DEVELOPMENT AND FIELD-TESTING OF PERFORMANCE CRITERIA FOR CUSTOMER-SERVICE PERSONNEL IN THE CREDIT/CHARGE CARD BUSINESS

Abstract

"Quality may not be what you think it is," says Philip B. Crosby. a fervent advocator of customer-service management. The problem with quality management is not what people do not know about it, but what they think they know. The development of appropriate performance criteria for service personnel is therefore crucial to achieving service excellence. This study will address the issue in the context of the credit / charge card industry where quality service has been charged as the ultimate benefit ( Arnold, 1988/89 ). This study aims to identify and compare the quality service expectations of managers, customer-service personnel and cardholders. It also serves to assess the extent to which customer-service personnel are meeting their perceived performance standard and whether a general customer-service training program would bring forth these performances. Five service criteria were identified through extensive literature review. They are reliability/trustworthiness, responsiveness, communication, mannerism, and knowledge. These service criteria and their associated attributes were subsequently field-tested with three groups of stakeholders - managers, customer-service personnel ( both were from the credit / charge card business) and cardholders. Descriptive statistics (median percentage distribution), as well as nonparametric tests (Kruskal-Wallis, Mann-Whitney. Wilcoxon Signed-Rank, Spearson Correlation) were used in the analysis. Findings showed that there was a general consensus on the validity of the identified performance criteria. Among the three groups, cardholders held different view from managers and customer-service personnel on some and all of the identified criteria respectively. It was also recognised that customer-service personnel could decipher well the principal needs of cardholders while managers lacked this perception. Service personnel's assessment of their own performance showed a deficiency in meeting two criteria against their perceived performance standard. The learning constructs from a general customer-service training program carried only moderate correlation with all five performance criteria. Results indicated the approval for the adoption of the identified criteria as valid yardsticks of quality service performance in the credit / charge card business. Feedback from customer-service personnel is a good source for identifying customers' needs and should be taken seriously when implementing quality service program. The service personnel's desire to deliver a service at a higher level than cardholder's expectations complement well with the industry's pursuit of service excellence. Nevertheless, upgrading of technical support system and service personnel's participation in relevant customer-service training program may help to achieve that objective. Training modules on customer-service should be carefully designed to specifically address each service criterion.