Introduction And Background Of Customer Service

Consumers do, in fact, care about experience. In fact, in many ways the rise of quick-service formats and automated service has actually fuelled a greater desire for good old-fashioned customer service, particularly in face-to-face form.

Costco started as a small company in Washington State in the 70’s named Price Club. The founders Sol and Robert Price sought out to create a new and revolutionary way to shop, and the result we now know today as Costco Wholesale. Costco is now a top five company in America. They are focused on serving their members, shareholders, employees and the community. Costco holds truth to their mission statement which consists of “providing the best products at the lowest possible prices”. Over the years Costco has added a Pharmacy, food court, tire center, optical, hearing aid center, gas station, and one hour photo. They also work in cooperation with car dealerships, travel agents, and various other trades and organizations for the benefit of their members.

Customer service is the most important aspect of any business. Without an adequate relationship with its consumer base, a company is at an enormous disadvantage.

New technology was not just a big hit for places of business. People could now call other people from their own homes

Answered and screened two or more phone calls at a time using the multi-line switchboard, effectively directing the customer to and from the department of their asking

Customer service must satisfy the needs of the customers to ensure a service companies’ quality is maintained.

Call centers were antiquated and no standardized measurement systems or aggregated goals existed for the call centers, and no centralized policies existed. In addition, Congress had cut the IRS budget by 11%, $4 billion was spent on modernizing information systems but still not completed, and 2,000 employees were laid off. (Davis, 1997)

Excellence in customer service is the objective of all organisations wishing to be successful. However, there is often a gap between customer expectations and management perceptions of customer expectations. Organisations often fail to get close to their customers and correctly read their expectations.

The customer experience is a competitive battleground and your company’s fate is tied to it.

From the time of its invention to 1880, there were 50000 subscribers of the telephone. However, it took nearly a hundred years for the system to improve dramatically. The operators were eliminated because the users could now make their own connection without calling the operators first. By the 1960’s - U.S. Telephones total 80,969,000; world's total reaches 159,200,000; telephone companies were forming everywhere and by 1964, some 2,535 companies were in existence. The more the telephones improve, the more the people wanted more from it. In the twentieth century, the telephone is the main medium to reach just about anyone. It is also the favored medium of communication in the business world. Nowadays, the telephone system can be configured to suit a business' needs. At my job for example, the telephone has multiple functions. One is the paging system to reach someone; it can be used to make conference calls to multiple companies at the same time. With the invention of cellular phones, one can be reached anywhere in the world and be connected to the internet; as long as you have a signal of course.

After reviewing the case study and realizing that I had to gently let down my largest customer, I decided to use the telephone for my preferred electronic communication style. The telephone

With so much technology and applications being developed these days, there is one technology that seems to be touching people’s lives since it was introduced. What technology is that? It is Voice over Internet Protocol or VoIP for short. When Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876, he had no idea that his invention would morph into what it has become today. This paper is describing how VoIP was created, its industry trends, technological developments, and how VoIP is utilized.

| * Card phones * Activated by a pre-programmed card for the holder making calls lasting a specific number of minutes * Paging and voice mail services * Allowed subscribers to receive and leave messages for other subscribers * New telecom infrastructure using radio transmission between outstations and central platform * Central platform routed calls to TTCL, which would direct calls to local, long-distance and international. TTCL levy a charge for directing each call

The history of voice communication technology begins in 1876 with the invention of Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone. In the 1890s, “law enforcement agencies begin tapping wires on early telephone networks”.[48] Remote voice communications “were carried almost exclusively by circuit-switched systems,” where telephone switches would

Customer loyalty is much harder to obtain that customer service satisfaction. The most important first step is to satisfy the customer by meeting their expectations. Customers only give a company one chance and if they aren’t satisfied they will not do business with that company again, as well as tell others of their experience. The next step would be to exceed the customer’s expectations. If a business goes above and beyond to assist the customer they begin to build loyalty. The next step is to truly surprise the customer. In order to dominate the marketplace the company must find a way to make them selves stand out with their product or service, accompanied with phenomenal customer service. Once this has been done customer satisfaction and loyalty will be gained. “Acquiring a new customer can cost four or five times more than keeping a current customer” (Bestmark, 2013). So it’s essential to keep the current customer’s happy and coming back for more.