by Ben Aidoo

Created on: March 29, 2010

Before touching the issue of quality customer service, let’s note that the customer is the reason quality customer service is essential. The customer is the source of the demand that the producer and retailer must have in order to sell their goods and services.

Quality customer service begins when the customer comes into contact with the producer or retailer. The contact may be by telephone, on the Internet or at the front door of a retailer. How long the customer had to wait for someone to answer the phone. How easy or difficult was it to navigate the website pages for information. How was the customer greeted at the retailer’s front door? All these events add up to the customer’s first impression about the seller.

How the seller interacts with the customer is an essential customer service. Is the seller attentive to the customer’s questions and helpful in providing full and correct answers? Is the seller courteous in his response to the customer’s questions, regardless if they are redundant or ill informed? Does the seller’s tone and body language make the buyer comfortable? Answers to these questions will tell if the customer will want to buy anything, let alone come back again.

How well informed is the seller about the features and benefits of his product is another essential customer service. The information the seller gives the customer should be correct and provable, in order to gain the customer’s confidence. If the seller gives the wrong information, the customer will feel cheated of her money should the product not perform as the seller said, and that customer, including her family and friends may be lost to the seller, perhaps forever.

Quality customer service is essential as it afford the seller the opportunity to do something extra for customers that other sellers are not doing. He can speed up the processing of sales to help customers get what they want in a shorter time. He can provide customers with special discount coupons. He can stay open longer hours, and take calls at night when customers are home from work. He can offer customers free subscription to his newsletter or blog with updates on products and prices.

Providing after sale service is one important reason, among many,  why quality customer service is really essential. A customer who contacts a seller for after sale service has already bought a product from the seller. The customer’s state of mind at the time of contact is

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