A study of Best Practice Customer Service.

The western world has arrived at an age of service, which has led to an increasing number of companies in the retail sector attempting to adopt a service culture. All companies succeed in delivering customer service to a degree, yet too many fail in their bid to deliver excellent customer service, as they have neglected to lay the foundations needed for service excellence to exist. The primary objective of this research is to determine the key ingredients needed to foster 'Best Practice Customer Service'. In order to consider these, the author undertook an extensive review of customer service related literature and as a result, found the main elements needed to foster a service culture to be corporate culture, leadership, recruitment, training, staff evaluation and customer feedback. Once these elements had been considered, the author tested their validity by means of a case study. The chosen company was Superquinn, the Irish grocery-retailing outlet renowned for its superb customer service. The analysis of Superquinn involved the author conducting an interview with the manager of a flagship Superquinn store and a distributing a questionnaire survey amongst his staff. An analysis of the reviewed literature and the findings of the case study allowed the author to ascertain the importance of each of the elements and to make recommendations as to how each could be improved upon.