International Customer Service as a New Competitive Tool

This article examines the use of customer service as a competitive weapon in industrial markets. The database consists of respondents from industrial firms throughout the United States. While the majority of respondents indicated a willingness to use the service option, only a few had an organisational customer service philosophy as embodied in a written customer service policy statement. An analysis of the data concluded that firms with a written customer service policy were more likely to use customer service as a competitive weapon. Furthermore,these firms also assigned greater importance to respective customer service attributes.