Customer touch-points

The strategy ofthe business has avital connection to the virtual service encounter. If the strategy is one of low service integration, then the business will not be delivering high levels of value-added service, but rather will deliver more standard service offerings. The service value chain network virtual encounter dimensions house the Web site and its visible interface. This interface offers customer touch-points whereby the customer may interact, and may seek (or demand) services from the business. 

Our core purpose at The Home Depot is to improve everything we touch. Retailing is a tough game, and to survive - and thrive - we must deliver on our brand promise at every touch point. In other words, what we tell our customers must be exactly what we execute, with no disconnects between what people see in our advertisements and what they experience in our stores. If we run a TV commercial about a father and son building a treehouse and picking out the lumber at The... 

The guiding principle of metric development is to have a stable system or process to collect, review, and draw conclusions. All metrics should be developed with stakeholders input taking into account the requirements and needs of the customers. This includes the touch points of the downstream quality processes. Without this input and understanding metrics may be developed within a silo and hold little value, causing both frustration at the leadership as well as the staff level. Without proper... 

Project metrics should be identified to measure the actual benefit of the change versus the expected result following the implementation. Many times, corporations implement a change and move on to the next project without fully understanding whether or not the changes achieved the desired result. A project that does not achieve the expected benefits can lead to an ineffective process, conflicts with associated touch points with other processes, or frustration from staff and customers. 

The operational, services, and customer component areas are integrally connected in the modem service value chain network. Data is pooled, shared, exchanged, and cross-concept applied (between customer servicing, operations, and business strategies) to provide new learning and new customer solutions. The component areas come together at the service encounter touch-point . The customer receives the business s demand-driven, appropriate, approximated, value-added set of services. This mix is intelligently sourced and retrieved from its networked combinations of databases. 

Efficient design of the Web site (with the use of appropriate technologies) may reduce customer cycle-time (customer Web site access time to source, retrieve, and absorb desired information) (Malcinski, Dominick, Hartrick, 2001 Cutler Sterne, 2002), reduce bottlenecks, and possibly improve Web site effectiveness. Thus touch-point information trade-rates between the customer and the business service value net-woik remain dependent variable areas that may be improved. 

The model adopted in the 1960s can be depicted by two fuimels with the small ends touching each other. These small ends lepiesent the only point of interface between the customer and the supplier sales on the suppher side and purchasing on the other (see Figure 1.1). 

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