Customer Service Cycle: How It Works, Characteristics And Phases

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

Aspects such as the treatment of workers, waiting time, how clear it is about what it means to hire a certain service, among others, are key to understanding not only the fact that the client pays, but also whether they return in the 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 as all the steps that occur when a user goes to an organization to obtain 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 in more depth about what service cycles are about, in addition to explaining the steps to follow to develop them and, finally, we will provide a practical case.

What is the customer service cycle?

The customer service cycle is the entire sequence of actions that customers go through when they contact an organization until they get the product or service they are looking for. That is, it is a continuous chain of events that a customer goes through when contacting a company.

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

During this process, client and supplier maintain contacts, which are called “moments of truth.” The customer’s experience of these moments of truth can be positive or negative, depending on how they felt at the time the seller or the person offering the service treated them.

Companies take into account how the customer service cycle occurs and, especially, how moments of truth occur, given that even just one bad experience that the customer may perceive can completely ruin it. the possible sale or offer of the service.

The great usefulness 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 identifying what needs to be improved

It should be taken into account that the service cycle of an organization should not be seen as a simple set of tasks It must be understood that what is important in these cycles is how the customer experiences the actions and experiences it in a pleasant way, with the benefit of requesting the product or service from that same company again in the future.

Steps to develop a service cycle

To accurately define 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 or offer process:

1. Identify moments of truth

In the first step, we analyze the moments when 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 identified and delimited correctly, it is advisable to resort to the professional opinion of analysts, promoters or other specialists in the field of economics that will allow greater precision of the moments to be analyzed.

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 if some type of incident occurs.

Companies must take special care when establishing interaction with their customers at these critical times otherwise you run the risk of progressively losing users due to the offer of poor service.

2. Requirements

At this point it must be found out and clarified 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 supervisors and bosses, who will offer a more holistic vision of what is required to improve contact with customers.

3. Action plans

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

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

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

5. Customer satisfaction survey

Last but not least, a satisfaction survey must be carried out with the intention of being able to clearly achieve what customers think of the organization 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, which is why, when reading the questions, it must be clear what is being asked and, thus, be able to obtain useful feedback from the clients. .

Example of a duty cycle

Below we present what the service cycle would be 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 client 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. Take public transportation to get to the bank.
3. Enter the bank.
4. Inside the bank, observe the process that occurs when cashing checks.
5. Ask a worker what to do to cash the check.
6. The employee tells him that, first, he must pick up a number to be served in order of arrival.
7. The customer waits until his turn arrives, which may last longer or shorter depending on the number of customers in front of him.
8. The customer 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 bills he wants the money to be given.
12. The customer answers and the cashier gives him the money.
13. The client checks the money received, which is the correct amount.
14. The client says goodbye and leaves the bank.
15. The client takes public transportation again to return home.

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

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

Finally it is the moment in which you give the check and will receive the money, this moment being the most critical If the teller had made a mistake when giving the customer the money, giving him less than the expected amount, the customer could have thought that the bank was trying to scam him, something that is clearly not a desirable situation when it comes to go to a bank.