Software by Allen Harrington

References on Customer Service

In the book , Achieving Better Service is explained that in a 100 store chain scenario, if each store lost only one customer per day the loss estimate would be $94.4 million per year. This represents about $2,575 per customer lost. The Rule of Five states that it takes 5 times as much to gain a customer than retaining one, this is $12,875 to gain one customer.

Excellence Through Customer Service, by John Tschohl
Post Direction throughout the store as convenient points of reference.
^{Retailing Management Levy and Weise, 4th edition 2001 McGraw-Hill Co. Exhibit 4-2 p. 120}
Changing Performance Beliefs .... The Supermarket might try to improve its rating by ..., or providing more in-store information so customers could locate merchandise more easily.
^{Retailing Management Levy and Weise, 4th edition 2001 McGraw-Hill Co. Chapter 5, p. 151}
Refact: the typical annual turnover among hourly retail employees approaches 100 percent.
^{"Workers are Seeking Employers of Choice" Chain Store Age October 1995, pp 103-108}
.... Some retailers maintain a want book in which salespeople record out-of-stock or requested merchandise. This information is collected by buyers for making purchasing decisions.
^{Retailing Management Levy and Weise, 4th edition 2001 McGraw-Hill Co. Chapter 12, p. 368}
Case 37: Best Buy Use Kiosks to Improve Customer Service:
Best Buy, a category specialist competing against Circuit City, uses interactive kiosks in its stores. This case provides a comparison of interactive technologies in a store environment versus a non-store, electronic retail environment.
^{Retail Management Bart Weise, 3rd edition, 1998 McGraw-Hill Co.}

The most frequently cited reasons for disliking shopping are long checkout lines, crowds, and poorly trained salespeople.
^{"Change at the Check-Out", The Economist, March 4, 1995, pp. 31.-32}

Refact: Lack of inventory and high prices are why customers don't buy: in every category , out of stock, wrong size, wrong brand or insufficient advertised items account for 33% of failed food shopping trips and 40% of apparel and home goods shopping trips not resulting in a purchase.
^{Mark Kingdom, "Consumer Enhancement & Development," Chain Store Age January 1996, section 3, p. 5}

Refact: When firms increase customer retention by 5 percent, they realize a 25 to 95 percent increase in net present value.
^{Fredric Reichold, The Loyalty Effect, (Boston,MA; Harvard Business School Press, 1996)}

... Thus, retailers need to reduce the service gap (the difference between the customers' expectations and perceptions of customer service) to improve customers' satisfaction with their service,

Four Factors affect the service gap:
Knowledge gap: The difference between customer expectations.
The following discussion of the Gaps model and its implication is based on
_{Deon Nel and Leyland Pitt, " Service Quality in a Retail Environment: Closing The Gaps," Journal of General Management 18 (Spring 1993), pp 37-57; Valarie Zeithaml, A. Parasuraman and Leonard Berry, Delivering Quality Customer Service (New York Free Press, 1990); and Valerie Zeithaml, Leonard Berry and A. Parasuraman, "Communication And Control Processes in the Delivery of Service Quality," Journal of Marketing 52 (April 1988), pp. 35-48.}

Refact: Ninety-one percent of customers dissatisfied with a firm's offering never buy from them again. These customers will tell nine other people about their unsatisfactory experience.
_{Thomas Peters and Nancy Auston, A Passion for Excellence (New York: Random House, 1985), p. 84.}

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