High Performance Organizations care about their customers. This is reflected in the quality of the customer service which is provided. The Future of Customer Interactions shows you the way to become high performing, to outperform competitors and to provide high performance customer service.

Service and attitude
Customer service can be seen as an activity which expresses the performance or quality of an organization. Good customer service is an attitude which shows that an organization really cares about the customer. Therefore customer service is an important part of the so-called high performance organizations (HPO’s): organizations which financially and non-financially outperform their competitors over a period of at least five to ten years. Within such organizations customers are positioned in the center and all employees do whatever is necessary to please those customers. That means that HPO’s welcome everything which may help them to improve the service they offer to their customers.

The Future of Customer Interactions
The fact that you are reading the Future of Customer Interactions, indicates that you are moving in the right direction to transform your organization into a HPO. Not just because you want to learn how to improve customer service, but because you have picked up this book. The CIRC Foundation has succeeded very well in applying research to identify and describe the trends that show the increasing importance of customer service. Added to that, the CIRC Foundation also provides the reader with a large number of tips and suggestions for improving customers service.

Towards High Performance Customer Service
One of the reasons for which I started my HPO-research five years ago, was that I had enough of organizations which were only providing me with poor service and that I hoped to find the secret of how service could be improved. I am convinced that after reading the Future of Customer Interactions you will have found that secret and will belong to those who actually can and will deliver improved customer service. You are placing the call center in the central place which this department deserves. According to you, the customer service manager is of importance to the organization and you listen to him. You recognize the green trend and actually act accordingly. You really are more interested in retaining your current customers, then in gaining new customers at the expense of everything. You do apply flexible labor. And therefore you will join the ranks of the HPO’s!

André de Waal MBA Ph.D
Associate Professor, Maastricht School of Management
Academic director Center for Organizational Performance


The Future of Customer Interactions is the third quarterly publication of Customer Interaction Research Center. The book describes the results of research among general management and marketing, sales en services management. For more information, visit CIRC-Foundation.com or contact dr Frans Plat, F.Plat@chello.nl.

The research of the CIRC Foundation is supported by SNT, Unamic/HCN, The Selfservice Company and Clockwork.