Customer Service in Business Relationships
This article considers customer services in a business to business relationship. This essay will summarise they key findings and methodology, and People aspect of services marketing.
The article identifies the importance of customer service within a service provider’s organisation, areas in which customer service may be affected by the marketing mix and additional three P’s. The article defines that it isn’t just one specific P, that has an effect on customer service but all of them are inclusive, and identifying the correct mix, at the correct times, will impact customer service, satisfaction, customer loyalty and retention.
The people employed by an organisation, for customer services, act as an interface between the company and the customer as a source for input. The provision of good customer service takes in to account numerous different people factors.
Two major influential factors are the performance of employees and the quality of technical service. It is widely expected that company employees would be professional, this includes courtesy and competency. The findings of Parasuraman (1985,1988) found that courtesy with respect to telephone manner was mentioned as important, especially in complaint handling situations, as according to the article people interviewed were dissatisfied with the selling companies complaint procedures. However Banting (1976) and Homburg and Rudolph (2001) found that it is considered more important by customers that the contact personnel who directly provide the service (In the case studied the primary contact personnel would be the engineers) should have and provide a professional service in the same respect as a telephone salesperson. This leads to employee competency and knowledge as it is the contact personnel’s responsibility to continue to provide the service expected by the companies reputation.
Competence is “offering professional knowledge and expertise” on the particular service which along with
The article identifies the importance of customer service within a service provider’s organisation, areas in which customer service may be affected by the marketing mix and additional three P’s. The article defines that it isn’t just one specific P, that has an effect on customer service but all of them are inclusive, and identifying the correct mix, at the correct times, will impact customer service, satisfaction, customer loyalty and retention.
The people employed by an organisation, for customer services, act as an interface between the company and the customer as a source for input. The provision of good customer service takes in to account numerous different people factors.
Two major influential factors are the performance of employees and the quality of technical service. It is widely expected that company employees would be professional, this includes courtesy and competency. The findings of Parasuraman (1985,1988) found that courtesy with respect to telephone manner was mentioned as important, especially in complaint handling situations, as according to the article people interviewed were dissatisfied with the selling companies complaint procedures. However Banting (1976) and Homburg and Rudolph (2001) found that it is considered more important by customers that the contact personnel who directly provide the service (In the case studied the primary contact personnel would be the engineers) should have and provide a professional service in the same respect as a telephone salesperson. This leads to employee competency and knowledge as it is the contact personnel’s responsibility to continue to provide the service expected by the companies reputation.
Competence is “offering professional knowledge and expertise” on the particular service which along with
Bibliography: Banting, P.M. (1976), "Customer service in industrial marketing: a comparative study", European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 10 No.3, pp.136-45. Homburg, C., Rudolph, B. (2001), "Customer satisfaction in industrial markets: dimensions and multiple role issues", Journal of Business Research, Vol. 52 pp.15-23. Lewis, B.R., Craven, P. (1995), "The role of customer service in buyer-seller relationships: evidence from the industrial gases market", Interaction, Relationships and Networks, Proceedings of the 11th IMP International Conference, September 7-9, Manchester, pp.762-86. Parasuraman, A., Zeithaml, V.A., Berry, L.L. (1985), "A conceptual model of service quality and its implications for future research", Journal of Marketing, Vol. 49 pp.41-50. Parasuraman, A., Zeithaml, V.A., Berry, L.L. (1988), "SERVQUAL: a multiple item scale for measuring consumer perceptions of service quality", Journal of Retailing, Vol. 64 No.1, pp.14-40. Wouters, J. (2001), "Customer service as a competitive marketing instrument: an investigation into the construction and measurement equipment supply chains", in Proceedings of the 17th Annual IMP Conference, Oslo, Norway, September, . Zolkiewski, J et al. (2007) “An assessment of customer service in business to business relationships” Journal of services marketing, Vol.21, No 5, p312-325