OVERVIEW

What is more important than the customer? In business, probably little could be of more value-add than customer service, especially in today's competitive markets where service often differentiates one firm from another in the eyes of customers. Given that, it is surprising that customer service is such a misunderstood topic in many businesses. It is also surprising that there are a number of companies that find a large unexplainable gap when comparing their data to the customers', even though they post a 95+ percent service level. What is even more frustrating is that many of these same companies seem to lack interest in reconciling the difference between the two numbers. There is much to be learned from these gaps. In this case, the customer is (almost) always right.

The numbers do not lie if the people who use them are honest with others and with themselves. One company I worked with had a bonus program that was driven from customer service. The spirit of the metric was exactly what it should be: the fidelity of the first promise to the customer. The issue developed over "acceptable" exceptions, one of which was customer reschedules. Logically, if a customer called and delayed a shipment due to its own reasons, the company did not feel it should have to count those delays against the metric, especially when the bonuses were calculated on these data. If that is entirely how it worked at this company, this paragraph would not have been included...