Customer Satisfaction from a Supply Chain Perspective: An Evolutionary Process in Enhancing Channel Relationships

Abstract

Meeting customers' real needs is the key competitive success. Unfortunately, concepts of customer service and satisfaction are frequently misunderstood and often poorly defined--even at leading companies. The result is that customers continue to complain about the poor service that they receive.  In fact, articles in the business press indicate that despite extensive efforts to provide ever higher levels of service, customers remain dissatisfied and demonstrate little. Creating true customer satisfaction and achieving sustained loyalty remains a persistent challenge. To better meet this challenge, today's firms need to reconsider their customer fulfillment strategies so that they can keep customers from either defecting to competitors or going out of business. The objective of any new customer-service paradigm must be to clearly define and describe the basic characteristics and likely outcomes of various service activities. As this is done, everyone within an organization comes to better understand exactly what needs to be done to profitably provide customers with a unique and valued set of satisfactions. When everyone within the firm acts on this understanding, the firm is better able to provide truly superior product/service offerings that will help key customers enhance their own competitiveness. This ability to help customers achieve greater competitive success by delivering a value-added capability is the essence of profitable customer takeaway.