Introduction

Service excellence has grown in importance in recent years for a number of significant reasons. First, customers have become increasingly demanding in their service requirements. They experience excellent service at the supermarket and therefore see no reason why they should not get the same from their bank. They know what they want and will often go to great lengths to achieve it. Customers are also much more sophisticated and understand their consumer rights in ways that were not dreamt of in previous generations. Today there is a steady stream of consumer programmes and newspaper and magazine editorial advising them of their rights and how they should go about securing them. This has given rise to more confident consumers, who are not afraid to challenge companies when they receive poor service. Television programmes such as the BBC s Watchdog and consumer magazines like Which? have undoubtedly contributed to this better educated consumer society. For companies, this means having to respond to customer demands in ways that impact on their whole business, not just on customer facing personnel.

Secondly, more and more markets are becoming commodity markets. One could argue that one washing machine is much like another and one bank is much like another, as customers perceive few technical differences between competing offerings. Thus, the need to create differential advantage through added value has become vitally important and service excellence is a significant source of that added value. Thirdly, companies are beginning to realise that increases in customer satisfaction and customer...