Customer Service Funnel Effect: Part III

The first two parts of this series are the basic foundation. Having a formal definition and a basic description of the significance of customer service is great, sound bit like a textbook at times, but foundations are needed.

This week’s blog is not necessarily a new concept or theory; I have not personally seen any graph/chart on this topic. Any way, I have decided to at least take a jump in trying to come up with an idea to describe Customer Service in an effect form by creating the Customer Service Funnel Effect.

Side Note: This is just my personal opinion of what creates a good customer service environment in a hierarchal form. I have never worked in a corporate environment, at least not yet, but this is just the view of someone who has worked on the lowest end of this funnel.

The Customer Service Funnel Effect

In part 1 of the series, I reiterated the definition of customer service in different ways, but one of the ways was the preference to this post.

Each of these definitions builds upon each other, which makes sense. The first definition deals more with corporate, the next one deals with production and the seller, and the last deals with retail or an ending point of a supply chain when the consumer has access to the final product.

With the visual in place, let’s get down to the nitty-gritty details.

The top of the funnel represents where everything comes from and the basis of everything. In the relations of this to Customer Service, this is where the idea is formed. If looking back at the first blog where I have listed the definitions of customer service, it deals with corporate philosophy, which means there has to be something about customer service at the top for it to come down to an ending point.

So it makes sense that if a company positions themselves as a company that delivers great customer service, it must be in the DNA of the company. For example, in the textbook Crafting and Executing Strategy: The Quest for Competitive Advantage: Concepts and Cases there is a case study that focuses right on this point. Southwest Airlines is a company known for their customer service, but that goes much deeper than on the customer end, but comes from the top with a decision that they made as a corporate entity. Later I will go on to how this will affect the people on the ending point.

The Production/seller aspect of this model is a bit more abstract, but customer service is still important. This middle section is that middle of the supply chain where getting the product to a warehouse. One can easily assume that customer service does not play an important role in this area, but I beg to differ. If a warehouse is not delivering products on schedule or making the right shipments to stores, then they themselves are not providing good customer service. If they are unable to do the job before them, then corporate is not keeping their customer service promise and the ending point has to provide service in a different way.

The ending point or retail, the area where I have the most experience in, is where most people think about customer service. People assume that if you are in retail/store, restaurant, or service industry then that is the main area of where customer service can be found. It’s that make it or break it point on whether people think a company as a whole has a good customer service policy. What most consumers realize though is how the corporate decisions really do affect these employees. I mentioned earlier, the case study that focuses on Southwest Airlines states that:

Employees were provided the following policy guidance regarding how far to go in trying to please customers:

No Employee will ever be punished for using good judgment and good old common sense when trying to accommodate a Customer—no matter what our rules are.

When you empower People to make a positive difference every day, you allow them to decide. Most guidelines are written to be broken as long as Employee is leaning toward the Customer. We follow the Golden Rule and try to do the right thing and think about our Customer (1).

They are giving their employees a chance to make a decision within parameters. If your choice is in the customer’s favor then that is your guidelines, if it is not, then you are not necessarily giving great customer service.

I have personally experienced situations exactly like this where managers trust your judgment on circumstances involving customers that are within reason. I won’t go to much detail on my personal experience yet, because that is for next week’s blog.

The overall point is that for customer service to be consistent in a company is that it MUST funnel down from the top. If there is no basis of customer service at the top of the funnel, then that mentality cannot shuffle down into the management in charge of the stores or areas of distribution to the public. Customer Service must be at all levels for it to embody a company.

Next week I will be finishing up this series with my personal experience with customer service. I will not be viewing this only in the eyes of a retail employee, but at different places where I have witnessed and experienced good/great customer service at different levels.

1. Thompson, Arthur A., and Arthur A. Thompson. Crafting and Executing Strategy: The Quest for Competitive Advantage : Concepts and Cases. New York: McGraw-Hill/Irwin, 2012. Print.