Can information technology revitalize your customer service?

Executive Overview The era of mass production and mass merchandising has given us an abundant cornucopia of products but has often done so at a considerable cost to customer service. Progress in information technology permits a return to an earlier era of hometown service, when customers were treated as individuals, products were often tailored to personal needs, and customer support was provided throughout the product's life cycle. In this article, we describe and illustrate several simple conceptual tools that can help in discovering ways that information technology can be used to personalize both products and customer service. A customer service life cycle is presented which can assist in using information technology to revitalize customer service at various stages. For instance, a customer facing a complex range of product choices or features might be provided with an expert system to assist in product specification. Seven basic questions permit us to examine a business as it currently operates and offer ways that information technology might be used to fundamentally transform it in the future. For instance, information technology may permit a firm to move from “delivering from stock” to “making to order,” or from “selling” to “renting.”