The young lady eyed the office chairs doubtfully. Crossing the office furniture show space, she spotted a comfortable looking, burgundy colored secretarial chair sandwiched between a massive desk and a row of metal filing cabinets. After a little tug-of-war with the object of her attention, the lady finally freed the chair from its tight confinement and tentatively sat. Much too hard. The next one she tried was comfortable enough, but the attached price tag was not. Looking around for assistance and finding none, she wondered where they kept the ones on sale, the ones she had seen in this morning's newspaper insert. She had even double checked the name of the store to be sure she had the right one - Office This, Office That, the two were so similar that she had trouble distinguishing between them.

    After what seemed like a two-mile hike through isles and isles of office supplies, the young lady finally found a store employee busy at stocking reams of paper. Her polite inquiry as to the whereabouts of the sale merchandise garnered first a deep sigh, then a curt "by the front door". The young lady did not even glance at the merchandise displayed by the front door as she used it to exit. She did, however, glance up at the huge red and white sign that dominated the parking lot.

She remembered the name.

    An article which appeared in the Journal of Managerial Issues in 1995 described an encounter such as the one above as a "service encounter", defining this as "the direct or indirect interaction between a service provider, or firm, and its customer" (D'Souza & Menon 1995; p. 481). The article stated findings that focused on the customer being an active, not passive, participant in these encounters and emphasized the fact that the customer should be considered as having as much an active role in the company as an employee (D'Souza & Menon 1995).

    A 1995 Marketing News survey revealed that the manner in which a company treated complaints was second only to product quality when it came to the purchase decisions of the consumer (Conlon & Murray, 1996).

    In other words, the old adage "the customer is always right" is one that businesses might do well to remember as they enter the twenty-first century. Confronted with steep competition and a flood of new competitors, modern businesses have found it a major struggle to obtain new customers while keeping the loyalty of those already obtained. This has forced them to seek new avenues in the areas of customer satisfaction and retention.

    In today's fast paced, competitive marketplace, new tools to help companies gauge the strength of their competitors and the loyalty and satisfaction have been developed. One such tool available to modern businesses is the services of a specialized market research firm such as Benchmarking Associates in Texas. This research firm uses its patented "Competitive Strength Inventory" method to help companies to become better acquainted with their target markets in order to know the best strategy to take in the area of customer retention(competitiveanalysis.com/components.html).