Generally speaking my freight arrives on time; but I do not consider this to represent exemplary service. Exemplary service is when something more is offered that really makes a difference to me and may stand out from my experience with other service providers: exemplary service is something the carrier community do not appear to offer, even when you pay a premium.

For decades the lines have been telling us all, that offering high customer service levels is paramount, and has been a basic fundamental of their business models. They say that service is what differentiates each of them from one another and what influences and drives customer choice. They say that this is vital in a world where good service is essential for world trade to survive.

All this is reinforced with the messages I see on the walls when I visit their offices, and in publications or on their web sites: Customer First; Striving for Excellence in Customer Service; Customer is king; Dedicated to Service; Winner of Good Service Award.

Over the years the lines should have accumulated vast amounts of information about their customers and their businesses; experience and knowledge should have been gained which should have presented them a fantastic avenue for developing new services, improving others and raising the standard of service through the evolution of best practice.

Advances in technology and communications and a move by some towards smaller, more robust, smarter and more efficient service teams should have sown it all up.

It should have become easy to move beyond the offer of a standard level of customer service. The time one notices how highly customer service ranks in a company is when things go wrong. This is the time when the customer really needs customer service to resolve the problems and then to ensure they don’t happen again. Yet with regularity the same old service issues keep reappearing:

- little if any warning of pending shortfalls so that it is too late to do anything about it;
- incorrect transport documents;
- inaccurate invoices;
- poor communication and
- an overflowing disputes tray!

One failure, even a small one, can result in huge on costs. All responsible shippers will recognise that things can go wrong; however with better levels of customer service, the risk and impact can be significantly reduced.

Issues are raised locally, often without acknowledgment further up the chain where things could be corrected once and for all. As a result carriers and shippers are wasting vast amounts of effort and resource and often concluding that it would be far easier just to accept the poor service or change the carrier, only for the process to begin all over again.

Top executives within the liner industry say shippers are mostly to blame for any decline in service: we allegedly want everything for nothing; we make unrelenting and unreasonable demands on the carriers and squeeze margins and, therefore we should only expect to get what we pay for.

Yet when there are full ships and rising prices as we have today on the Far East-Europe trades, for example, shippers will not see an improved service. When ships are full, freight is left on the quayside. Too often, the decision to shut-out the freight is taken locally and the first time shippers tend to hear about it could be when the ship has sailed or even when it has arrived. Then, it is likely shippers will be left with a host of extra costs of these failures, (out of stock, loss of sales, credibility, air freight etc..). This is not good customer service. Ironically, the customer focus is actually better on backhaul routes, because suppliers have to really work much harder to pick up customer support.

I attended a conference of the European Shippers Council recently where the key message was about taking responsibility in the supply chain. I for one am ready, willing and able to take responsibility for helping shipping lines and other transport providers in the chain manage operations more efficiently and find ways where an exemplary service can be provided with all the collective benefits. Raising freight rates without any noticeable service benefit is not the answer: I cannot sell or justify that to my Board; they do not accept it in any other part of the business, so they will not accept it for freight transport.

The price of shipping is currently driven by the market; as advised by one carrier CEO at the ESC conference. We should be looking to change this: shipping should be a service, not a commodity, so we have much to do in order to turn this around. Lines should compete on service and price and not just price alone. Finding new ways to compete must be a high priority for the lines and now is the time to start looking.

This blog was written and produced by Steven Cox (Shipper) 29th October, 2007

Labels: customer service, liner shipping