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Customers mean value exchange, and exchange means giving and receiving from each other.
—— Paul Tim, "The Customer Service Bible: How to Successfully Build Customer Loyalty"
Customers is a general term; "broad customers" refer to anyone with whom we exchange value. As humans, we constantly exchange value, becoming customers to each other. "Narrow customers" refer to external customers, that is, non-company personnel who engage in transactions with us in business activities. Customers can be said to include clients, patients, passengers, consignors, partners, users, purchasers, readers, end users, parties involved in cases, buyers, and so on. Different titles for "customers" indicate different transactions. Our focus is on identities such as "purchasers, buyers, users, clients," to gain a clearer understanding of customer service matters.
1. What is customer service?
The official definition: Customer service is a comprehensive activity that centers around meeting customer needs, solving problems through systematic processes (pre-sale, during sale, post-sale), and establishing long-term customer relationships. Its essence is a value creation process, covering the entire product lifecycle.
Key characteristics: Involves multi-role real-time interaction; requires customized solutions for individual needs; must maintain professional empathy when handling complaints.
Today, customers expect high-quality service from the very beginning of sales and marketing interactions, and they demand the same experience for help, after-sales, and repurchases thereafter. For a company to succeed, they must synchronize service across all touchpoints in the customer journey.

2. Why is providing high-quality customer service important?
The purpose of customer service is to seize every interaction and build long-term mutually beneficial customer relationships. High-quality customer service helps to keep customers loyal to the company's brand, products, and services, driving economic benefits for the company, thus allowing it to succeed in fierce business competition. Specifically, there are several points:

Significant economic benefits:
Retention rate increase: According to research data, when customer retention increases by 5%, the average customer lifetime profit can increase by 50%, and in the insurance industry, it can even increase by 90%; when customer churn decreases by 5%, the company’s profit can increase by about 25% to 85%.
Service cost: The cost of retaining customers is only 1/6 of acquiring new customers.
Revenue drivers: Companies with quality service have revenue growth exceeding the industry rate by 4-8%.
Cultivating loyal users: A one-time exceptional service (such as quick resolution + sincere apology + a small compensation) can calm an angry customer, even making them trust the brand, gradually turning them into "loyal customers." Data shows that the chance of selling to loyal customers is around 60%-70%, whereas the chance of selling to new customers is only 5%-20%.
Differentiated competition: In today's marketplace, where products are highly homogeneous, excellent service experience often becomes the key reason for customers choosing our products over others!
Drive product upgrades and process optimization: Customer service constantly listens to customer complaints and praises, giving them high insights into product issues, process bugs, and user needs. By collecting this feedback, companies can quickly drive product upgrades and optimize processes, making them the best choice for two-way engagement with users.
Save money! Preserve reputation: Quickly and effectively resolving issues can turn angry customers into calm (or even satisfied) customers, avoiding a flood of negative reviews and the need for companies to spend money on public relations to mitigate the negative impact of events.
Free promotion: Companies with good service will have customers actively recommend them to friends. This is the source of motivation for "good product sharing," "tool recommendations," and "word-of-mouth marketing" found in various books!
3. The difference between customer service and customer experience
Many people often confuse customer service with customer experience, but in fact, the two have a relationship of "points" and "planes"; customer service is the "point": resolving a specific pain point at a specific moment; while customer experience (CX) is the "plane", the overall feeling that runs throughout.

Customer Service:
Focus Point: Solving Problems! The interaction that occurs when customers encounter specific problems or proactively seek help.
Scenario: Making complaints over the phone, online inquiries to customer service, returns and exchanges, asking about product information, reporting issues...
Essence: "Firefighting" & "Answering Questions". The goal is to resolve the specific dissatisfaction at that moment.
Metaphor: If you burn your mouth eating hot pot, the waiter immediately brings you ice water and apologizes, even offering you a cold dish—that is service in action.
Customer Experience (CX):
Focus Point: Overall Feeling! The sum of all feelings throughout the entire journey, from the first time hearing about your brand, to researching, purchasing, using, seeking help, and even recommending or abandoning your products or services.
Scenario: Are ads appealing? Is the website user-friendly? Is the product packaging surprising? Is the checkout process smooth? Does the product itself work well? Of course, it also includes the quality of service!
Essence: "Overall Impression Score". The goal is to ensure customers feel good, smooth, and value at every stage.
Metaphor: From deciding to eat hot pot (seeing an appealing ad), choosing a restaurant (looking at reviews), entering (environment and atmosphere), ordering (menu design), receiving dishes (speed, presentation), eating (taste, ingredients), burning your mouth (service response), paying (convenience), to finally reflecting, "Hmm, this place is good"—this whole process of comprehensive feeling is the experience.
High-quality customer service is a key component in creating an excellent experience! So, what are some examples of high-quality customer service? Please continue scrolling:
4. Examples of high-quality customer service
Fat Donglai is one of the examples of exceptional customer service. Let's look back at the services they provide:

Return and Exchange Policy
Unconditional returns and exchanges; if the customer is dissatisfied, they can return without conditions; if fresh food is not tasty, they can get a full refund without conditions; if the product is more expensive, they can return the price difference; if a wrong amount was charged, it is directly delivered to the customer.
Free Services
Includes hundreds of free services such as delivery, repairs, dry cleaning, direct drinking water, pet boarding, and providing free meals for delivery drivers.
Complaint Reward Mechanism
If customers are dissatisfied with the service and complain, they are initially rewarded 100 yuan, later increased to 500 yuan.
These services together construct the service iron triangle of "returning if not satisfied, free services, handling customer complaints", providing customers with a sense of security, thereby forming high loyalty, promoting the Fat Donglai brand's unbreakable moat on social media.
5. Contents of customer service work:
Here, we focus customer service on the role of customer service representatives, classifying them based on the service phases and core functions of customer service work:

Pre-Sale Consultation Representatives:
Core Responsibilities: Provide support before the customer's purchasing decision.
a. Answer basic inquiries about product functions, specifications, prices, promotional activities, stock status, etc.
b. Recommend suitable products or solutions based on customer needs.
c. Guide customers to complete initial purchasing intentions or ordering processes.
d. Address doubts and obstacles before purchase (e.g., payment methods, delivery range).
Post-Sale Support Representatives:
Core Responsibilities: Solve problems customers encounter after purchases, ensuring customer satisfaction and loyalty.
a. Handle order inquiries, logistics tracking, delivery issues.
b. Accept and process return, exchange, and repair requests, explaining related policies and processes.
c. Provide technical support for product installation, use, and troubleshooting.
d. Effectively manage customer complaints and disputes, providing emotional comfort and escalating issues.
e. Collect customer feedback and relay it to relevant departments.
6: Types of customer service positions, responsibilities, job contents, and skill requirements:
After understanding the content of customer service work, we classify customer service positions into 4 main types: telephone customer service, online customer service, email customer service, and social media customer service, detailing the responsibilities, job content, and skill requirements for each type.

Phone Customer Service:
Core Responsibilities: Communicate with customers in real-time through voice calls.
Main Job Content: Covers full process or specific stages of telephone interactions including pre-sale consultations, order processing, post-sale services, complaint handling, etc. Clear records of call content are required.
Core Skill Requirements:
a. Excellent Mandarin proficiency and language expression skills (clear, fluent, professional).
b. Outstanding listening skills and quick comprehension abilities.
c. Strong instantaneous memory and information processing ability.
d. Good telephone etiquette and emotional control ability.
e. Stress resistance (dealing with high call volumes and emotional customers).

Online Customer Service / Instant Messaging Support:
Core Responsibilities: Provide text/image/audio service through website chat windows, in-app customer service, WeChat for Business, WhatsApp, and other instant messaging tools.
Main Job Content: Real-time inquiry responses, handling simple issues, guiding self-service, collecting information, and forwarding complex cases. Usually need to manage multiple conversations simultaneously.
Core Skill Requirements:
a. Fast and accurate text input skills and written expression abilities.
b. Efficient multitasking and window-switching capabilities.
c. Use standardized scripts to improve efficiency.
d. Quickly assess problem complexity and whether escalation is needed.
e. High responsiveness requirements.

Email Customer Service:
Core Responsibilities: Handle non-urgent inquiries and issues requiring detailed written responses via email.
Main Job Content: Handle product inquiries, complaint suggestions, service applications, etc., through emails. Must write professional, clear, and detailed replies, possibly including attachments.
Core Skill Requirements:
a. Excellent business writing skills (grammar, structure, professionalism).
b. High level of organization and document management capabilities.
c. Ability to analyze complex issues and provide written explanations.
d. Generally, time sensitivity is slightly lower than real-time channels but must respond within specified SLA.

Social Media Customer Service:
Core Responsibilities: Monitor, respond to, and manage customer interactions on the brand's official social media platforms (Weibo, WeChat official accounts, Douyin, Facebook, Twitter, etc.).
Main Job Content:
a. Monitor brand mentions, comments, private messages, and @ messages.
b. Timely respond to public comments and private inquiries and complaints.
c. Handle potential public relations crises, protecting the brand image.
d. Collect public opinion and user feedback.
e. May need to create interactive content that aligns with platform aesthetics.
Core Skill Requirements:
Mainly includes:
a. High awareness of public relations and sensitivity to the brand.
b. Familiarity with the characteristics, rules, and online cultures of various social media platforms.
c. Excellent public communication skills (wording needs to be cautious and appropriate).
d. 7x24 hour public sentiment monitoring awareness and rapid response capability.
e. Ability to collaborate with marketing and public relations departments.
7: Common challenges and values in customer service positions:
After understanding the content of customer service positions, we browse various consultations about customer service, many of which include complaints and grievances about customer service roles. Next, we will explain the challenges and values of customer service positions from a more objective perspective.

Main Challenges:
High-intensity emotional labor: Continuously handling customers' (especially negative) emotions requires maintaining professional restraint.
Repetitive work: Answering a large number of basic questions can lead to burnout.
Middle-layer dilemma: Balancing conflicts between customer demands and company policies/resource limitations.
Assessment pressure: Need to meet various quantitative indicators (response time, resolution rate, satisfaction, call duration, etc.).
"Frontline" pressure: Directly facing customer dissatisfaction caused by product, service, system, logistics issues, etc.
Shift work/unpredictable hours: Especially for positions offering 7x24 hour service.

Core Values and Career Growth:
Excellent communication skills: Improve listening, expressing, persuading, and communication skills in high-conflict situations.
Problem-solving ability: Ability to quickly analyze, locate, and solve a variety of problems.
Business knowledge expert: Deep understanding of company products, services, processes, and policies.
High emotional intelligence and resilience: Significantly enhance emotional management, empathy, and psychological resilience.
Customer insight: Directly obtain a large amount of genuine customer feedback (VOC), understanding customer needs and pain points.
Career development foundation: A common starting point for positions leading to customer success, service management, training, quality control, sales, operations, product support, or even product management.
8. Trends in Customer Service
When exploring the trends in customer service development, it’s best to begin with the pain points of traditional customer service and customer service robots. Traditional customer service has high labor costs, long training cycles, and high turnover rates. Roughly calculated, each issue costs about 8 yuan, while customer service robots lack contextual understanding and channel integration ability, providing answers based solely on keyword matching, which frustrates many customers who want to speak to a human.

Amidst the various challenges facing traditional customer service, artificial intelligence has emerged, injecting a shot of adrenaline into the development of intelligent customer service. In the future, customer service, with the aid of large models, will better understand user emotions and intentions, provide intelligent multi-channel matching solutions, and help companies steadily increase revenue. The specific trends are as follows:
Generative AI reshapes ticket handling:
Ticket creation time compressed to under 5 seconds, multilingual support standardizing global service.

Three-dimensional integrated experience upgrade:
Omnichannel service: Whether users prefer to call, chat online, email, or browse social media to @ official accounts... AI customer service can seamlessly connect! Information can flow across different channels, avoiding users having to repeat their issues multiple times.
Emotional intelligence: Emotional AI identifies subtle emotions, improving satisfaction rates by 40%. This means artificial intelligence can understand user emotions and motives, soothe users' feelings, and provide suitable solutions, cooling down their emotions, thereby retaining users.
Metaverse service: IKEA's virtual showroom has reduced return rates by 18%.
Intelligent customer service (AI Custumer Service) showcases its capabilities:
24/7 online intelligent customer service can identify customer intentions, analyze emotions, quickly retrieve information, recommend solutions, establish customer profiles, etc.
A robust knowledge base and increasingly complete video tutorials. Many questions can be answered with just a few simple actions from the customer.
Personalized & Proactive Services:
This comprises two aspects; for businesses, they can customize the personality and scripts of the AI customer service, while uploading product knowledge bases, allowing the AI to become a product expert for efficient issue resolution. Moreover, based on purchase history, they can proactively send relevant shopping information when consumables are about to run out, enhancing the repurchase rate. For customers, leveraging data analysis, intelligent customer service can better understand their history and preferences and even proactively remind or provide help before the customers encounter problems!

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