Customer service is often viewed as the primary interface between logistics and marketing. Discuss ...

Customer service is often the key link between logistics and marketing within an organization. If the logistics system, particularly outbound logistics, is not functioning properly and a customer does not receive a delivery as promised, the organization could lose both current and future revenue. Manufacturing can produce a quality product at the right cost and marketing can sell it, but if logistics does not deliver it when and where promised, the customer will not be satisfied.

The traditional role of customer service is at the interface between marketing and logistics. This relationship manifests itself in this perspective through the place dimension of the marketing mix, which is often used synonymously with channel-of-distribution decisions and the associated customer service levels provided. In this context, logistics plays a static role that is based upon minimizing the total cost of the various logistics activities within a given set of service levels, most likely determined by marketing.

However, logistics today is taking on a more dynamic role in influencing customer service levels as well as in impacting an organization's financial position. Again, appropriate examples here would include both Dell and Walmart that have both used logistics and customer service to reduce product prices, increase product availability, and reduce lead times to customers. These two organizations have gained an appreciation for the impact of dynamic logistics systems on their financial positions.