Service in Sporting Goods

Service in Sporting Goods

Abstract

This study of the customer service for this specific sporting goods store will analyze customer's needs for their preferable shopping experience. This study compares and contrasts this store to other national chains in an attempt to quantify the quality of service given and what customer service means to each customer and what qualities they find most important. What we found was that in order to stay on top of the highly competitive market of sporting goods your company must constantly be aware of the consumers’ needs and build relationships to increase customer loyalty.

Service in Sporting Goods

Customer service has come a long way in the past few decades. Prior to the 1990’s the only way to achieve dialect with a company was through a telephone (Morris, 2013). Most customer service agents knew this and if they were having a bad day then your experience was most likely not pleasant because you needed them more than they needed you. From the late 1990’s until now with the advent of the internet we progressed to email, chat, and now social media (Morris, 2013) and now customer service has become a priority for companies since information can spread like a wildfire and a negative review or comment about your organization seems to be worth more than 10 positive reviews or comments and can damage a company’s reputation.

Customer service represents who the company is. Products are part of the package. Most products are non-exclusive and customer loyalty, which means customers will re-purchase products along with recommending the products and/or service to other people, is derived from good customer service and not just products and pricing (Westfall, 2013). One local survey stated that 86% of customers will pay a higher price for better customer service. (Westfall, 2013). An extreme and personal example is when I had Verizon cellular service. In my area Verizon hands down provides...