into the future.