CHAPTER ONE

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Great customer services can improve customer retention and repeat business transactions with customers. “the more you engage with customers the clearer things become and the easier it becomes to determine what you should be doing, to satisfy the different customers who comes to patronize your business” (John Russell, president Harley Davidson). It is imperative to identify parameters which act as stumbling blocks, when it comes to rendering effective customer service to current and new customers, which if not taken seriously would dampen the marketers efforts to render effective customer service. Customer service is one of such parameters, which marketers used in retaining current customers and attracting and maintaining new customers.

The term customer service is defined as “anything to do various strategies is formulated to retain the customer and the key of it is to increase the service quality level. Service quality is particularly essential in the Supermarket services context because it provides high level of customer satisfaction, and hence it becomes a key to competitive advantage (Ahmossawi, 2001).

In addition, service quality has a significant impact on retailing success and performance (Mouawad and Kleiner 1996). Nowadays, service quality has received much attention because of its obvious relationship with costs, financial performance, customer satisfaction, and customer Retention. (Duncan and Elliot, 2002) Consumers all over the world have become more quality conscious; therefore customers.

Requirements for higher quality service have been increased (Lee, 2005). Service sector such as the supermarket is obliged to provide excellent services to their customers in order to have sustainable competitive advantage.

In spite of the criticality of service quality to businesses, measuring service quality causes, Difficulties to service providers, as of the unique characteristics of services: intangibility, Heterogeneity, inseparability and perishability (Douglas & Connor, 2003). In sight of this, Services need a distinctive framework for quality clarification and measurement. Among the Major frameworks, SERVQUAL model developed by Parasuraman et al. (1985; 1988) is most Preferred and widely used model for measuring service quality in the service industry.

Quality is such an important issue that it is considered a really significant concept in our real life. It is regarded as a strategic organizational weapon. And the pressing need of developing service Organizations and upgrading their services necessitates the measuring of service quality. This Asset in checking the quality progress and providing bases for improving it. As a result of Economic changes throughout history, the concept of ‘quality’ has changed. ‘Quality’ comes from the Latin word ‘Qualities’, which refers to the nature of a person or the nature of an object. In the Past Quality meant accuracy and perfection (Al-Dararkah, 2002).

The study of Lee et al. (2000) suggests service quality leads to customer satisfaction. To achieve a high level of customer satisfaction, most researchers suggest that a high level of service quality should be delivered by the service provider as service quality is normally considered an Antecedent of customer satisfaction. As service quality improves, the probability of customer Satisfaction increases. Quality was only one of many dimensions on which satisfaction was Based; satisfaction was also one potential influence on future quality perceptions (Clemes, 2008). Service quality is an important tool to measure customer satisfaction (Hazlina et al., 2011).

Empirical studies show that the quality of service offered is related to overall satisfaction of the customer. According to Jamal and Anastasiadou (2009), reliability, tangibility and Empathy positively related with customer satisfaction. Suleiman (2011) found that reliability, tangibility, responsiveness and assurance have significant and positive relationship with Customer satisfaction. Meanwhile empathy was found to have a significant and negative effect on Customer satisfaction .Moreover, the result of Ravichandran et al (2010) indicates responsiveness is the only significant dimension of service quality that affects the satisfaction of customers positively.

Customer retention in the supermarket sector has received utmost acknowledgment. (Ehigie, 2006). Some customers stopped patronizing the services of supermarket due to the fact that they spend more hours in trying to find what they are looking for, their complaints are not handled with urgency, and they are not given prior notice to provide their identification cards when going for their deliverables and they are not informed of any increase in service charges and rates which have caused them (customers) a lot of displeasure. Or a customer that enhances customer experience” (Harris 2000).The oxford dictionary refers to it as an act of assistance. A service is a basic or fundamental concept that accompanies the core offering, regardless whether the core offering is a tangible product or an intangible service. In this regards (customer service is defined as a service that accompanies the core product or services offering and is provided free of charge to customers. The question is who is a customer? That so much attention is given to him or her. According to Wikipedia in sales, commerce, and economics, a customer is the recipient of a good, service, product or an idea obtained from a seller, vendor, or supplier via a financial transaction nor exchange for money or some other valuable consideration.

A customer is an individual, group of individuals or an organization that receives or may receive goods, services, products or ideas from another individual or a company in return of value which can be money or anything of value. Customers form the back bone of business, usually as the customers are more, patronizing the business, the company, enterprise or firm will be making more profits and vice versa. Business needs customers to buy their products or services in order to continue production of goods and services in an enterprise over the long period of time. Before a customer purchases the products, the customer wants information about the product, price and availability of the product from the supplier (the time, place where the product is being sold); the marketer should be able, to provide this information without charging any amount to the customer.

 There are different types of customers that the marketer is going to be interacting with on a daily basis, they are differentiated based on their characteristics and buying behavior. Every business organization that wants to stay in the market in the long run period, must consider providing good customer service to this different groups of customers. We have the potential customers, loyal customers, new customers, discount customers, former customers, internal customers, external customers, intermediate customers, potential customer’s .Examples of customer services are, a patient’s relative wants a bill for payment from hospital, after the treatment is completed and the doctor has given the discharge note. Also a service department receives telephones and letters from dissatisfied customers and these are answered without charging any amount. Marketers often conclude by saying that, if the above customers services are prompt, efficient, helpful, they are called good customer service. The objective of giving superior customer service is to gain customer satisfaction, which is the key to customer satisfaction (kotler 2002)

On the other hand customer retention is the ability of a company producing certain product which is found in the market, to retain its customers that are the current customers and new customers over some specific period of time. A current customer of an enterprise is a customer who is purchasing the firms product at the moment. High customer retention means customers of the product or business tend to return to, continue to buy the firms products or in some other way helps in promoting the firms products.

 The goal is to build customer relationship and provide positive effect in the long term, stabilize and expand it. Customer retention is part of customer relationship management (CRM), it is aimed at the existing customers with the aim of maintaining these relationships and preventing any negative change that may affect the customer decision to buy in the future. Customer retention is an ongoing process, meaning that it takes time to win the trust of customers and eventually when the trust of the customer is won they become loyal to the firm or enterprise like in the case of Dove supermarket Yaoundé. In general there are several types of customer retention and can be divided into habitual retention, routine retention, and voluntarily retention.

Therefore there is the need for every marketer to realize that there is an effect of good customer service on the retention of customers in an enterprise. An enterprise is a business organization that deals with the production of goods and services and transforming this goods and services into semi-finished and finished products in order to make profit. It is worth noting that there are two types of enterprises. The profit making enterprise and the nonprofit enterprises. This research is out to find out the effect of customer service on the retentions of customers in the dove supermarket central region of Cameroon.

1.1PROBLEM STATEMENT.

Most companies, firms and enterprises such as the Dove supermarkets, faces the problem of poor customer service, which causes customers to be dissatisfied with the products and services which the company is offering. When a customer is dissatisfied, he or she may have no positive experience with the firm’s products, and it causes the customer to become disloyal, and start purchasing the products of other competitors and even encouraging friends and relatives to also start purchasing the competitors’ products. It is very necessary for all business organizations to search for effective measures, in implementing customer services in order to satisfy the different groups of customers market, and try offering better services than competitors do, in order to provide more satisfaction to the customers. There is therefore the need for the company to research on better ways in which they can satisfy the customers, in order to retain the customers in the long run period. Taking note of the fact that there is a lot of technological improvement in the business world of today, which has led customers seeking for new ways, that they can better gain more satisfaction.

1.2. RESEACH QUESTIONS

The main research question was to find out the effect of quality customer service on the retention of customers of dove supermarket Yaoundé.

1. What will be the effect of self-serve customer service, on the retention of customers in Dove supermarket Yaoundé?
2. What will be the effect of social media support services (face book, wasap, and twitter) on the in the retention of current and new customers in Dove supermarket Yaoundé?
3. What is the effect of live chart support service on the retention of customers in dove supermarket Yaoundé?
4. What are the effects of email support services and phone support services on the retention of customers in retaining new and current customers in Dove supermarket Yaoundé?

1.3. OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY.

The main objective of the study was to find out the effect of quality customer service on the retention of customers retention of dove supermarket Yaoundé.

1. To find out the effect of self-serve customer service on the retention of customers in Dove supermarket Yaoundé.
2. To evaluate the effect of social media support services (face book, wasap, and twitter) on the retention of current and loyal customers in Dove supermarket Yaoundé.
3. What is the effect of live chart support service on the retention of customers in Dove supermarket Yaoundé?
4. To find out the effects of email support services and phone support services on the retention of customers in Dove supermarket Yaoundé?