As customers are becoming more sophisticated and increasingly more demanding, customer service is redefined and its roles changed.

Rapid technology advancement has brought added complexity and variety to different facets of customer service. Significant changes and improvements are made to enhance customer service quality and company productivity. Yet, the market competition and the chase to what is next seem never end.

Rapid changing market conditions, government regulations and de-regulations together with globalization of competition, corporations are constantly looking for creative, practical and result-oriented solutions to improve customer satisfaction and to both retain loyal customers and their own customer service staff.

Psychologists and other behavioral scientists in the West have enlightened corporations on many of the above. However, given the cultural differences between the West and the East, there are a lot of things we do not know. For example,

• What are the practices that work best among Chinese employees?
• What are the ways that can dramatically improve Chinese recipients' perception of the service?
• What are the ways that can improve Chinese providers' service quality?

Faced with these challenges, we often find ourselves not alone in looking for collaboration, strategic alliances and partnering with others to explore synergy, benchmarking to improve process and productivity, seeking sustainable competitive advantages.

Rarely can one corporation tackle all the challenges alone.