Customer Care Concept

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The Customer Care Concept and customer care concept describes a possible service organization with the aim of optimization and automation of service processes.

The scheme of such a service organization can be described using the following five core components:

Multichannelling

Modern service organizations are characterized by the fact that the customer has several options to get in touch with the company. Whether by phone, letter, fax, email or the web, the company can always be reached via at least one contact medium. With the help of so-called self-service software, certain customer concerns can be answered and satisfied immediately and automatically.

Customer Relationship Management

The customer relationship management is used to record all customer interactions, thereby obtaining a uniform and complete customer picture. For example, if a customer initiates a transaction via the web today, sends a question to the company via e-mail tomorrow and calls the day after tomorrow on the same topic, he can only receive consistent and comprehensive support if all his interactions with the company have been recorded centrally in advance.

Skill levels

In order to be able to optimally take care of customer concerns, different levels of competence have to be defined within an organization. Basically, the more complex a customer concern, the deeper it penetrates the service organization. This fact can be counteracted with two measures. First, those skill levels that are in contact with the customer early on have to be very competent. This competence can be ensured through knowledge that is carried forward from downstream competence levels. Secondly, what is known as an e-level is used in an ideal service organization, which uses process automation to keep standard concerns away from human interaction and thus makes support affordable.

See also the technical article Support (service) .

Process orientation

The various levels of competence of a service organization are linked to processes that are defined in standardized flow charts, so-called Standard Operation Procedures (SOP). These standardized flow charts define what exactly needs to be done. How well the internal and external performance promises have to be carried out is described in so-called service level agreements (SLAs). These must always be clearly defined and measurable. A methodology developed from the IT world for recording and evaluating these service processes is the IT Infrastructure Library ( ITIL ). ITIL is part of the Customer Care Concept.

Reporting

In the sense of a feedback mechanism, a continuous improvement process (CIP) acts on the service organization in reporting and enables the permanent adjustment of one's own performance and the optimization of business processes . For example, the product management of a service company will receive information about how and why a product is being used via the reporting from the customer center. The feedback from the documented customer contacts can flow into the idea management . If necessary, the products and services can be individualized and approaches for further development can be given.

literature

  • P. Schubert, M. Ginsburg: Virtual Communities of Transaction: The Role of Personalization in Electronic Commerce. In: Electronic Markets. Vol. 10, No. 1, 2000, pp. 45-55.
  • L. Zhao, F. Deek: User Collaboration in Open Source Software Development. In: Electronic Markets. Vol. 14, No. 2, 2004, pp. 89-103.