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Customer service
Provision of service to customers

Customer service involves assistance provided via phone, online chat, mail, in-person, and e-mail to those who buy or use products or services. Effective customer service aims to increase revenues by adapting to customer personalities and reflects a firm's values. It is measured through customer retention and can be a key intangible asset that differentiates companies. The rise of AI-based chatbots is transforming call centre roles, boosting productivity and enhancing service quality. Companies develop service packages—combinations of tangible and intangible elements—to meet evolving consumer needs and ensure consistent service standards.

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Customer support

Main article: Customer support

Customer support is a range of consumer services to assist customers in making cost-effective and correct use of a product.11 It includes assistance in planning, installation, training, troubleshooting, maintenance, upgrading, and disposal of a product.12 These services may even be provided at the place in which the customer makes use of the product or service. In this case, it is called "at home customer service" or "at home customer support." Customer support is an effective strategy that ensures that the customer's needs have been attended to. Customer support helps ensure that the products and services that have been provided to the customer meet their expectations. Given an effective and efficient customer support experience, customers tend to be loyal to the organization, which creates a competitive advantage over its competitors. Organizations should ensure that any complaints from customers about customer support have been dealt with effectively.13

Automation and productivity increase

Customer service may be provided in person (e.g. sales / service representative), or by automated means,14 such as kiosks, websites, and apps. An advantage of automation is that it can provide service 24 hours a day which can complement face-to-face customer service.15 There is also economic benefit to the firm. Through the evolution of technology, automated services become less expensive over time. This helps provide services to more customers for a fraction of the cost of employees' wages. Automation can facilitate customer service or replace it entirely.

A popular type of automated customer service is done through artificial intelligence (AI). The customer benefit of AI is the feel for chatting with a live agent through improved speech technologies while giving customers the self-service benefit.16 AI can learn through interaction to give a personalized service. The exchange the Internet of Things (IoT) facilitates within devices, lets us transfer data when we need it, where we need it. Each gadget catches the information it needs while it maintains communication with other devices. This is also done through advances in hardware and software technology. Another form of automated customer service is touch-tone phone, which usually involves IVR (Interactive Voice Response) a main menu and the use of a keypad as options (e.g. "Press 1 for English, Press 2 for Spanish").17

In the Internet era, a challenge is to maintain and/or enhance the personal experience while making use of the efficiencies of online commerce. "Online customers are literally invisible to you (and you to them), so it's easy to shortchange them emotionally. But this lack of visual and tactile presence makes it even more crucial to create a sense of personal, human-to-human connection in the online arena."18

Examples of customer service by artificial means are automated online assistants that can be seen as avatars on websites,19 which enterprises can use to reduce operating and training costs.20 These are driven by chatbots, and a major underlying technology to such systems is natural language processing.21

Metrics

The two primary methods of gathering feedback are customer surveys and Net Promoter Score measurement, used for calculating the loyalty that exists between a provider and a consumer.22

Instant feedback

Many outfits have implemented feedback loops that allow them to capture feedback at point of experience. For example, National Express in the UK has invited passengers to send text messages while riding the bus. This has been shown to be useful, as it allows companies to improve their customer service before the customer defects, thus making it far more likely that the customer will return next time.23

See also

Further reading

  • Krishnan, C., Gupta, A., Gupta, A., Singh, G. (2022). Impact of Artificial Intelligence-Based Chatbots on Customer Engagement and Business Growth. In: Hong, TP., Serrano-Estrada, L., Saxena, A., Biswas, A. (eds) Deep Learning for Social Media Data Analytics. Studies in Big Data, vol 113. Springer, Cham. doi:10.1007/978-3-031-10869-3_11
  • Adam, M., Wessel, M. & Benlian, A. AI-based chatbots in customer service and their effects on user compliance. Electron Markets 31, 427–445 (2021). doi:10.1007/s12525-020-00414-7
  • Hardalov, M., Koychev, I., Nakov, P. (2018). Towards Automated Customer Support. In: Agre, G., van Genabith, J., Declerck, T. (eds) Artificial Intelligence: Methodology, Systems, and Applications. AIMSA 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11089. Springer, Cham. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-99344-7_5
  • Roberts, C. and Maier, T. (2024), "The evolution of service toward automated customer assistance: there is a difference", International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Vol. 36 No. 6, pp. 1914-1925. doi:10.1108/IJCHM-08-2022-1037
  • Suendermann, D., Liscombe, J., Pieraccini, R., Evanini, K. (2010). “How am I Doing?”: A New Framework to Effectively Measure the Performance of Automated Customer Care Contact Centers. In: Neustein, A. (eds) Advances in Speech Recognition. Springer, Boston, MA. doi:10.1007/978-1-4419-5951-5_7

References

  1. Lucas, Robert (2015). Customer Service Skills For Success. New York: McGraw-Hill. ISBN 978-0-07-354546-2. 978-0-07-354546-2 ↩

  2. Buchanan, Leigh (1 March 2011). "A Customer Service Makeover". Inc. magazine. Retrieved 29 Oct 2012. http://www.inc.com/magazine/20110301/a-customer-service-makeover_pagen_2.html ↩

  3. Teresa Swartz, Dawn Iacobucci. Handbook of Services Marketing and Management. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage ↩

  4. Adam, M., Wessel, M. & Benlian, A. AI-based chatbots in customer service and their effects on user compliance. Electron Markets 31, 427–445 (2021). doi:10.1007/s12525-020-00414-7 /wiki/Doi_(identifier) ↩

  5. Krishnan, C., Gupta, A., Gupta, A., Singh, G. (2022). Impact of Artificial Intelligence-Based Chatbots on Customer Engagement and Business Growth. In: Hong, TP., Serrano-Estrada, L., Saxena, A., Biswas, A. (eds) Deep Learning for Social Media Data Analytics. Studies in Big Data, vol 113. Springer, Cham. doi:10.1007/978-3-031-10869-3_11 /wiki/Doi_(identifier) ↩

  6. "AI-enabled customer service is now the quickest and most effective route for institutions to deliver personalized, proactive experiences that drive customer engagement". New York: McKinsey & Company. March 27, 2023. https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/operations/our-insights/the-next-frontier-of-customer-engagement-ai-enabled-customer-service ↩

  7. "AI-enabled customer service is now the quickest and most effective route for institutions to deliver personalized, proactive experiences that drive customer engagement". New York: McKinsey & Company. March 27, 2023. https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/operations/our-insights/the-next-frontier-of-customer-engagement-ai-enabled-customer-service ↩

  8. Brandon Turpin (August 2, 2023). "How chatbots can provide a better customer experience". IBM. https://www.ibm.com/blog/how-chatbots-can-provide-a-better-customer-experience/ ↩

  9. Krishnan, C., Gupta, A., Gupta, A., Singh, G. (2022). Impact of Artificial Intelligence-Based Chatbots on Customer Engagement and Business Growth. In: Hong, TP., Serrano-Estrada, L., Saxena, A., Biswas, A. (eds) Deep Learning for Social Media Data Analytics. Studies in Big Data, vol 113. Springer, Cham. doi:10.1007/978-3-031-10869-3_11 /wiki/Doi_(identifier) ↩

  10. Bordoloi, Sanjeev (2019). Service Management Operations, Strategy, Information Technology. New York: McGraw-Hill. ISBN 978-1-260-09242-4. 978-1-260-09242-4 ↩

  11. businessdictionary.com > customer support Archived 2018-07-23 at the Wayback Machine Retrieved March 2011 http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/customer-support.html ↩

  12. businessdictionary.com > customer support Archived 2018-07-23 at the Wayback Machine Retrieved March 2011 http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/customer-support.html ↩

  13. Crittenden, Victoria (2020-01-01). "Customer support services: more than administrative support – it has to be strategic!". European Journal of Marketing. 54 (7): 1807–1808. doi:10.1108/EJM-07-2020-972. ISSN 0309-0566. S2CID 225558345. https://doi.org/10.1108%2FEJM-07-2020-972 ↩

  14. "10 reasons why AI-powered, automated customer service is the future". ibm.com. 16 October 2017. Retrieved 2020-05-17. https://www.ibm.com/blogs/watson/2017/10/10-reasons-ai-powered-automated-customer-service-future/ ↩

  15. Kongthorn, Alisa; Sangkeettrakarn, Chatchawal; Kongyoung, Sarawoot; Haruechaiyasak, Choochart (2009). "Implementing an online help desk system based on conversational agent". Bibliometrics Data in: Proceeding, MEDES '09 Proceedings of the International Conference on Management of Emergent Digital EcoSystems. New York, NY, USA: ACM. ISBN 978-1-60558-829-2. doi:10.1145/1643823.1643908 978-1-60558-829-2 ↩

  16. Goebel, Tobias. "Google Duplex's Conversational AI Shows a Path to Better Customer Service". CMSWire.com. Simpler Media Group. Retrieved 2 June 2018. https://www.cmswire.com/customer-experience/google-duplexs-conversational-ai-shows-a-path-to-better-customer-service/ ↩

  17. Tolentino, Jamie (20 April 2015). "Enhancing customer engagement with interactive voice response". The Next Web. Retrieved 2020-05-17. https://thenextweb.com/future-of-communications/2015/04/20/enhancing-customer-engagement-with-interactive-voice-response/#gref ↩

  18. Solomon, Micah (4 March 2010). "Seven Keys to Building Customer Loyalty--and Company Profits". Fast Company. Retrieved 29 Oct 2012. http://www.fastcompany.com/1570793/seven-keys-building-customer-loyalty-and-company-profits ↩

  19. Kongthorn, Alisa; Sangkeettrakarn, Chatchawal; Kongyoung, Sarawoot; Haruechaiyasak, Choochart (2009). "Implementing an online help desk system based on conversational agent". Bibliometrics Data in: Proceeding, MEDES '09 Proceedings of the International Conference on Management of Emergent Digital EcoSystems. New York, NY, USA: ACM. ISBN 978-1-60558-829-2. doi:10.1145/1643823.1643908 978-1-60558-829-2 ↩

  20. Kongthorn, Alisa; Sangkeettrakarn, Chatchawal; Kongyoung, Sarawoot; Haruechaiyasak, Choochart (2009). "Implementing an online help desk system based on conversational agent". Bibliometrics Data in: Proceeding, MEDES '09 Proceedings of the International Conference on Management of Emergent Digital EcoSystems. New York, NY, USA: ACM. ISBN 978-1-60558-829-2. doi:10.1145/1643823.1643908 978-1-60558-829-2 ↩

  21. Kongthorn, Alisa; Sangkeettrakarn, Chatchawal; Kongyoung, Sarawoot; Haruechaiyasak, Choochart (2009). "Implementing an online help desk system based on conversational agent". Bibliometrics Data in: Proceeding, MEDES '09 Proceedings of the International Conference on Management of Emergent Digital EcoSystems. New York, NY, USA: ACM. ISBN 978-1-60558-829-2. doi:10.1145/1643823.1643908 978-1-60558-829-2 ↩

  22. Mandal, Pratap Chandra (2014). "Net promoter score: a conceptual analysis". International Journal of Management Concepts and Philosophy. 8 (4): 209. doi:10.1504/ijmcp.2014.066899. ISSN 1478-1484. https://doi.org/10.1504/IJMCP.2014.066899 ↩

  23. "Lunch Lesson Four - Customer service". BBC News. October 3, 2003. Retrieved October 27, 2008. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/working_lunch/3161800.stm ↩