By Panatda Chennavasin

While customers are scrutinising their expenses, companies want repeat businesses.

Customer-service strategies that enable the companies to maintain their competitive edge cannot be successfully implemented without employees who have a service-mind orientation.

To become a customer-service-orientated organisation, the management must be committed and must help the staff understand the corporate vision, strategies, customer's expectations, their role in delivering "expectation plus" value to customers and how to read between the lines to satisfy the customers.

Customer-service training is a "must" to help the staff perform up to expectations so that customers consistently have "value added" experiences, which will result in customer loyalty and not just buyer satisfaction.

Employees must be trained to skilfully serve customers by going the extra mile to make the customer's experience a pleasant one. This will create a win-win relationship.

The expectation-plus experience will bring the customer back, which is the ultimate goal of any organisation.

The staff must realise that the company and they themselves are the ones who provide customer satisfaction.

Without the customers, the organisation and the staff have no job, so they cannot be indifferent in making the customer's experience an impressive one.

A customer does not just buy the product, he or she also takes the skilful services provided for granted.

Hence, customer service must always be a holistic effort of the entire organisation, not just by those on the interaction front, such as salespersons or customer-relations officers.

Just imagine, a prospective client calls to ask for product details.

The telephone operator is always available and helps the prospect contact the right person without keeping him waiting on the line or transferring the call to those not concerned with the call.

When this customer visits the organisation, the guard politely shows him the place to park his car and the customer-relations officer provides him the relevant information in an easy-to-understand manner.

It is obvious how the entire staff with a service-mind can turn a prospective client into a customer by making the interaction a success.

Impressive customer service will bring about short and long-term benefits that the company can always reap.

Panatda Chennavasin is vice president for corporate strategies and corporate relations at Tri Petch Isuzu Sales and the senior vice president for overseas marketing of Isuzu Operations (Thailand). Follow her article the third Wednesday of every month.