Developing Competitive Advantage Through Customer Service

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Case Study: American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT &T)
Conclusion
Works Cited

Introduction

Globalization and advancement in information technologies have enabled business enterprises to compete across national borders. The physical distances have been drastically reduced and communication expenses have become relatively low. Business organizations and individuals no longer stick in one geographical region.

As such, competition between businesses has heightened (Porter 12). Now more than ever, enterprises must endeavor to attract and retain customers in order to stay put in the competitive business environment. Note mentioning, customers are vital for business firms and organizations.

Therefore, these entities have been forced provide great experience to them. They must understand the perspective of customers towards the kind of service or experience they are provided with.

In order to gain competitive advantage, business firms ensure that they provide effective communication, service and products that are relevant to the lifestyle of the customers. An organization must deliver a consistent experience in order to retain customers (Rivkin 1).

Case Study: American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT &T)

Background and History

AT&T Inc. is a multinational telecommunications company headquartered in Dallas, United States. Since its inception in 1984, the company has achieved significant growth. Currently, AT& T is the largest provider of fixed and mobile telephony in the United States.

It is also among the top ten companies in the United States by revenue. The achievements of the company are attributed to its ability to attract and retain large numbers of customers from all parts of the world.

Over time, the company has been focusing on delivering extraordinary experience to its customers through quality service.

Problems of Customer Service at AT&T Corporation

In the recent times, the company has faced number of problems. It has achieved little growth in the past five years. According to Porter (7), the success of a company largely depends on customer service. It is evident from social chat sites such as Facebook and twitter that most consumers who have visited the company in the recent past are unhappy about the services they are offered.

The company has not been able to gain competitive advantage over its competitors in the recent past because of its poor customer service which emanates from in-store customer service. Consequently, the company has been losing customers to its rivals. Some of the common problems of the AT& T customer service include:

Poor communication between the customers and sales representatives.
Some customer service representatives are rude to the customers.
Slow customers’ response. It is difficult for customer to reach the relevant people and they are sometime put on hold.
Incompetent customer service representatives.
The company is reluctant to make a follow-up of customers’ issues which require more and research.

Generally speaking, the multinational corporation is facing great deal of challenges in respect to the kind of customer service it offers. This calls for immediate solutions otherwise the company will collapse.

In the past, the company has been known for its quality products which enabled it achieve competitive advantage in the industry (Rivkin 1).

Solution

As the market conditions change, AT &T must cope with vast range of issues such as regulatory requirements, demographic shifts and increasing competition. The services which the company provides have great deal of effects on customers.

A noted earlier, the success of every business is largely influenced by customers. Therefore, the company must strive to solve the customer service related problems.

It is advisable that the company addresses the matter as soon as possible otherwise it risks losing a number of customers to the competitors. Some of possible solutions for the problem include:

Recruit more customer service representatives
Subject the existing customer service representatives to extensive training on how to handle customers and issues they raised.
The organization should recognize the significance of customer loyalty.
Adopt and implement customer relationship management (CRM)
Customer feedback loop policy

Solving the Problems (Implementing Problems)

In order to develop competitive advantage, the company must provide good experience to customers. It must understand customers’ expectations and then plan how it can meet them.

AT &T Inc. must deliver high quality service so that it can differentiate itself from its competitors in the global markets (Porter 16).

The multinational corporation should dedicate great deal of its resources for recruiting, reinforcing and training customer service representatives. It is explicit that the company has limited number of staff to attend various issues of customers.

The organization’s employees or customer service representatives should be fully equipped with the necessary skills. They should explicitly understand company goals and objectives, features and uses of products and services offered. The organization must select and recruit staff believed to possess relevant knowledge and skills necessary for delivery of good customer service.

The company must invest heavily on recruiting and training of employees so as to teach them skills for high quality customer service delivery. The training ought to focus on customer service representatives’ reliability, efficiency and their individual service.

Importance of listening and responding to customers’ issues and requests should be emphasized during the training of the staff otherwise the program would be redundant. The company should dedicate itself to advancing careers and skills of the customer service representatives.

The staff must be encouraged to talk with customers freely and integrate them. This will promote personalized customer service. In addition to training the employees, the company should also invest in promoting careers of the staff so as to boost their morale to work hard towards attaining the intended goals of the organization.

With the advancement of technology, businesses operations have improved. AT&T Inc. should understand the fact the customer service problem occurs due to poor interactions or relations between customers, sales representatives and clients.

Customer relationship management (CRM) model should be adopted and implemented with the view of gaining competitive advantage. The organization has not been able to provide good experience to customers since it is not able track issues of the clients.

CRM system will enable the organization to easily access and share information on customers’ issues and complaints. As a result, this will help the concerned staff to focus on high value tasks that will enhance quality customer service (Rivkin 5).

Customer feedback loop is another fundamental policy that will enable the company deliver quality customer service with the view of achieving competitive advantage. This policy should be implemented by setting standards and this can be achieved through effective customer service charters.

The standards should be communicated to the responsible staff and the public at large. The organization should also establish customer feedback scheme to facilitate capturing of feedback from clients.

It is also important to review the performance of customer service representatives and thereafter revise the standards as stipulated in the established customer service charter (Rivkin 6).

Conclusion

As competition in the global markets intensifies, businesses have struggled to provide quality customer service in order to gain competitive advantage. In the paradigm case, the company should ensure that customers are provided good experience.

This can be achieved through adoption and implementation of CRM, customer feedback loop policies, recruiting and developing customer service representatives.

Works Cited

Porter, Michael. Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance: with a New Introduction. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998. Print.

Rivkin, Jan 2006, Creating competitive advantage. 19 July, 2012. <https://www.merageinstitute.org/>

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