EDGAR NELTON GASPAR ID: UB17921BBU25745

Bachelor of Business Administration Managing Customer Services

Date 07/29/2012

Index

Introduction 3 Quality in Management . . 3 Quality in Customer Services

4 Quality Services

. 5 Quality in health care services .

6 Evolution and the importance of services .. .. 7 Conclusion 14 Bibliography .. 15 .. ..

Introduction
It is believed that for the struggle of survival organizations have sought to provide quality products and services. But when competing, offering the same products, customer service is the main factor of competitive advantage between organizations. It is precisely the quality of a tangible or intangible acquired which will ensure customer satisfaction and also the company's success. And the quality services provided by the company is in the details of the relationship of customer service. The study is a academically justified to the fact that the topic is of great importance to academic management area and its social justification the fact that quality is a factor essential in organizations seeking success. The overall objective of the study is to analyze the quality of care provided to customers, with the following objectives: a) Discuss the importance and quality of customer services. b) Raise the level of satisfaction of customers. c) Identify the negatives to support the proposed improvements with management. Therefore, in order to deepen the limitation of the subject it was intended to address the following question: what are the aspects relevant to excellence in customer service to gain competitiveness?

And, through the first search up to the assumption that to achieve quality in customer service, it is necessary that customer expectations are met. Thus, this work is the result a literature review on theories related to the study of quality customer service and field research, developed through exploratory observation.

Quality Management
The advancement of transportation and commerce gave customers the ability to make comparisons, and it was from there that the concept of quality of tangible and intangible products began to take hold. Before there was no option to substitute products and services which made comparisons difficult. As early as 1980, customers were becoming increasingly critical and demanding for the products purchased because at that time the market and was expanding to become increasingly competitive, providing customers more selective products. So, this decade was marked by concern for firms in the quality of its products. During the twentieth century, to prevent defective products at the hands of customers, the quality began to be incorporated into industrial production. Growing market techniques were introduced for statistical quality control in accordance with the increase of mass production. This approach was called Quality Control. And after the Second world war the quality began to be applied in production processes, from design to the finished product, looking at the security and the achievement of zero defects. This concept evolves for quality assurance in the services area also demonstrating to the client and the general public, that certain products or services of the company have the quality requested. What defines whether a product or service is good is the attitudes of the customer before the product or service through the set of changes in behaviors, attitudes and activities of the company over time and not just at the time of service or sale of a product. So meeting the needs of customers is the basic function of a company facing competition. The objective is to positively surprising the client, in your experience with tangible or intangible products. For this its necessary for the conscious participation and motivating employees in line with the explicit and implicit needs of the client.

The term quality means: a) Always have the objective of total customer satisfaction; b) Consider the quality in broad sense; c) Consider the cost and conditions of service as major factors of total customer satisfaction. "Quality is a management philosophy that seeks to achieve full compliance and maximum satisfaction of the needs and expectations of customers / users in all processes of a company.

Quality in Customer Service

In these highly competitive times , a good customer service is beyond a smile. Good customer service is a combination of elements: quality, efficiency, product cost and layout. All these elements are promoters of the environment that facilitates the deployment or the conquest of fidelity. A key element for long life of fidelity is innovation. However, the innovations wake strength of the client, which may be between the possibility of falling in love with something new and have satisfaction guaranteed by services. In addition to the resistance of customers, there is also the resistance of employees, who generally resist the possible changes in methods of work. However, if innovation are critical for fidelity, it is important to find out what makes the client to abandon the old and join the new product. Among clients we also include buyers outside of the organization's, employees, supervisors, managers, suppliers and all the local community. The satisfaction should be throughout the organization, or, all people, all functions, all departments. Every organization aims to create and maintain customers satisfied, although companies have to make money, money is not taken as a goal, but as a necessity. Therefore, the fact that a company makes money does not mean the society sustains it. But, somehow, the company that maintains the company due to its meeting the needs of customers leaving them satisfied. If most clients become dissatisfied and stop buying from the company the society will condemn and make them close down. And it is due to that fact

that customer satisfaction has been identified as the key to success. Although not all companies use this concept, there is a well defined movement in several companies, markets and industries, where there is a culture that incorporates customer satisfaction as part of the company's mission. Systematic monitoring of the relationship with the customer is fundamental to the organization therefore it maintains the fidelity of the client and ensures the competitive difference for much longer. There are six basic elements that customers seek when looking for a service: cost, power, reliability, continuity, customization and communication.

Quality Services
The theme "Quality Services", even though much discussed in scientific research, is still much debated and questioned by managers, administrators and researchers. This is because the issue involves two issues of understanding. However, several authors have identified characteristics of "services" in order to contribute to the understanding of its meaning. See the following three services:
a) Simultaneity: Because the services are consumed almost

simultaneously when they are produced, it is virtually impossible to detect and correct faults before they impact the client;
b) Intangibility: Services cannot be transported or stored, since they

represent a non-physical product.

c) Heterogeneity: The activities stimulating and prices standardization

is hampered by the strong relationship with the human factor and the great variety of existing services. In most cases, the customers reaction for what he considers good or bad service is immediate, but the reaction to the quality of a manufactured product can be delayed. However, both products for tangible and intangible products, cannot be defined today as a client will sort them in a year. This is because judgment of the consumer may change, your needs may change, the market may appear new alternative products or services and so on.

The quality of a service is perceived by a satisfied customer with the services offered to him that is why quality of service is linked to customer satisfaction. The company must have care in planning the services offered to provide a job well done and generate customer satisfaction. Through it, customers return to buy and still indicate third parties, making the demand and increase of profits. However, to make the provision of quality service and generate satisfaction the administrator must take some precautions such as: a) Manage customer expectations - expectations are formed through comments from other people, experiences gained with the own company or competitor, or by the promises made by service vendors. b) Perception of quality - it is difficult to assess the quality of customer service they receive, despite knowing the professional that provides a good quality service, the customer does not realize the quality. That is why it is important to monitor the companies in relation to how their customers perceive their services.
c) Sequence of procedures - necessary for the administrator to develop

its quality services, i.e. research is needed to establish a culture, developing training, creating an organizational climate with the internal market, communicating the plan and establish control mechanism.

Quality in Health Care Services

A good definition of the quality of medical care seems simple for anyone, but it is a constant problem for administrators in medical care and for people who wish to study the industry. This can be defined in several ways and for each set there is a particular type of problem. 1. Comfort of patients under medical care. 2. Number of people under medical care, men and women, in each age group. 3. (Applicable to a clinic for the elderly). The number of people kept out of the hospital or home care. 4. Facilities for examinations, such as laboratories, X-ray apparatus 5. Public health

6. Average life of people discharged from institutions. 7. Amount applied by an institution, per patient. Some of these definitions are unethical because they have two meanings, and this can cause misinterpretation at the time of analysis. An example is the number of patient care, if large, may indicate a good medical assistance (having many people), on the other hand, can indicate the contrary, it can be large because of the adverse public health measures. When receiving medical care, clients make rational and emotional perceptions, and by your conscious and unconscious are expected. The quantitative differentiation in service must be fully recognized by the client, or is useless to seek a differential if the customer does not realize the value. Recognition of the quality of service by the doctor gives the sum of several observations that the client performs, and is the sum of these observations he concludes his perception of services. With the rational perception, the client evaluates the physical and tangible aspects of the implementation of service, from the point of view of concrete results. Already with the perception emotion, the client evaluates the most subjective and inherent feelings envisioned before, during and after an appointment.

Evolution and the importance of Services

In recent decades, indicators such as GDP and the use of the work force reinforced the trend growth of services in the global economy. Both indicators have shown significant increases, both in developed countries like the United States and in developing countries like Brazil. Some countries like the United States, Indonesia and Brazil, have their greatest asset of human capital in the service sector, which indicates a growth in this sector, whether in manufacturing companies, to increase in the value of its physical products, such as organizations dedicated to producing services such as health services, hospitality, financial, distribution and other basic services. In parallel to this scenario, followed by the constant search for productivity and fierce competition in markets, stressed the importance of intangible assets such as knowledge, creativity, the human

factor, particularly trends in service management. Definitions of services involved is currently being considered as a system of value creation networks composed of people, technologies and processes. It is a complex, interconnected by flows of information and knowledge, which depends on the quantity and quality of people, technologies and organizations involved in this web of creation. Historically, services began to gain importance in the 1950s, when the United states of America represented approximately 50% of the economy of the world. Table 1 presents a survey of definitions that have been proposed since the early years of study on services. In the definitions given, the service is understood as a tertiary activity, which benefits can only add to a manufactured product. Some of these definitions mention the importance of the customer as an essential part in the production and consumption of the service, as well as the features and benefits of these intangible. AUTHOR, Year American Marketing Association, 1960 Regan, 1963 DEFINITIONS Service are activities, benefits or satisfactions that are placed on sale or provided in connection with the sale of goods. Services represents the intangible satisfactions presented directly (transport, accommodation), or intangible satisfactions presented directly when purchasing goods or other services (credit, delivery) Services on the market: A market transaction is conducted by a company or an entrepreneur where the purpose of the transaction other than the transfer of ownership (or title, if any) of a tangible commodity. For the consumer, services and the sale raised any activity that provides valuable benefits and satisfaction: an activity that the customer cannot or prefer not to carry on its own A service and an activity or series of activities that takes place in interactions with a contact

Judd, 1964

Bessom, 1973

Lehtinen, 1983

person or with a physical machine and provides satisfaction to the consumer. Free, 1987 Meeting the expectations of the client during a sale and after-sales activities, through conducting a series of functions that rival or surpass the competition in order to provide an incremental profit to the supplier An activity or series of activities of a more or less tangible than normal, but not necessarily happen during interactions between customers and employees of services or systems and services supplied as a solution to customer problems Services can be understood as the business transactions that occur between a provider (service provider) and a receiver (client) to produce a result that satisfies the customer. Services is any act or performance that one party can offer the other and that is essentially intangible and does not result in property of anyone.

Gronroos (1993)

Ramaswami (1996)

Kotler (1998)

Lovelock E Wright (2001) Services is an act that creates benefits for customers through a desired change in the name of the addressee of the service Bowen E Ford (2002) A service includes all intangible elements that together are responsible for creating a memorable experience for the customer at a given moment of time. Services are deeds, processes and performances. Service is an application of specialized competences (skills and knowledge) through deeds, processes and actions for the benefit of another entity or self service.

Zeithaml E Bitner (2003) Vargo E Lusch (2004)

More recent publications report speaks of the service system as a term related to the importance of the constituent elements of the service and the inter-relationship between them. For example, systems and services is a value of creation of networks composed of people, technologies and organizations. These types of systems are complex and this complexity depends on the quantity and quality of people, technologies and organizations listed with the network to create value, considering the flow of information and knowledge that are necessary for the production of the services. Characteristics- The characteristics of services can be classified as, intangibility and simultaneity. The intangibility can be verified by the fact that services are experiences that the customer experiences at the time of the service. This feature makes it difficult for system operations because the product offered by the organization is not physical. The simultaneity in turn, refers to the fact that the production and consumption of the service, in general, being simultaneous. Moreover, client's participation in this type of production is necessary for the occurrence of the same provision, often from the terms of when and how to proceed. This feature also notes that the decisions of system operations must consider aspects such as location, time that the client is willing to wait and need to exercise control over operations in a decentralized manner to facilitate the process. As a consequence of the previous feature, the services are considered non-storable e.g., the presence of the customer as part of the process of services causes services that cannot be stored. In this sense, the excess capacity of the system operations to work efficiently services cannot be reallocated for manufacturing operations. There is a fourth characteristic called heterogeneity which has been related to the high variability between the supply / production and service provision of the following, considering the simultaneity of the product directly to the customer, forces the system operations services to customize the service for each client. The features described above must be taken into account to reach a full understanding of service quality, as they involve the performance of service providers.

The package of services - Every organization produces a composite of goods and services resulting in a package offered to the customer. In services organizations identification of the package offered is complicated by the characteristics of intangibility of the product. The package of services in a company is composed of all the elements of the service, which can be classified into: support facilities, facilitating goods, implicit services and explicit services. The support facilities, in general, support the provision of service and may be facilities, infrastructure, equipment, and so on. In practice they are physical evidence of service and has a high influence on the perception of quality of service by the customer. The property facilitators are physical elements that provide an explicit evidence of the service and that are consumed or used by the customer during delivery. The physical evidence are aimed at trying to tangibles services and thus positively influence in the final assessment made by the client. The property also enables facilitators to communicate the company's brand, as through the physical elements carried by the customer, it creates a common understanding about what is offered by the company and what the customer expects to benefit from the service. For services explicit, stands out the benefits for the service. The explicit benefits are clearly perceived by the customer, for example, the power supplied by the energy company and its usage in different appliances. The services relate to the implicit psychological benefits that the client can get on providing service-related experiences and are strongly related to brand positioning, since operations on the intangibility of the service package offered requires the client to create associations with psychological benefits. Implicit services are often neglected in favor of explicit services. The management of innovation in services: The management of innovation in services stands out as a strong line of research in the search for methods to systematically create innovations in service operations, as well as business processes related to provision of services. When the service system involves knowledge-intensive activities, the importance of skilled human capital employed. Consequently also increases the need to strategically manage the large volume of information and knowledge that underlines the operation

of these systems, the main source of innovation in organizations today, considering that knowledge embedded in service providers, is a key factor in the management of the intangibility of service, which make up a line of research called Knowledge Management. Innovation also occurs when knowledge management is applied in the development of new services. Improvement of efficiency through better technology: The role of information technology and communication services is still an important challenging research, related both to the use of them as with the selection and choice of more technology. During product design manufacturing is common to assess scenarios until the final product. However, the intangible nature of services makes it difficult to assess and justify the possibility of implementing the project. While the project property is common to construction of physical models that embody the ideas conceived, the design of services can rely on simulation of techniques. Establishing the price of the services: Historically, the determination of purchasing price in services has required a level which difficulty high than the manufacturing goods. The degree of intangibility present in the production of services as well as costs related to its provision. Therefore, another important area of research is the assessment of costs and pricing for the service operations. For this, one must search for new forms of assessment that meet the realities of the market competition and customers' perceptions of themselves as evaluators of the final quality of services. In recent years they studied new mechanisms for evaluating costs, primarily related to the measurement of so-called intangible assets, among them, called the Intangible assets Monitor. The measurement of intangible assets has been a viable way to assess the costs and establishing prices for services considering the strong influence of organizational knowledge. Evaluation of productivity in services: Research should focus on quantifying the results obtained in services as well as investments, since the assessment of service productivity has proved a difficult task. Some techniques such as simulation are presented as an alternative interesting to evaluate results and productivity in services, in particular the techniques developed to represent intangibles.

Project evaluation and testing services: the fact that production and consumption are simultaneous service impairs the ability to conduct evaluation tests before production of the service. Thus using simulation techniques to perform these evaluations grow in the coming years revealing itself as a natural evolution of the techniques currently used. The simulation can be defined as a process for construction of an actual system, with the possibility of driving dynamic experiments, either in order to understand the behavior of the system or for the purpose of assessing different strategies for the operation of systems supporting decision making. In this sense, the previous assessment tests can help determine not only the most relevant characteristics of a service in terms of the same design, but also to deliver packages to better service, to simulate aspects that increase the complexity of operations, as intangible and its quantification. Risk Management in service projects: The same way as assessment, risk management has gained an important place within the course of services. Incremental complexity of new technologies, coupled with the new demands of use and complex environment of competitors, makes the risk management in service projects a promising area of research and multidisciplinary. Methodologies and tools to improve quality and efficiency of service processes: The ability to evaluate services in terms of processes involves the use of new tools and techniques supported in information technology and communication. The importance of modeling processes (Business Process Modeling) grows accordingly and will continue growing in coming years. The use of modeling and simulation allows a better understanding of the functioning of services and their management. Moreover, the known processes considered intensive, based on the knowledge economy also require new approaches to study and analysis. Services, considered mostly knowledge-intensive contain a lot of these processes requiring approaches that enable the modeling of intangibles. The new operations research and optimization: Operational research, historically marked by the use of strict mathematical methods, optimal solutions to problems identified and well defined has recently been faced with a scenario characterized by production operations that require a high degree of intangibility and interactivity with the user or customer. Thus, a new operational research was proposed called Soft

Operational Research. The soft modeling methods were a reaction to the inability of traditional methods of solving hard problems in complex social systems, using inappropriate mathematical methods as linear programming, queuing theory, regression analysis and simulation, all essentially linear static losing the richness inherent in various systems, among it is the service operations. The new frontier of knowledge in relation to services has a vacant space for research online, considering not only the creation of mathematical models and use them, but also the relevance of nonquantifiable aspects such as those found in social systems. Services are primarily produced and consumed in the presence of people and, as mentioned above, the heterogeneity and variability of services obviate the use of traditional techniques of operational research, opening space for tools as the soft systems methodology, cognitive mapping and system dynamics. The computational organization theory: Services are highly dependent on people to add value. The disciplines of organizational behavior should focus on both service providers and the clients or consumers. The queue management, for example, requires a more careful analysis considering the psychological effects caused on the client when the queue is not respected or relocated. In this sense, organization theory uses computational simulation tools to represent the behavior of complex organizational systems and examine it from different production scenarios and alternatives. Thus, some options are presented for the representation of organizational systems, such as discrete event simulation (Discrete-event Simulation DES), the continuous or dynamic simulation and simulation-based agents. Service as an Experience: Currently, customers looking for services that meet needs beyond those related to the service itself. This trend relates to the fact that customers also want to take memorable and enjoyable experiences of services beyond its basic function. Among examples of this type of service, we can mention parks or cafes, where suppliers of these services begin to realize that there are competitive advantages to offer experiences with the basic functions of their services. One of the relevant factors as previously mentioned are the new technologies and their use in developing more competitive products.

Serving as a network system of value creation : The service is considered as a system composed of people technologies and organizations. These organizations create networks of collaboration, creating value on the service operations. One of the trends developed was called outsourcing - outsourcing English word formed by the words out and source, or external source. Outsourcing services across the value chain is linked to the effectiveness of strong partnerships with no legitimate abdication of responsibilities and prioritizing the balance of forces. This requires new collaborative approaches involving processes, available technology, staff and new working relationships. Outsourcing also represents a gain in quality, were customers enjoy the benefits of the solutions developed jointly by the department and the organization takes advantage of relying on the expertise of the partner. Finally, more recent studies reinforce that outsourcing of services depends heavily on both the organization and inserted in outsourcing, and value creation to offer the customer, depends on the joint action of this partnership relationship.

Conclusion
Through the research note that providing the concept of quality has to be applied more carefully, since services are intangible products and are consumed at the time when both are produced, not having to correct faults before they impact the customer. Most companies are in search of quality, since that's what customers are looking for. But sometimes the company has the perception that quality and customers do not perceive it. Therefore it is important to apply a tool for measuring the quality of services provided.

Bibliography

Cook, Sarah 5th edition (2008) Customer Care Excellence: How to create an effective customer focus. Payne, Adrian (2006) Handbook of CRM: Achieving excellence in customer management. Evenson, Renee (2007) Customer Services: 101 ways to Guarantee great perfomance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer_service