In all fronts of human interaction, incompetence erodes credibility, capacity, and competitiveness, while it wrecks the rapport and trust that should evolve between two people. It does the same damage to the customer service integrity of any company. Incompetence degrades, weakens, and ruins the quality of customer service.

But how could a seemingly innocuous and localized issue of incompetence destroy the customer service capacity of an organization? It appears that the "4P's of Marketing" (e.g. product, price, place, and promotions) has the greater potential to destroy it?

Not necessarily so. A moribund customer service is highly corrosive and fatal to business viability.

Customer service is part of the process that a company adopts to be operationally efficient and aligned with the needs of customers. While it is generally considered as a component of the marketing mix (under "promotions"), it is my professional disposition to always treat "process" as the fifth and final "P" of Marketing. I consider it a best-practice exercise that illuminates the importance of systems and processes, and customer service in particular, as a protective mantle for the factors of product, price, place, and promotions.

Customer service is an integrated and systematic discipline of building values on products and services in order that the needs of the customer can be satisfied to the point of delight and advocacy. It is the source of life, the spring of growth, and the seed of survival for any business enterprise. The exercise of the discipline applies to the interaction before, during, and after the purchase of the company's product or service. It recognizes no end or terminal boundary since the central purpose is to develop lifetime productive relationship with the customer.

A company might have an excellent product to crow about, a responsive price to offer, a strategic distribution structure to conduct its business, and a powerful advertising message to promote its product. But with a weak customer service platform, the product suffers flickering demand and revenue falls short of expectation as customers go on an exodus, away from the company and headed to the key competitor with superior customer service program. The company decisively loses supply ascendancy and, at worst, treks the road to extreme financial difficulties and cessation of business.

The execution of no-nonsense customer service strategy demands no less than the dedicated upholding,

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