Will you ever believe that customer service and cost management can be interlinked. To tell you the truth; both these aspects if taken care off; in a well planned and efficient manner can be complimentary and so to say hand holding to one another while interacting with the customer. In layman's terms effective customer service module will focus solely on serving customers rather than boast about it by letting the entire world know. If you try and analyze the marketing spend of most of service related companies you would realize that instead of concentrating on customer service excellence; these companies are rather concerned on letting the entire world know that they have found out a new way of sneezing; not realizing it is not worthwhile for the customers to know about it. Going all out in promoting and advertising for s sub standard product or service might mean unnecessary expenditure which is not effective cost management. The learning that one gets here is that there should be more concentration on perfecting the service delivery function rather than wasting your energies on gimmicks.

The work force of a company or a service delivery function is one of the most important elements which will be able to find and justify the correct balance of exceptional customer service viz a viz effective cost management. Although successful companies or operations are run on systems rather than individuals; but it is the commitment of the individuals that makes the difference between and average and an exceptional service output. Utmost care should be taken while hiring the customer service team; especially the ones who would be interacting directly with the customer. These customer service employees are the face of the company and their attitudes and behaviors can make or break the situation in front of the customer for the business operation.

Often there is a myth that to run an effective service operation a lot of buzz and hype has to be created around the whole thing. Does it mean that only 7 or 5 star hotels would have the capacity of serving guests accommodation needs? That's not true. Had this been true; then the idea of low cost airlines would have never been successful. One should concentrate more on getting the product right rather than how to present a sub standard product. The amount of money spent on promoting a sub standard product can be better utilized or rather saved by perfecting the product.

Therefore: a no frills service delivery function can also be successful provided it caters to customer needs and requirements.

The catch here is to spend substantial amounts of money on training and skill development of the customer service employees rather than unnecessary advertising and rationalize every single penny spent. A well trained customer service employee would more often than not win a customer or a guest which would mean repeat business and profitability for the company. One should realize that a customer would only deal with a business operation if he finds value in it and every customer would have his or her own parameters in assessing the value; for some monetary value might be of more importance rather than the experiential or a more holistic view. The bottom line is when a customer will transact; that would reflect in the bottom-line of the company.

Another aspect here is that the service delivery function should focus more on what the customers want and thereby provide accordingly; rather than spend huge sums of money in a useless or unutilized service delivery aspect.

The focus of a service delivery function should be to use tools such as effective cost management in conjunction with exceptional customer service to provide that ultimate WOW experience to the guests.