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Wednesday 08-02-12, the day had finally arrived. After 6.5 years of hard labor, I could finally defend my dissertation, whose theme was the role of customer service in relations management. I had paid attention to both the customer and employee perspectives, and come to the most important conclusion that customer service can play a crucial role in creating loyal customers. The results of my research provide every organization with concrete tools in order to improve this quality of their own customer service. The research was conducted among customers and employees of B2C service providers in the Netherlands, and a brief summary of the various surveys and results is given below.
So what exactly is quality of customer service? CCC Quality
This research has shown that, as far as the customer is concerned, customer service quality comprises 7 factors. Five of these can already be found in previous research into the quality of service in general: reliability, empathy, waiting time, accessibility and selection menu. There are two new factors however, namely customer knowledge and customer centricity, the latter of which also includes elements concerned with learning from signals. The article provides a complete measuring scale in order to determine the quality of your own customer service.
So what exactly is the job quality in customer service? CCC Job Quality
Job quality is somewhat more complex than quality from the customer’s point of view, and therefore also concerns 12 factors. Once again, we recognize a number of factors from previous research, but have also discovered 5 new factors: learning from employees, learning from customers, sharing information, integrity and ease of the tooling. This article also includes the total measuring scale with which you can determine the quality of the work in your own contact center.
What is the impact of the customer service quality on customer loyalty?
Of course it’s great to be able to define CCC Quality, but that is not an objective in itself. We have therefore considered whether CCC Quality can truly transform the contact center into a value center, by contributing to customer loyalty. It most certainly can! CCC Quality has a strong impact on customer loyalty, via its direct impact on satisfaction, commitment and trust. My advice therefore: use this munition to invest in the quality of your customer service!
What is the impact of job quality on the turnover of employees?
Once again, we can see how good quality work within the customer service department has a strong impact on turnover of employees. As this is a major issue in the customer service world, CCC job quality offers an extremely valuable tool with which to tackle the turnover rate.
Are you interested in all these articles? The full dissertation can be downloaded here.
