Unit 11 P4/M3

Unit 11 P4/M3

I will now explain what contributes to consistent and reliable customer service and analyse the importance of customer service to different businesses.

Customer service is important for all businesses. Having good customer service can lead to more new and regular customers and it leads to more sales and bigger profits. Customer service is also important for company’s image, reputation and reliability. 

To have good customer service it’s necessary that your internal and external customers are satisfied.

External customers are satisfied when:

1.       Their needs and expectations are met

2.       They have confidence in the service

3.       Believe that they received value for money

Internal customers are satisfied when:

1.       They receive accurate and consistent information

2.       Receive a good service from their colleagues

3.       They are satisfied with their job

Good customer service and customer satisfaction is important for all businesses and they can benefit from:

1.       Repeat business – word of mouth. When customers are satisfied with your company’s product, services and customer service they are more likely to spread a good word about you. This means that you’ll have free advertising and be able to attract more new and regular customers. If customers are not satisfied with your product, service or customer service they’ll probably inform their friends and relatives about that. Your company will have bad reputation, bad image and reliability, this means that you’ll lose many potential customers as no one will want to buy from you.

2.       Increased sales. If your customers are satisfied they can become your regular customers. They can also advertise your company by method of word of mouth and it’ll attract new customers.  When you’re gaining more new and regular customers you automatically sell more products.

Not providing good customer service can lead to very bad consequences:

Inconsistent and unreliable internal customer service (unsatisfied employees) will lead to your business not running smoothly – if employees are not happy with their job, they are not motivated to do it properly, provide good customer service for external customer, make as much sales as possible. Unhappy internal customers will not provide consistent and reliable customer service for external customers. If external customers will not be satisfied with the way they were treated by your staff they probably won’t come back to you again. It can also mean that they’ll inform others not to buy from you, so at the same time you’ll lose possible regular customers and won’t be able to make new customers. By not having enough customers your business will not make enough sales.  

Ways of providing consistent and reliable customer service

Knowing the scope of your job role

Internal customers should know the limits and responsibilities of their job role. They should not take on responsibilities that they’re not allowed to, as most of the time they won’t be able to cope with them.  They should also know when issues should be referred to a senior employee and not be stepping outside their area of authority. Employees should use their own initiative and they should understand what tasks they would be able to do themselves and what not.

Having good product and service knowledge

Internal customers should have good product and service knowledge, as it’s necessary to provide reliable and accurate information for external customers. They should also memorise and know where to locate information.

Knowing the types and quality of the business’s products and services

Internal customers have to have good knowledge about product or service range. They should also have an ability to advise external customers on the product or service using their personal knowledge, customer feedback and media reports.

Having a positive attitude and behaviour

Internal customers should have positive attitude and behaviour towards external customer and each other. They should behave courteously and professionally. It’s important as it’ll help to maintain good relationships between employees which will lead to good atmosphere in their work. It’ll also help to make external customers satisfied and provide them with a good experience, so they’ll want to buy from you again.

Having good timing skill

Internal customers should have good timing skills as it is very important when providing consistent and reliable customer service.  Employees should know and understand when to approach or call a customer. They should understand when customer needs their help and when not. If they’ll approach to help when customer doesn’t need to, it’ll make customer feel irritated and disturbed. If they won’t’ approach to help customers when they actually need help, customers may feel that no one cares and respects their needs, so they’ll be dissatisfied with customer service. Internal customers should also not be late for pre-arranged appointments or meetings, not be late for deliveries and return pre-arranged telephone calls. Good timing skill could help to increase company’s reputation and reliability for external customers.

Knowing how to deal with a lack of accessibility/availability of business products and services

Internal customers should know how to sympathise with a customer’s disappointment. If customer is unhappy that he can’t get his product or service, employee should know the ways how to keep situation positive. Internal customers should know, that even if they don’t have product or services that customer is asking for, they should still try to find alternative. Maybe that alternative doesn’t differ that much from the product or service that customer asked. External customer will be happy that staff was trying to help as much as possible. Staff should also inform their employer about the customer’s disappointment, so it’ll reduce possibility that anything similar will happen in a future. It’ll also be helpful to review product or service deficiencies.

Knowing how to meet the customer’s needs

It’s important that internal customers are trying to meet customer’s needs, as if their needs are not met they won’t’ probably come back to you again. Staff should identify customer’s needs by listening to the customer. Then staff should match customer’s needs to the business’s products or services and try to find the best solution for the external customer. It’ll also be helpful to check if the customer’s needs have been met, so external customer feels that he’s cared after.

Knowing how to work under pressure

It is important for internal customers to know how to work under pressure and deal with difficult situations that can happen anytime in any business. Knowing how to deal with these situations will help to run business smoothly.  In these situations staff should stay calm, don’t panic, do one task at a time, put tasks in order of urgency and work as fast as possible whilst maintaining professionalism.

Knowing how to deal with customer’s problem

Internal staff should have a good knowledge how to deal with different customer’s problems. Knowing how to do it will help to run business smoothly and keep calm working environment which will help to reach business goals and be productive. Internal customer should be ready to deal with any problems that customer may have. When doing that they should not interrupt the customer when they’re speaking, check if they have all the facts, do their best to help and if the problem is greater than the limits of their job role, they should refer the problem to a senior employee.

Codes of practice

All the businesses use codes of practice to regulate consistent and reliable customer service. They are guidelines or standards of service that customer expect. The codes include information how to deal with problems, information for external customers and information and guidelines for staff. 

Levels and types of Codes of Practice 

·         Industry codes of practice – codes of practice that remain similar for businesses in the same industries.

·         Organisational codes of practice – codes for a particular company

·         Professional codes of practice – drawn out by professional bodies e.g. solicitors, teachers, doctors.

·         Ethical codes of practice – e.g. fair-trade

unit11 p2.

Unit 11 p2

I will now outline the benefits of good customer service in computer shop.

There are three beneficiaries to good customer service – the customer, the business organisation and the employee.

Customer

Many customers in computer shop would expect to receive good customer service, which means:

·         Their needs and expectations have been met – e.g. customer found what he was looking for and for the price that he can afford.

·         They feel that they were treated with respect – staff listening and understanding about their needs, assisting and informing them about products, talking politely and with a nice manner.

·         They were informed about product – they were correctly informed about product or service specification, prices and etc.

·         They were given good advice and assistance

·         They were satisfied with their purchase – sales person clearly understood their needs and suggested the most appropriate solution

Organisation

If they received good customer service, they are satisfied with a product, feel treated with respect and etc., they are more likely to come back to the shop next time and spread a good word about a company. This leads that computer shop also benefits from good customer service. Benefits of good customer service in computer shop:

·         Enhanced reputation – this means they they’ll probably have more new and regular customers, which can lead to bigger profits.

·         Employee satisfaction – less sickness, bigger productivity at work, better attitude to work and better results.  Employees are happier doing their work, they are more motivated to do it right and sell more computers.

·         Meeting aims and objectives – e.g. breakeven in 1 year; expand a business in two years – open another shop.  It’s necessary for all companies to reach a real success in a business.

·         Bigger profits – being successful in a business will mean bigger profits. Providing good customer service means that you’ll have more customers, more customers means more sales and more sales means bigger profits. Having bigger profit can also help to expand business and earn even more money.

Employee

Employees should be treated well as internal customers and provide good customer service to external customers. They have great benefits from providing good customer service:

·         Positive feedback from customer –If employees provide good customer service they are more likely to receive good customer feedback and sell more products. This can also give them more motivation to do job properly and boost their self confidence.

·         Positive feedback from managers/peers – this shows that manager trusts and respects their work. It can also help them to increase their self confidence and have more motivation to sell more computers.

·         Personal pride at a job well done – employees are more satisfied about their work. 

·         Financial reward, promotion –knowing that they can be rewarded for doing good job can give motivation. If they provide good customer service, they are more likely to have more customers and sell more computers and this may lead to financial rewards or promotion.

Unit 11 M4/D2

Unit 11 M4/D2

a)      I will now link and analyse the value of monitoring and evaluating to the improvements that organisations might make to customer service.

It is very important for all businesses to constantly monitor and evaluate their customer service. Doing this can help to make significant improvements to customer service which can lead to very big success of a company.

Customer service is important for all companies. Good or bad customer service can directly affect company’s profits and sales. Monitoring and evaluating customer can help to understand weaknesses of company’s customer service and after understanding those weaknesses it is easier to make improvements. It is necessary to make improvements for customer service and understand your customer needs. If you don’t you’re automatically losing customers and profits.

Monitoring and evaluating customer service leads to Improvements to customer service, which leads to:

b)      I will now explain and analyse how an organisation can make improvements to customer service for customers.

Monitoring and evaluating customer service can help to make improvements to customer service for external customers. It is important to do that because all the profits and success of a company has a very big dependence on quality of customer service.  Very important thing to do is to monitor your customer service regularly, so when level sales is going down you can make a decision what to change easier. If quality of customer service is bad, number of external customers is getting lower so automatically level of sales and profits are getting lower as well. Bad quality service can affect more different aspects but it usually leads to failure of a company.

Organisation can make improvements to customer service for customers by improving their:

·         Quality of services – it can be done by improving materials used for products that are used in a service. It can also be done by improving customer service for employees, improving staff training. If your employees will be happier about their job and will gain more skills they will be able to provide higher quality services for external customers.

·         Quality of materials used for products – it has a big dependence on quality of products. People can usually see when product is made from cheap material and no one likes buying something that is low quality or will break in few days. Package of a product should also look good, as first impression is very important when deciding to buy a product or not.

·         Quality of products – it has a very big impact on the image of a company. Good quality of products also shows your companies reliability.

·         Delivery times- delivering time should be as specified or even faster. If people are not receiving their product when they were promised to, there’s very high possibility that they won’t order from you again and inform others not to do that as well.  Improving delivery times means more happy customers. It’ll also help to gain more new customers and regular customers.

·         Reliability- it is very important that your customers trust your services or products. If they like the way they are treated in your company or they like a product they bought from you they are more likely to firstly, become your regular customers and secondly,  to spread a good word about which will attract more new customers and increase your company’s reputation.

·         Premises – redecorating premises or relocating into new, bigger premises.  People are more likely to come into spacious and nice looking shop or office, it is more attractive than small and old looking premises. Changes are always attractive for customers.

c)       I will now explain how an organisation can make improvements to customer service for employees.

Staff is very important for all companies and their performance is directly related with sales and profits.

It is very important that staff feels values and respected for what they’re doing.  If people are not happy about their job they will not be motivated to work hard, make as much sales as possible and etc.  If staff is looked after they are more likely to feel better about their job and work harder, do their job with bigger responsibility which leads to increase of sales and bigger profits.   

Organization can improve customer service for employees by using the business management theory of Frederick Herzberg

Frederick Herzberg felt that employee job satisfaction could be achieved if they have:

·         Interesting work – if people don’t find their job interesting or they’re bored doing it they usually don’t have any motivation to do it good. There should be something interesting about every job and you should help your employees to see that.

·         Responsibility – responsibilities can make your employees feel more appreciated for what they’re doing.  It can help them feel trusted by their managers and it gives motivation to do a good job and maybe gain more trust and more responsibilities.

·         Praise for doing a good job and a personal sense of achievement – it makes employees feel appreciated by other people and by themselves, it gives motivation to progress in their jobs.

·         The ability to acquire new skills- employees will be happier knowing that they’re able to progress in their career, gain more skills and learn something new. It gives motivation for them to do their work productively.

·         Opportunities for advancement e.g. training and promotion – knowing that you’ll be able to get training or promotion for to doing a good job, gives motivation to do it. It makes employees feel appreciated.

An organization can also make improvements to customer service for employees by improving the employees working environment.

d)      I will now explain how an organisation can make improvements to customer service to benefit the business.

Organisation can make improvements to customer service to benefit the business by:

·         More investments into staff training / New and improved methods of training – staff can gain new skills and they’ll be able to do more tasks. It means that and won’t need to hire other employees, will be able to improve quality of services and range of services. It is cheaper to train your staff than hire new people.

·         Improving quality of services – improved quality of services means more customers and more customers means higher level of sales. Improving can be done by improving materials used for products that are used in a service, or by improving customer service for employees, staff training. If your employees will be happier about their job and will gain more skills they will be able to provide higher quality services for external customers.

·         Improving quality of products - it has a very big impact on the image of a company. Good quality of products also shows your companies reliability. If people trust your company they’re more likely to buy from you.

·         Improving or redecorating premises - redecorating premises or relocating into new, bigger premises.  People are more likely to come into spacious and nice looking shop or office, it is more attractive than small and old looking premises. It means that you’ll possible get more customers and more customers means higher level of sales.

Monitoring and evaluating customer service is very important for all organisations. It can help to make improvements for customer service for external and internal customers and for the organization and making improvements is necessary to reach a success in a business.