سطح خدمات لجستیک مشتری در لهستان؛ تغییرات بین سال های 1993 و 2001

Customer service plays an important role in companies acting in new market economies of Central Europe. Assessment of customer service is possible while adopting different standards reflecting various aspects of that service. This paper presents results of surveys of Polish companies in the period 1993–2001. Those surveys show that Polish manufacturers changed their attitudes towards customer service and its competitive advantage aspects. They are aware of growing customer requirements and adopt sets of standards to evaluate that service. However, several drawbacks can be indicated in the field of practical use of those standards such as low quality or sporadic reports and accidental use.

Several years of market economy functioning in Poland has brought about many tremendous and profound changes in operations of Polish companies. Narrowing profit margins and growing market segmentation meant that the managers in Polish companies slowly started becoming aware of the fact that a business that is successful in the long term is one that provides for the needs of its customers better than its competition. Therefore, one of the major problems in the near future of Polish companies would concern strategy and management of customer service. It has already become the “modus operandi” of manufacturing companies. However, the desire for extensive growth of sales seems to prevail while dealing with demand constraints. The principles of modern logistics management become more and more popular, but the precise tools and methods for managing effectively the flow of goods are not common knowledge to the majority of managers as yet. Inventory policies, inventory control and managing precise relations of inventories to required logistics customer service levels still remain more a theory than practice in these manufacturing companies. Periodical surveys of customers service levels and their management carried out by the author examine basic changes from 1993 till 2001. The analysis has been based on samples of manufacturing companies picked in a random manner from typical Polish companies operating in the southern part of Poland. The size of sample in 1993 was 52 companies (Kisperska-Moroń, 1996) and 87 companies in 2001. Samples from 1993 and 2001 did not include exactly the same companies since the objective of the research was not to follow customer service change in a particular group of companies. The basic goal was to find out what is the average picture of customer service level in 2001 when compared to the initial period of transformation in the beginning of the 1990s. However, four particular branches of companies out of the whole sample have been compared: metal, metallurgical, chemical and light industry. In the sample surveyed in the year 2001 electronic and engineering industry have been distinguished since companies belonging to those branches formed larger data group than in 1993.

This paper has not been aimed at proving specific research hypotheses concerning the changes of customer service in the period 1993–2001. The paper intended rather to present the general drawbacks and obstacles that have to be faced by many of the Polish companies on their way to efficient customer service. The major drawbacks in the area of customer service are as follows: • lack of proper knowledge in manufacturing companies about the real expectations of their customers due to inadequate information systems and neglection of proper customer service data bases, • too much confidence in company's own success and a sort of natural abilities to satisfy customers’ demand, • missing tradition and lack of professional tools for management of customer service, • conservative management methods and philosophies or a simple absence of knowledge of modern logistics management concepts. Generally, changes of concepts in customer service in the period 1993–2001 reported by surveyed companies show correct tendencies. Manufacturers are aware of growing customer requirements, saturation of markets, constantly complicated ways of achieving competitive advantages, etc., and therefore try to multiply efforts aiming at better measurement of their customer service abilities. Hence a larger portion of surveyed manufacturers adopt different techniques of defining and measuring various aspects of customer service. However, the quality of adopted standards and their relevance to actual customer requirements on the market could be a subject of professional discussion. Also a missing habit of constant analysis of reported customer service indicators suggest the absence of coherent and complex customer service concepts in many companies as well as lack of proper managerial skills in the use of modern techniques of customer service management and analyses. Progress in that area could be achieved through intensive training and education of acting managers and via education schemes preparing future managers for their jobs (Kisperska-Moroń, 2003).