BSBCUS501C
Manage quality customer service
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Assessment Task 1
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Develop
customer service plan
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction
For over five decades, Innovative Widget
has gained a reputation in terms of their operations and become the largest
manufacturer of widgets in Australia. It is a family-owned and run company.
After the founder’s management, his sons and daughters have occupied the Board
of Directors.
There had been little change at
Innovative Widget during his management for fifteen years. Due to little
competition, the company could take a dominant and safe position in the market.
Approximately five years ago, however, it was noticed that the company’s sales
began to suffer from recession, and that the previous management built up by
the founder was vulnerable to unexpected challenge. Eventually, they request a
firm to provide them with management consultant in order to cope with their
difficulties.
By undertaking a pre-audit with staff
interviews work processes and departmental records; they were able to generate
an initial report that names some areas for concern. The following is the
concerns:
·
Unawareness of their external
customer’s needs
·
Unawareness of their internal customer’s needs
·
Inadequacy in policies and
procedures for customer management
The managing director admitted his
inappropriate attitude toward the customers in the case of dealing with
customer’s complaints and price negotiations.
2. Methods of customer service
As mentioned earlier, customer service
is the way an organization interacts with a customer at all stages of the purchasing
process, i.e. before, during and after the purchase.
The most obvious customer service is
that given to a customer when buying a product (a tangible item) form a shop.
Advice on product selection, the transaction itself and the after-sales service
are often undertaken between the customer and provider face-to-face. The way a
customer perceives this service will guide the customer to conclude a sale, do
repeat business or recommend the shop to other people.
Pre-sales advice and after sales service
are often undertaken by telephone; in this case, consideration needs to be
given to how to make that a quality service.
Often the sale of some goods and service
are conducted by telephone with written confirmation in the form of letters or
emails. Such examples include buying insurance or transferring a utilities
provider. The challenge here is to make the telephone contact and written
material exceed the customer’s expectations.
Recently, more transactions have been
undertaken entirely by Internet, such as telephone credit for a mobile
telephone. The design of the web pages and processes are important factors in
ensuring a quality service.
3. Customer service vision and mission
Vision:
The world’s leading Consumer Company for
automotive products and services.
Mission:
•Transform
customers into advocates
•Create the
best place to work within the communities we serve
•Deliver
exceptional worldwide customer contact and business processing outsourcing
solutions
We are a global family with a proud
heritage passionately committed to providing personal mobility for people
around the world. We anticipate consumer needs and deliver outstanding products
and services that improve people’s lives
4. Product standards
a) Reliability
·
The sizes you want are 5mm,
6mm, 7mm, 8mm, 9mm, and 10mm.
·
They must be made to a
tolerance of no more than +/- 5%.
b) Assurance - You want delivery within 24 hours of ordering.
c) Tangibles - You need cylindrical stainless steel widgets.
d) Empathy
·
You expect your suppliers to
dress smartly in clean uniforms and deliver in clean vans
·
You will not tolerate impolite
or unprofessional suppliers.
e) Responsiveness - You expect widgets to be guaranteed for two years
from the date of purchase.
5. Policies and procedures
Identification of customer needs
You need cylindrical stainless steel
widgets.
The sizes you want are 5mm, 6mm, 7mm,
8mm, 9mm, and 10mm.
They must be made to a tolerance of no
more than +/- 5%.
You don’t want to pay more than $25 for
each widget.
You expect widgets to be guaranteed for
two years from the date of purchase.
Customer complaints
You are a
customer (use your real name) who telephones innovative Widgets with a
complaint.
You are a
self-employed gardener and have just returned home after buying a 5mm widget
from innovative Widgets. The round
journey took you over an hour to complete. When you opened the packet you found
it contained a 7-mm widget. The packet has 5mm written on it but the widget
inside is 7-mm. your receipt states 5-mm too. You only buy two or three widgets
each year and this has really annoyed you. This is the second time this has
happened to you. The last time this happened you got an apology and replacement
and were told it wouldn’t happen again. You still had to repeat the journey to
get a replacement though. You need the widget to fix your lawn mower and you
can’t work without it.
Please try to
be as realistic as possible during this exercise. This exercise will be
monitored by the facilitator and forms part of the assessment for this module.
Collection of customer feedback
from questionnaire
In the case
of collecting customer’s feedbacks, the followings are a must:
a)
Validity: When writing
questions for a survey, they should be validated by conducting a smaller survey
and interviewing the responder to ensure that they understood the question as
it was intended to be understood.
b)
Reliability: A question is
considered reliable if the response given would be the same as a second
response to the same question with the same condition. Reliability issues can
be resolved by careful design of question and scale.
c)
Avoidance: The questions must
features impartiality, simplicity, two-in-one, acronyms, and impersonality.
Customer feedback survey
You are
attending innovative Widgets, Customer Services Department meeting to discuss
how to obtain customer feedback about your product and services.
Innovative
Widgets produce and sell stainless steel widgets in the following sizes: 5mm,
6mm, 7mm, 8mm, 9mm and 10mm. they are guaranteed to be made within a tolerance
of +/- 2%.
Your largest
customer buys 40% of your widgets. There are two customers who buy around 10%
each and the rest of your customers are ad-hoc buyers. Last year’s sales data
shows that just over 1000 different customers bought widgets, some bought just
one item.
Innovative
Widgets only sell to trade customers so you know the name and contact details
of all your customers.
Procedures
a)
Greet the customer courteously
and give them your name.
b)
Listen fully to what the
customer is saying. Try to gather all the facts about the complaint and jot
them down. Ask questions and summaries what they are saying.
c)
Never argue with the customer.
d)
Apologize for any product fault
of poor service. Be sympathetic. Ask if the customer will allow us to send the
faulty item to our quality department for testing.
e)
When you have all the details
about the complaint, ask the customer how they world like it to be resolved.
f)
No quibble product replacements
or refunds are within all staff members’ authority.
g)
All staff members can use their
professional judgment and refund an additional 10% of the value of the faulty
product up to a maximum value of $25.
h)
Complaints involving damage to
other property are covered by our insurance. Help the customer to complete the
Claims Form and ask if the customer can obtain quotes for repairs.
i)
All complaints involving injury
must be referred to the Customer Service Manager. Agree a suitable time for the
Customer Service Manager to call the customer.
j)
Any complaint that is not
covered in the above procedures must be directed to the Customer Service
Manager. Agree a time for the Customer Service Manager to call the customer.
Policy and procedures for
obtaining customer feedback
Similarly, a policy and procedure for
obtaining customer feedback would contain who is accountable for obtaining
customer feedback and who was responsible for undertaking the procedure’s
tasks. The procedure’s tasks would include what strategies are to be used to
obtain feedback.
6. Customer relationship management
Customer
relationship management (CRM) refers to those organizational activities
designed to establish and cement strong link with customers. The ultimate goal
is to become a unique provider so that the customer is so delighted with what
you provide so that the customer is so delighted with what you provide he or
she has no need or intention to go anywhere else for your product.
Lager
organizations utilize computerized customer relationship management systems
that comprise an integrated database of information about all customers,
activity schedulers and reports.
Typically,
the database can provide instant access to all the information held about the
customer to be able to converse with a full history of the customer at their
fingertips.
CRM system
can also schedule calls, meetings, invitations or mail-out as appropriate for
the particular customer.
CRM can also
act as an intelligence gathering opportunity with information about the
customer being used by other internal departments such as the Sales Department,
who would be interested in any upgrading or replacement opportunities.
Monitor customer service
·
Ensure 90% of all calls are
answered within 3 rings.
·
Reduce operating expenditure by
2.5% of last year’s budget.
·
Identify an internal
replacement for complaints supervisor who retires in March
·
Reduce staff absenteeism by 5%
on last year’s figures.
·
Produce a report on the
opportunities for outsourcing the telephone complaints line October.
Customer service KPIs
·
Time taken to answer customer
calls
·
Percentage of complaints
resolved on the same day of complaint
·
Achieving an agreed customer
satisfaction score in feedback
·
Undertaking an agreed number of
customer feedback activities
