For no one in the business environment it is a secret that the phrase: "the customer is always right" is very true and is becoming more relevant every day
When a person arrives at a store or any commercial establishment, be it physical or virtual, he is expecting the best of services, he expects that: "he will be treated like a king", whether he decides to buy or not. Why? because the customer knows that without their purchase, without the money they spend on the different items, the store would not exist or would not be what it is. And is that how many of us have had bad experiences in terms of service, at the checkout of a hypermarket, in a restaurant, in a bank, in a virtual store,…? I think I am not wrong if I assure that everyone, like Consumers, we have had bad service experiences, as I think I am not mistaken if I say that those bad experiences cause our concept and image of the establishment to decline,resulting in a decline in the store's financial results.
There are two basic attitudes of customer service that mark companies, the positive attitude and the negative attitude, even when in the definition of the policies and in the strategic plan of the firm its interest and its purpose of providing excellent service are consigned that allows customer loyalty and thus develop a competitive advantage, a negative attitude of an employee can make all this scaffolding come to the ground. When this happens, in general, the client does not identify the person individually as the cause of her bad experience, she identifies the entire institution, for example, if in a bank she had a bad experience with a commercial advisor she thinks “is thatThis is why it is important that a positive service attitude prevails in each and every one of the employees of a firm.
Customer service is determined by the philosophy, attitudes and behaviors of each of the firm's employees, from the watchman to the president.
Based on the variables of customer treatment and technical competence, we can differentiate four types of service in companies, the ineffective and pleasant, the effective and pleasant, the ineffective and unpleasant, and the effective and unpleasant.
In the first quadrant is the service of the ineffective and unpleasant type, in which low technical competence and poor customer treatment are combined. A simple example, let's imagine an ice cream parlor whose facilities are not very clean and whose servers are not either, unpleasant right? (Low customer service), but what if we add to that that the flavor of their ice cream line is not tasty and that they are in an almost liquid state due to misuse of their freezers, terrifying or not? (technical incompetence). So who returns, that would be to stumble twice on the same stone, as Mr. Iglesias would say. The head phrase of these companies is: "WE ARE INCOMPETENT AND WE DO NOT CARE TO BE ANTIPATHIC"
In the second quadrant we find the Ineffective and Pleasant service, in which companies with low technical competencies treat the customer like a king and thus hope to cover the gap of their technical incompetence. Let's suppose that the ice cream parlor has improved the appearance of its facilities and its waiters and that now it is distinguished by its neatness and good customer service (pleasant) and that being witnesses of this change we decide to return, but when they serve us our ice cream, the taste continues being disastrous and the consistency even worse, they are ugly and apart they are served melted (ineffective). His headline phrase is: "WE DO IT WRONG BUT, WE ARE LOVELY"
The companies that are in the third quadrant, Effective and Unpleasant, are highly effective, they know how to carry out their processes, they are efficient but because they reach high standards of technical quality, they do not focus on the client and therefore are not leaders. Imagine the ice cream parlor but now with excellent flavors, consistencies and a variety of products, but just as untidy as at the beginning, would you be a customer? They can be identified with the phrase: "WE ARE VERY EFFICIENT BUT, VERY ANTIPATHIC"
Finally, in quadrant four, Effective and Pleasant, are the firms that have found the perfect balance between their technical skills and their customer service strategy, they are organizations that focus on the customer because they know that they depend on them., are aware of strong competition and their prospects point to leadership. The ice cream parlor would be located in this quadrant if we mix the neatness and good treatment of the second quadrant with the flavors. consistency and variety of third party products. We can identify them with the phrase «WE DO OUR WORK WITH THE HIGHEST QUALITY»
In order to position itself in the fourth quadrant, an organization must involve all its elements in the service quality process, I am not only referring to people but to all agents, machinery, systems, suppliers, etc. The quality of service is a chain in which each person, department and element is a link and if any of the links yields or breaks, the survival of the company is endangered.
