You can read his blog at http://blogs.dcvelocity.com/the_art_of_art/. Kenneth B.
Ackerman, president of The Ackerman Company, can be reached at (614) 488-3165
or ken@warehousing-forum.com.
58 DC VELOCITY FEBRUARY 2014 www.dcvelocity.com
businesses or individuals.
More breaking news: We know the truth, and others are
catching on rapidly. The days of the rapacious hucksters
are numbered. We only wish we knew the number and
could plan accordingly.
THE MANY FLAVORS OF CUSTOMER SERVICE
Putting aside the unseemly details of our specific recent
adventure, which was not excellent, this is ultimately about
the role of customer service in supply chain performance
and enterprise success. So, what can customer service do
for you, and what can it do to you?
First, recognize that customer service encompasses all
relationships and interactions between your organization
and your customers (including your internal customers);
it is not limited to the functionality of a specific box on
the org chart. Customer service is the totality of a buyer’s
experience with the seller—order placement, product
inquiry, problem solving, tech support, returns, image
and appearance, transaction accuracy, order fulfillment
performance, community relations, general ease of doing
business, interpersonal relationships, value, collaboration
in products and processes, and on and on.
Here’s what’s at stake when you make decisions about
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the what, why, and how of your customer service:
b Middling-to-poor customer service can undermine—
even ruin—excellent operational supply chain performance.
b Exquisite customer service can overcome the short-term impacts of marketplace events, e.g., floods, famine,
conflict, earthquake, tsunami, shortages.
b Robust customer service can mitigate customer reaction
to sporadic failures in supply chain execution.
b No amount or quality of customer service can make up
for frequent and continuous supply chain failure.
b Superb customer service can enhance customer relationships, protect business volume, and help build business
growth with existing customers.
b Dynamite customer service can generate business growth
through current customers’ word-of-mouth endorsement.
b Shabby, shoddy, ineffective, or otherwise negative customer service can drive customers into the waiting arms of
ardent and loving competitors—at incredible velocity.
b The flip side of word-of-mouth endorsements is that
news of bad customer service travels at least six times as fast
as testimonials for good customer service.
THE COST OF CUSTOMER SERVICE
There’s no denying that it takes money to deliver customer
service. The core issue becomes one of whether the money
will be an investment or an operating cost.
Those who see it as an investment understand that the
payoffs of customer retention, business protection, and
sales growth are huge. Those who see it as a cost, a necessary
evil in doing business (or an onerous requirement imposed
by regulators), think customer service represents an opportunity to trim costs, or to get by with either a minimum or
a faux function that minimizes the expense involved.
What the beady-eyed cost managers fail to see is the economic damage visited upon the enterprise by lost business
volume, by lost customers, and by the rise of competitors
with a longer-range vision—and an understanding of customer service as a competitive weapon, a differentiator.
At its best, in addition to the short-term and tangible
business results, customer service can provide a window
into what customers think, want, and need as they plan how
to succeed in their own markets and with their customers.
AND THE FUTURE HOLDS?
Potentially fatal diseases seldom develop without signs and
symptoms. We’d submit that eventual business failure is a
likely consequence of some combination of supply chain
failures and customer service shortcomings, pretenses,
implosions, or mediocrity.
