Introduction
Today’s market is highly saturated with the same type of goods and services. In order to behold reliable positions in the market, companies need to attract and retain customers’ attention. Brands must evoke emotions and impress customers to remain ahead of the competition. It is also necessary to constantly maintain contact with customers and strive to provide a positive customer experience when interacting with the company. The focus on the customer allows the organization to develop and increase revenue. This type of service is called customer service and includes many different aspects (Goodman, 2019). Any successful customer-focused organization needs to choose the leadership approach to realize customer-oriented services (Lucas, 2014). Strategic leadership can be an efficient method of advancing a particular strategy in the case of customer services. This approach makes excellent customer service a top priority. Strategic leadership significantly impacts customer services by identifying the organization’s strategy, ideology, and culture, including customer-related behavioral, communication, and loyalty-formation methods.
Customer Service Leadership
Customer service leadership is structural – the chosen approach should help the company to gain a competitive advantage through the customer’s interest orientation. It is more productive for the company’s performance when employees have a customer service mindset (Lewis, 2017). Such an approach is called the service-focused culture, which includes a highly structured approach to managing employees to achieve a particular result in customer service (Lewis, 2017). In other words, in order to provide successful customer-oriented services, enhancing the whole organizational structure is required. Achieving such changes can be gained through developing the corporative culture, which includes such values as loyalty formation through communication and behavioral styles. The leader is the mediator between customer services and corporative culture, which strives for success through motivating and guiding the employees. Therefore, the leadership approach is essential in customer service.
Customer Service
The theoretical understanding of customer services allows one to state which aspects are vital for organizational success. Customer service is a set of measures for customer service, with the help of which a businessman either eliminates potential problems from the sales process or thinks out ways to solve them in advance (Lucas, 2014). Only businesses whose operating model is based on dumping and providing the lowest prices can survive without customer service. In other cases, the company has to implement service standards to create a loyal base of regular customers. Customer service is the help that the company provides to its customers. It is necessary to assist the client in taking the next step in interacting with the company.
Customer service is not limited, for example, to scripts for sellers. It is a set of standards that consider the client’s experience at every stage of interaction (Lucas, 2014). Customer services also address the issue of creating a positive customer experience. This is a comprehensive value approach of the brand to the client. In order to provide the client with a positive experience, the leader needs to understand the customer’s path at every step of interaction with the company: from information or ordering on the site to working with returns. All the breakdowns and service recoveries should be managed in accordance with the company’s values, which are centered on the customers’ interests. The approach to customer service may differ depending on the type of business. Still, in one way or another, specific points serve as a universal basis for maintaining customer service at the proper level. Among these factors are loyal employees, feedback, corporate culture, individual approach, and leadership approach. The last factor is one of the main ones since the previous aspects depend on it.
The Role of Customers: The Successful Customer Services
Customers are the primary source of income for the company. They create demand for goods and services, evaluate their quality, and share feedback with other potential consumers. In the end, the results of the activities of a commercial organization depend on the degree of their satisfaction. The central element of relationship marketing is the customer value perceived by customers on the one hand and the satisfaction of their needs on the other hand. The positive experience of interacting with the company is more comprehensive than repeat visits or transactions. Customer shares their experience in surveys, reviews, online comments, and in person to bring new customers to a particular business. In other words, the general success, income, performance, aim to posture, and business strategy of the company directly depend on the customers’ needs.
Customer Service Culture and Leadership Approach
Depending on its strategic goals, the company may choose one or another option for the formation of a corporate culture. This, ultimately, will determine the experience received by customers. To evaluate corporate culture, look at how it is people-oriented, in particular, employees and customers. It is the employees who always interact with the customers. They are the first to hear their problems and difficulties. Employees observe the reactions and can assess whether everything is going well or if there is a failure somewhere (Lucas, 2014). Moreover, they can not only recognize the problem but also offer solutions. In other words, the company’s mission and culture are realized through communication between employees and clients.
In order to advance the particular company’s ideology or culture, which shapes customer-oriented services, a suitable leadership approach is essential. Lucas (2014) states that leadership is crucial to service success. A service culture should be developed by the company executives who understand the needs of the company and accesses the long-perspective goals and development spheres. Leaders are responsible for designing specific ways of culture forming and communicating the vision to employees. Such an approach can help establish solid relationships with the customer through employees (Lucas, 2014). In other words, the role of leadership strategy is vital because it allows for building relationships with the employees and further providing high-quality customer services.
Communication and Leadership
Leadership communication is a set of skills and tools that help a leader communicate effectively with others, including employees, customers, partners, and the media. This type of communication is not only formal communication related to official duties but also informal. The development of personal relationships and the strengthening of emotional ties are achieved through building a solid connection with the customers and employees. Communication is a vital factor in a successful customer service leader.
There are two primary types of communication that any leader should be aware of and utilize to ensure clear communication with employees and customers. The first type is verbal, which establishes the speaking and thought-formation patterns. Using the customer-centered communicational style is more rational, which will leave a favorable impression on the client (Lucas, 2014). The second type of communication is called nonverbal. It includes body language, facial expressions, posture, and many other factors which can help the leader to adjust communication and convey particular ideas (Lucas, 2014). According to practical research, nonverbal communication helps the leadership establish authority and build more trustful relationships with employees and customers (Wisankosol, 2018). Another vital theme related to the communication issue is listening skills, ensuring the leader can meet the customer’s needs. It is essential for advancing the corporative culture which was defined above. The ability to listen opens the gift of persuasion and promotes effective communication. Good listening skills earn the respect of interlocutors, provide a motivational boost to team members, and increase the effectiveness of any interaction.
In addition, a person who knows how to listen notices the interlocutor’s emotions, such as concerns and fears, takes them into account, and responds to them promptly. Such an approach may contribute to a better understanding of the customer and adjust the company’s values to improve customer-oriented services. In the scope of communication and leadership, it is also vital to mention the behavioral styles applied in communication. Behavioral styles are often considered approaches to reacting to particular events during the interaction of people (Lucas, 2014). There are various patterns with which the leader should be ready to collaborate, such as decisive, rational, and others (Lucas, 2014). It is essential to learn how to cooperate with people of different behavior patterns and convey the main culture-related topic relevant to the company.
Customers’ Loyalty and Leadership Approach
In order for the company’s profit to grow, it is necessary to increase the number of regular customers. To do this, the company needs to work with customer loyalty. Customer service affects loyalty contributing to retaining customers and thus increasing revenues. At the same time, loyalty is a positive attitude of a customer towards a company, store, or brand resulting from a positive customer experience (Ian, 2022). Loyalty arises from the company’s efforts and conscious and purposeful actions toward the client. The primary motivation of a genuinely loyal client is a sense of community, belonging to the chosen ones. The buyer should share the views and values of the company.
Developing a base of loyal customers is challenging and requires constant attention. Moreover, the realization of such a goal requires the consolidation of all the efforts of the company. Increasing efficiency requires a thoughtful and effective strategy to organize a service for each client. Loyalty itself is heterogeneous. Several levels can be distinguished from it, starting from the negative zone and the lack of loyalty. To improve customer loyalty, every company must honestly assess how loyal customers are to it. This will help the leader choose methods and tools to increase customer loyalty.
In other words, the clients’ loyalty can be achieved primarily through identifying a specific strategy. The realization of the identified strategy, including the company’s value, mission, and cultural assets, is a complicated task that is part of the leader’s responsibilities. Therefore, choosing the leadership approach should be accurately suited to the needs of the company, meeting the interests of its customers. As one of the most comprehensive leadership approaches, strategic leadership can be discussed as a tool for forming a positive customer experience and increasing loyalty.
General Understanding of Strategic Leadership
An important condition for the successful implementation of strategic management in the organization is the use of the mechanism of strategic leadership. Management personnel responsible for strategic direction is assigned to perform many leadership roles in the field of entrepreneurship, strategy, administration, and control (Bhasin, 2021). It is expected in some cases that implementing leadership qualities is only possible by maintaining an authoritarian approach to management. In other instances, a collegial approach is required to reach a decision. There are cases when the leader must listen to different opinions and devise a compromise solution.
The main element of strategic management is the leader, who is responsible for the strict and consistent performance of the company’s functions. This performance, ultimately, should lead to the implementation of a long-term strategy (Bhasin, 2021). The leader is, as a rule, the ideological inspirer and one of the prominent participants in the development of the system. In many ways, the effectiveness of its implementation depends on his will.
Strategic leadership implies developing and implementing a strategy, the purpose of which is to systematize all production processes, coordinate the interests of all parties involved to minimize chaos, and understand the ultimate strategic priorities of the company. Strategic leadership is an essential element of strategic workforce management (Birnbaum, 2019). The leader comes up with the idea of the need for strategic transformations. The leader selects a team, builds an organizational structure and a decision-making system, determines strategic tools and plans, motivates the team, and monitors and controls. Thus, strategic workforce management’s other elements and functions pass through strategic leadership. The performance of the company depends on the effectiveness of its activities.
Aims of Strategic Leadership
The degree of acceptance by the staff of strategic changes directly depends on the leadership qualities of its leader. The leader must be able to motivate employees to come up with innovative ideas and proposals that can be useful for the company’s strategy. Secondly, he must be able to hear these proposals. A strong leader does not act as a brain for the group, some independent decision-makers, or those seeking agreement (Lewis, 2017). If the team leader gives his own opinion at the beginning of the discussion, the group generates fewer ideas and makes less successful decisions. However, the optimal decision is made if the leader restrains himself by simply facilitating the conversation without imposing his views and only expressing them at the end of the meeting.
The effectiveness of a leader, who is entrusted with the role of a strategic executive, largely depends on the ability to accept and understand the general policy of the company’s development. The manager or leader needs to share the organization’s approach to ensure the opportunity to apply maneuvers adequately to the situation. The responsibilities of a strategic leader include not only the reaction to strategic changes and their implementation but also the need to anticipate the very fact of such changes. To optimize the strategy and improve it, various tools of an entrepreneurial nature can be used, differing in that the initiative for their application comes from the management of the organization and is not forced (Lewis, 2017). An example of such tools is research aimed at studying the problematic aspects of the activity and implementation of the strategy that requires adjustment.
The Impact of Structural Leadership on Customer Services
Strategic leadership positively affects not only the applying strategic changes and the management of the performance of the personnel. There is a strong correlation between customer services and strategic leadership. The elaboration of the strategy allows one to focus on customer service and follow particular steps. Strategic thinking skills can help the leader establish the operations’ priorities. It can be noted that the strategic leadership applied to customer services is built upon the customer experience vision (Birnbaum, 2019). Such an approach helps to prioritize the clients’ experience and enhance the responses to feedback quality. Structural leadership allows advancing the value enhancement strategy — this approach centers on achieving the high quality and utility of customers’ services (Omale, 2022). Therefore, the strategy design and following are significant aspects of strategic leadership. Converting and managing the values through strategy contributes to more opportunities to increase customer service quality.
A strategy in the scope of strategic leadership can be defined as a plan of action designed to achieve a long-term or general goal. The customer engagement strategy should reflect and support the overall business strategy but be specific enough to guide customer service developments and decisions in the right direction (Birnbaum, 2019). Consumer expectations are evolving quickly, and innovation is the reason for this. The experience that customers have in any organization shapes their perceptions. An effective customer service strategy must have the support of senior management. A successful customer engagement strategy helps prioritize service, product, and process improvements (Lucas, 2014). An effective customer engagement strategy leads to results that matter and can be measured. These may include increasing profits, market share, interactions with customers and employees, and others. Realizing any strategy, especially customer-focused ones, requires a specific leadership approach to convey the company’s values and aims for the employees and customers (Miller, n.d.). Thus, strategy design and strategic leadership positively affect customer services opening new opportunities and spheres for development.
The Real-life Example
A successful business often applies the strategic leadership approach. Strategies vary depending on the company, but the leader’s qualities are similar. Strategic leaders, honing skills in practice, need a fair amount of autonomy. The manager must skillfully delegate tasks from top to bottom, enabling employees to make decisions and bear responsibility for the result. Such a management model increases the collective intelligence and resilience of the enterprise to change. For example, in the Dutch medical organization Buurtzorg, most decisions are made by nurses – members of autonomous medical teams with no more than ten people in the group (The Buurtzorg Model, n.d.). There is no middle manager or supervisor in the company. As a result, patient satisfaction is among the highest in the Netherlands (The Buurtzorg Model, n.d.). Creating channels for discussing ideas differs from the traditional management system when decisions are descended from the top. When the decision-making hierarchy is respected, the manager is tempted to block the innovative idea of a lower-ranking employee, which leads to the total eradication of initiative.
Another example of structural leadership based on ideology is management at Patagonia. Patagonia, a manufacturer of high-quality outdoor clothing, is known for its various environmental sustainability efforts (Deshmukh, 2021). The example of this company is a real case illustrating the challenging experience of building a solid company based on shared values and a powerful ideology. It is based on a development strategy and a powerful leadership arsenal.
The purpose-driven strategy centered on creating useful eco-clothes allows the company to establish a loyal client base. The managers and leaders of the company convey the values and ideology clearly, allowing them to find customers who share similar views on the issue of clothes creation (Deshmukh, 2021). The famous advertisement, which offered customers to avoid buying the company’s products to preserve nature, increased the income by thirty percent (Deshmukh, 2021). This is the perfect example of how structural leadership in the sphere of customer service works.
The company’s leaders had a particular ideology and used the advertisement and the employees. The business conveyed its values to the customers, which created a connection (Cuong & Mai, 2021). The issue of environmental threats is a problem of concern for many people today. Customers considered the company’s authority and shared the intention to preserve nature. As a result, when needed, customers decided to buy from Patagonia, which shows a high level of the loyalty formation process. In other words, the direct connection between the urgent customers’ needs and the company’s ideology was drawn. The mentioned examples show the successful realization of strategic leadership and its positive impact on customer services.
Conclusion
The structural leadership’s impact on customer service is significant. Excellent customer services are practically only possible with the proper strategy and the people ready to advance it. Structural leadership impacts the quality of communication, and the ideology conveyed through the path of leader-employees-customers. It also helps to form the loyalty of the customers, which is the essential basis of any business stability. Customer-focused organizations usually implement strategic leadership as a tool to enhance the quality of customer services. The effectiveness of organizational activities can be achieved through implementing structural leadership. Thus, this research shows that the impact of this type of leadership approach on customer service is ultimately positive.
References
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