Win-win situation is the target

The significance of differentiated customer service of the ­future is undisputed – this is also confirmed by the results of the ­Detecon study. At the moment, the aspect of economic efficiency is clearly prioritized over customer satisfaction as revealed especially in the assessment of the differentiation dimensions; the “hard” economic customer value factors (development and reference potential, profitability, contribution margin, etc.) still rank ahead of the “soft” topics such as customer loyalty, ­duration of customer relationship, and channel preference, but they also register a noteworthy degree of endorsement, clearly confirming the trend.

Differentiated customer service demonstrates two types of value-generating effects; based on carefully analyzed data, services can be efficiently tailored to customer profiles. The aim is to define the ideal service portfolio for customers on the basis of their value and individual characteristics and to realize this structure in practice. Moreover, this type of differentiation provides an effective instrument for the strategic support of forward-looking management and further development of customer groups. Successful service differentiation can turn the challenge raised by the dilemma between service excellence and economic efficiency into a win-win situation: cost-efficient utilization of service resources and profitable customer groups for the company, tailored products and services and heightened satisfaction for the customers.