Supply Chain Management

The ultimate aim of supply chain management is to satisfy the needs of the end-consumers. Companies are now realizing that they can distinguish themselves from their competitors on the basis of responsiveness, accuracy, ease of interaction and similar attributes -- collectively referred to as customer service.

In this chapter we touched upon various aspects of customer service from the perspective of supply chain management. First we understood the definition of customer service. Customer service can be defined as activities aimed at enhancing the product offer or facilitating the exchange process between a company and the customer.

Later we examined the three elements of customer service: pre-transaction elements, transaction elements and post-transaction elements. Then we discussed the different approaches for designing the customer service strategies. These are: understanding customer reactions to product or service failures (customer's response to stock outs), analyzing cost-revenue trade-off, activity based costing (ABC analysis), internal and external customer service audits and competitive position matrix.