Customer service cycle: how it works, characteristics and phases

When a company offers a product or a service, it is obvious that they must meet minimum quality standards. However, how well the product is done or how well the service is done are not the only ones that influence customer satisfaction.

Aspects such as the treatment of workers, waiting time, how clear it is to know what it means to hire a certain service, among others, are key to understanding not only the fact that the customer pays, but also that they return in a future. It is for this reason that the company must be clear about how its staff should interact with customers and, if there is something that is not quite right, proceed to improve it.

The customer service cycle is understood to be all the steps that occur when a user goes to an organization to have a service or product. This is something that the company must have very well defined to know how customers are treated and to what extent they are satisfied or not.

Here we are going to talk more in depth about what service cycles are about, in addition to explaining what are the steps to follow to develop them and, finally, we put a practical case.

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What is the customer service cycle?

The customer service cycle is the entire sequence of actions that customers go through in the moment in which they make contact with an organization until they get the product or service they are searching. In other words, it is a continuous chain of events that a customer goes through when contacting a company.

This cycle begins when the client requests the service or product that the company offers and ends when the client achieves what they were looking for and feels satisfied by the treatment received.

During this process, the customer and the supplier maintain contacts, which are called "moments of truth". The experience that the client has of these moments of truth can be positive or negative, in depending on how you felt at the time the seller or the person offering the service has treaty.

Companies take into account how the customer service cycle occurs and, especially, how the moments of truth occur, since, Even if it is only a bad experience that the client may perceive, it can completely ruin the possible sale or offer of the service.

The great utility of customer service cycles is that they allow us to know the weaknesses and strengths that an institution presents when the organization-client contact occurs, in addition to allow to identify what needs to be improved.

It should be noted that the service cycle of an organization should not be seen as a simple set of tasks. It should be understood that what is important in these cycles is how the client experiences the actions and lives it in pleasant way, with the benefit that you request the product or service again from that same company in a future.

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Steps to build a duty cycle

To define exactly how the customer service cycle occurs in a company, it is necessary to follow a series of steps, with which you can define the moments that occur during the purchase process or offer:

1. Identify moments of truth

In the first step, the moments in which there is interaction between the client and the seller, supplier or any other professional that offers a specific product or service.

To ensure that they have been correctly identified and delimited, it is advisable to seek the professional opinion of analysts, promoters or other specialists in the field of the economy that will allow a greater precision of the moments to analyze.

It is important to establish which are the critical moments that occur during the cycle. A critical moment is one in which aspects such as customer satisfaction and mood can be negatively affected in the event of some type of incident.

Companies must take special care when establishing interaction with their customers at these critical timesOtherwise you run the risk of gradually losing users due to the offer of a bad service.

2. Requirements

At this point you must find out and clarify what is required to improve the service offered.

It is advisable to ask what the organization itself thinks about what is needed to improve services, especially to supervisors and bosses, who will offer a more holistic vision of what is required to achieve better contact with the clientele.

3. Action plans

Once it has been clarified what is necessary to improve the service, it is time to establish the strategies to improve the service.

In this point you can consult the directors of the institution, who will prepare the action plans in the most efficient way with the resources available.

4. Prioritization of areas

When the improvement plans have already been decided, it is necessary to choose which areas require a short-term intervention, either because of their importance within the organization or because they are very deteriorated.

It is advisable to prepare a list in which the items are ordered according to your priority level.

5. Customer satisfaction survey

Last but not least, a satisfaction survey must be prepared, with the intention of being able to clearly achieve what the organization's customers think and how it relates to them.

It is very important to reflect on what deserves to be asked, and put it on paper in the least ambiguous way possible.

With these tools it will be possible to know the perception that the clientele has about the organization, that is why, when reading questions, it must be clear what is being asked and, thus, be able to get feedback from customers that is usable.

Example of a duty cycle

Next we present what would be the service cycle in a bank. In this cycle the different moments of truth are mentioned that occur between the client's arrival at the establishment until he leaves it, and all the steps he goes through. In this case, the customer in question has decided to go to the bank because he wants to cash a check:

1. The customer decides that he will go to the bank to cash a check.
2. He takes public transportation to get to the bank.
3. He enters the bank.
4. Inside the bank, he observes the process of cashing checks.
5. He asks a worker what he must do to cash the check.
6. The clerk tells him that, first, he must pick up a number in order to be served on a first-come, first-served basis.
7. The client waits until his turn comes, which can last more or less depending on the number of clients in front of him.
8. The client is called to go to the window.
9. The customer greets the cashier and presents the check.
10. The worker verifies the details of the check.
11. The worker asks in which banknotes he wants the money to be given.
12. The customer responds and the cashier gives him the money.
13. The customer checks the money received, which is the correct amount.
14. The customer says goodbye and leaves the bank.
15. The client takes public transport again to return home.

In the example presented here, several critical moments can be analyzed, that is, moments in which if there had been some type of incident, especially serious, they could have spoiled the entire service offered. The critical moments have been several. The first has been when the first worker has indicated that he should take a number. If he had responded inappropriately, indicating that it was obvious what he had to do, he would have been a clearly unpleasant moment of truth for the client.

The following has been the moment in which he has had to wait. If he had had to wait for a long time, the client might have thought that the company does not manage its tasks well, or that it does not have enough ATMs for so many clients. This can encourage the customer to consider changing banks.

Finally is the moment in which he gives the check and is going to receive the money, this moment being the most critical. If the cashier had made a mistake when giving the customer the money, giving him less than the expected amount, the customer would have been able to think that the bank is trying to scam you, something that is clearly not a desirable situation when going to a Bank.

Bibliographic references:

• Baker, M.J. (2001). Marketing: Critical Perspectives on Business and Management, Vol. 5, Routledge, pp. 3–4
• Kotler, P.; Keller, K. (2006). Marketing direction. Mexico: Pearson.