VUSSC/Content/Tourism/Customer Care/Impact of Technologies on Customer Service Excellence

IMPACT OF NEW TECHNOLOGIES ON CUSTOMER SERVICE EXCELLENCE

As you may be aware there is a strong move to integrate technologies within the tourism sector to improve service delivery. In particular it is fast becoming part and parcel of the tourism sector infrastructure to facilitate the delivery of services.

The embrace of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) is being pushed by many factors that include:

response times;
 * the development and availability of the technology;
 * fast changing economic, social, cultural and environmental landscapes;
 * rising customer expectation, demands for access around the clock and faster
 * better informed customer want better information;
 * more transparency and openness;
 * the acknowledged need for better services.

The ICT integration is necessary to facilitate one stop shop approaches to service delivery. What does this imply?

It recognizes that customers are less concerned with the administrative arrangements/ bureaucracy. They more concerned with accessing services. Increasingly therefore, services will have to offer services to customers not along the traditional structures but based on customer needs and interests.

Today's information technology is a great enabler. It's one of the strategic components of continuing reinvention. Many departments/agencies are using the Internet as a way to get news out to customers faster, cheaper, and more efficiently. Many customers are using the Internet to download information.

The use of ICT applications in this way necessitates rethinking of some traditional processes used in service delivery.

As tour guides you’ll have to adapt to new systems, update our knowledge and skills in ICT so we are able to harness the benefits of ICT for service excellence. Customer service excellence means


 * identifying changing customer needs and expectation;
 * adapt our systems and processes to changes identified;
 * using the new tools and infrastructure to add value to the service provided so that we continue to delight our customers.