Customer Service in Service Businesses

Economic activity in developed nations has changed significantly in recent years, shifting from predominantly manufacturing-based enterprises to the service sector. The service sector includes areas such as government, telecommunications, health care and hospitals, banking and financial services, insurance services, management consulting, retail, leisure, entertainment, hospitality, and travel and tourism. The service sector now constitutes around two-thirds of GDP in the developed countries (in Europe it is even higher, at around 70%). This means the term customer service has increasing importance, especially for the travel and tourism industry. There is no agreed-on definition of the term customer service but a reasonable starting point might be that used by the United Kingdom’s Institute of Customer Service: “the sum total of what an organisation does to meet customer ...