VUSSC/Content/Tourism/Customer Care/Rationales for Customer Service Excellence

RATIONALES FOR THE NEED FOR CUSTOMER SERVICE EXCELLENCE

In a genuinely competitive global market, tour guiding organisations/agencies cannot afford to ignore the needs and wishes of their customers if they want to stay in business. This is because dissatisfied customers can choose to go elsewhere. If you want business success it is essential to

• know what the customer wants;
• provide it quicker, better and cheaper than your competitors.

Competitive organisations/agencies worldwide have already realised that “the customer comes first” concept is not an empty slogan but a fundamental business principle that is very relevant for you as a tour guide. What will happen if all your customers suddenly decide to stop coming to your country/agency and go elsewhere? Just reflect over this question for a few seconds.

Why should customer service excellence matter? When service excellence is provided for all customers all the time everyone benefits.

For your customers - It’s what they expect!

Did you know that

• a typical organization never hears from 91% of its unhappy customers?
• an unhappy customer tells between 8 and 10 people of the poor experience. It can destroy the reputation of your workplace and your country?

Effective customer service will help to ensure that customer needs and expectations are met. They are delighted with the service and care that they receive. They will also have confidence that any problem they encounter will be resolved promptly.

For your organisation/agency You will be helping your organisation to meet its objectives and to be successful. Good customer care/service makes a good impression of your organisation and strengthens its reputation.

For you, as a tour guide

Customer care and service excellence delight your customers. They will be contented and your dealings with them will be enjoyable. When you take pride in trying to please your customers and meet their needs, you will get satisfaction from seeing that your customers are happy and that your efforts have paid off. Moreover

• It makes your job more satisfying and fun!
• It makes a good impression of you.
• It’s good training for future employment – many organisations look for potential employees with customer care experience.

And most of all…You are the face of your organization/agency! Thus with service excellence, everyone wins. Now in addition to the above, there are a number of arguments which make the case for customer service excellence. We may look at these from the following perspectives:

• Marketing perspective;
• Stakeholder perspective;
• Survival perspective;
• Customer Duty Principles and Good Governance perspective;
• Legal perspective.

Another way of describing these perspectives is to call them 'requirements' or 'imperatives' – but without doubt they are considerations that are vital to the delivery of service excellence. Let’s look at each in turn.