The importance of customer service in logistics

Nowadays, we still often encounter the problem of properly locating customer service areas. Customer service is currently a fundamental concept for marketing and logistics. However, this was not always the case. Until recently, customer service was associated mainly with marketing. This stems from the definition of marketing as the management of the four “Ps”. In practice, however, it was associated only with three “Ps” – product, price, and promotion. The fourth element – place – was rarely considered significant in the mainstream of marketing (currently, the “7P” concept applies).

In today’s world, we increasingly observe a decline in brand loyalty across various markets and a stronger tendency to reach for non-branded substitutes. Their main advantage is price. This is due to the fact that increasing technological progress makes it possible to produce a product (substitute) more cheaply, which performs a similar or broader functional role and satisfies a similar customer need. In a situation where it is increasingly difficult to maintain a competitive advantage through the product itself, it is customer service that will constitute the element distinguishing a company’s offer from that of its competitors.

In recent years, in one of the greatest bestsellers in the field of management, “In Search of Excellence”, the authors drew the attention of managers (and others) to the obvious fact that sales grow thanks to buyers, and the most successful companies are those that have the most customers and are able to retain them. It must be emphasized, however, that it was only with the advent of the recession that companies began to pay more attention to their customers. Probably two factors contributed most to the growth of the role of customer service as a weapon in the fight against competition. The first is the continuous increase in customer expectations towards the manufacturer. Similarly, industrial buyers expect a higher level of service, which is increasingly influenced by the shift of more and more of them to the “Just-in-time” production system.
Another factor is the transformation of markets into “commodity” markets. This means that the power of commercial brands is decreasing as the technologies used to produce competing products become standardized. Furthermore, this makes it increasingly difficult for the average buyer to grasp significant differences between them. (…)

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