IMPACT OF CUSTOMER SERVICE ON SMALL AND MEDIUM SCALE BUSINESS
CHAPTER ONE
1.0 INTRODUCTION
- BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Customer service on small and medium scale business is the provision of service to customers before, during and after a purchase. Everyone in the organization is providing one or all of these perhaps they recognize which ones perhaps not. Kurtenbach (2010) explains that those who are successful in customer service rank their customers experience as the top priority. Ettore (2014) is of the view that, concentrating on current customer’s information can and should be obtained to better understand their view of the service provided. The quality of service provided determines the level of service of the customer even though what is seen as quality by one customer may not necessarily be quality to another. Customer satisfaction is a measure of how products and services supplied by a small and medium scale business meet or surpass customer expectation. In a competitive marketplace where a business competes for customers, customer service is seen as a key differentiation and increasingly has become a key element of business strategy. Customer service on small and medium scale business is an asset that should be monitored and managed just like any physical asset. The relationship between customer service and customer satisfaction is a vital one. In a competitive market place, understanding customer needs become crucial, therefore small and medium scale business in this case, have moved from product centric to customer centric positions. Customer satisfaction is influenced by the type of service provided. Services are a challenge particularly in the small scale business based service as customers can easily switch from one shop to another of a better service. Considering the high costs of acquiring new customers and apparently, high customers turnover of many business services. It is very important to find out what causes customer satisfaction. (Siadat, 2008, cited Van Rie, Lijander and Jurriens 2001). High levels of customer satisfaction bring several positive aspects to a small and medium scale business; it is believed that customer service has a positive relationship with economic profit (Anderson, Fornell, and Lehmann, 2014). Moreover, it will lower customer’s price sensitivity (Fornell, 2015), and contribute to the creation of loyal customers, which in turn implies a stable future cashflow (Matzler et al., 2016).
Any organization that has satisfied customers is bound to increase customer base and hence profitability. Satisfied customers may sell your organization either consciously or unconsciously. It is therefore important that small and medium scale business provide quality service to customers so as to satisfy them, make them loyal and retain them at the end. Achievers inter bus, has customer service as one of the pillars on which the business operates and this research seeks to find out whether the service being provided meets customer expectations and whether customers are being satisfied by those services and also which other ways the service can be improved so as to satisfy the customers.