Knowledge Based Question
Discuss about the Framework For Achieving Customer Relationship Management.
This report provides a detailed analysis of customer service by reviewing the current status of customer service management given in the case study of Innovative Widget. Khodakarami, and Chan (2014) mentioned that customer service is a significant aspect of business, which needs to be tailored and arranged as per the needs of customers because the level of customer service often determines success of the business. The purpose of the report is to review the existing customer service of Innovative Widget aligned with the product it produces and develop a suitable service plan to help Innovative Widget address its current customer service issues and enhance the quality of customer service.
- Complaints can happen every day and when a customer complains, assuming that it is for a good reason, which means they made a purpose that did not meet their expectation- product or service. Trkman et al.(2015) mentioned that one common characteristic in customers is that customers usually want to know someone is listening and they expect that some is intended to take care of the issues to their satisfaction. The following example shows how five different approaches –“stay calm, listen well, acknowledge the problem, understand the facts and offer solution” altogether can be used to deal with customer complaint.
There can be situation, for example, in which the customer may come up with issue like, “I purchased a widget of 10mm, but colour is not depth and itz size is not proper as mentioned……bad choice of the brand…. No response from the service team, I want my money back right away …so disappointing!!! [email protected]”
Now the customer service executive of Innovative Widget needs to remain calm and listen to customer carefully. The customer service executive can respond this in a following manner:
We are extremely sorry for the inconvenience caused to you; however, we assure a speedy solution to your problem. Thanks for reaching us.
- b) You want a more intense colour? This is a good idea and we could add quit easily. The size of your widget is not proper, we thank you as you noticed that; can you please send your product to our mailing address, we take 24 hours to fix it and deliver back to you.
- Set a company-wide customer service policy:Undoubtedly any business stands on a few core principles – such as compensation, availability, satisfaction and happiness but Taherparvar, Esmaeilpour and Dostar (2014) mentioned that these policies are never the sole responsibility of care providers dealing with directly with the customers. The organization needs to make sure that each member of the organization maintains the policy of excellent customer service and the care for the customers must shin through.
Make yourself available: It is not possible to learn when the customer is going to contact the service team and especially in the manufacturing sector, people usually make purchases of high cost (Cook 2017). Thus, providing an email address or single phone line contact is not sufficient. So, the business needs open up many channels of interaction as possible which may range from a call centre to monitoring social media engagement.
- In the first day of my job in a new company, I would focus on relationship building and presenting as well as selling ideas because it is very important for any employee to build relationship with the co-workers because internal bonding often helps to resolve the workplace issues. On the other side, relationship building approach also helps to develop an effective relationship with the customers. In addition, presenting new ideas to the management often creates the scope for innovation.
- Aga, Noorderhaven and Vallejo (2016) mentioned that finding great talent is difficult but what is more challenging is keeping the talent engaged for better team performance. Unless an organization continually reinvest in enhancing employee with successful on boarding and ongoing training, which would help employees to reach their full potential. However, Keavney (2016) provided the fact that only 30% of employees in United State and only 30% of employees outside US feel engaged with their organizations. Within this three years, these figures have not improved in any way. Although, statistics show that it is worth an organization’s effort as well as resource to develop employees to retain them and there is still a gap. Thus, there should be clear and definite strategy of developing team members. For example, Tuckman’s team building theory talks about four different aspects forming, storming,normingand performing and here each aspect is equally important and they equally contribute to team building initiatives (Seck and Helto 2014).
- Performance management is a significant technique to monitor employee performance and identify scope for improvement. In performance management technique, the managers and employees work together to monitor plan and review an employee’s work objectives as well as overall contribution to the company. In addition to this, 360 degree feedback method is often known as “multi-rater feedback” that usually comes from colleague, peers and managers in the organization shelf assessment (Khodakarami and Chan 2014). This feedback method is transparent and useful because the feedback comes from different department and medium; thereby, several aspects can be analysed. It becomes easy for management to find out the flaws and suggest solutions.
- Managers play a great role in guiding employees to deal with the customer complaints. Firstly, the managers should pay attention to the communication skills of employees who are supposed to deal with customer complaints (Eichorn 2018). This is because customers come from different cultural and language background and sometimes it becomes difficult to understand and communicate with those unfamiliar cultural people. Therefore, the managers should plan for a communication skills learning training. In addition to this, managers also need to make employees understand about the values of each customer.
- The workplace usually develops an official or corporate format of communication in which verbal and non-verbal, both are important. Verbal communication usually remains as the use of auditory language to share and exchange information with other people. Employees when working in a workplace tends to communicate through words with a moderate tone or pitch of voice (Conrad 2014). On the other side, the non-verbal communication is usually occurs through sign language, gesture, facial expression, body movement and anything takes place without speaking.
- The following are the list of KPIs for customer service improvement
- Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)
- Net Promoter Score (NPS)- This KPI measures how likely the customers are supposed to refer the business or brand to someone else.
- First Response time
- Customer retention rate
- Employee Engagement level
Functions of proposed customer service plan
Mission: To continually develop service to satisfy and exceed customer satisfaction and contribute to success of Innovative Widget through the provision of timely, consistently high quality and professional support at every customer contact underpinning company’s strategic plan.
Vision: Innovative Widget could be the single point of widget related advice and support as well as be recognized as outstanding service provided by customer support executive and staff members.
Product standards including:
Dimension: Coloured stainless widgets in a range of size 7mm, 8mm, 9mm, 10mm and 11mm
Tolerance: 24X7 customers are dealing with the customers and they must remain in touch with the customers to resolve their queries.
Pricing: Reasonable and open to negotiation
Materials: High quality steel materials
Delivery: On time delivery policy
i). The policy for collecting customer information is: no customer will be forced to provide their information and information received based on customer’s will be kept confidential by following “Privacy Amendment Act 2000”.
- ii) Customer complaints are serious concern; thereby, the customer service plan aims to enhance the quality of service. The aim of the policy to provide customers the maximum support.
iii) The personal information of each customer will be kept hidden and used for managerial purpose only.
- a) Fulfilment of quality customer service and legal compliance will be judged and analysed by the quality standards set by Innovative Widget. Each service provided by the customer service team will be compared to with quality standard policy. The management of the organization needs to ensure that each customer representative complies with industry and principles of legal framework. The plan includes an evaluation and feedback method which would help to review the performance of customer service team. Each variable in the method such as level of legal compliance and quality will be aligned and compared with the performance recorded.
- b) Each customer is important and spending time on customer complaint is kind of business to the organization. As customer retention is important, cost specification and quality parameters will be aligned with customer expectation.
- c) The proposed customer service model will focus on increasing the level of customer satisfaction and minimizing customer conflict. The new model will focus on an atmosphere of service which is necessary to the majority of business across the world. The model will include the approach of receiving customer feedback, retaining angry and unsatisfied customers and persistently update policies and service to satisfy customer needs.
Commitment: The customer service team will recognize the level of customer service which is integral to their needs. The team is committed to providing with the service required to meet the obligation in a professional manner.
Customer service: Innovation and Management department provides a consistent approach to customer support team with the focus of service an individual can expect.
Customer service principle: To become highly responsive, accountable, consultive, strive for continuous improvement and communication.
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Reliability Do we deliver what our customer expects? Are deliveries accurate? Are products and service precise? What are the specifications and tolerances? When is product deadlines and deliveries? Is there a guarantee? |
There are many scenarios where the customer service team or the organization as a whole is failed to provide what customers expect. However, in most of the cases, Innovative Widget’s sales team and customer representatives put the maximum effort in meeting customer expectation. As customer expectations always remain high, it is sometimes difficult for brand to provide accurate deliveries. Product and service provided by Innovative Widget are mostly appropriate but flaws remain in some cases. To deliver any product, at least 3 days are taken Guarantee is usually provided to some specific products. |
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Assurance Do staff members inspire trust and confidence in customers? Are staff members knowledgeable about products and services? Is it expected that staff will be knowledgeable? Are staff members respectful and courteous to the customer? |
Staff members are trained with special teaching programs including the communication skills. During training and development session, each staff member is provided with proper education about the products and services. Thus, the staff members have knowledge about the products and services. Especially, the members in the customer service team are knowledgable. The organization develops its own workplace culture; thereby, each staff member is expected to comply with norms set by the organization itself. So, all staff members are taught the value of each customer. |
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Tangibles Are facilities visited clean and tidy? Do you expect them to be? Is customer paperwork clear and useful? Should our letters, brochures and website look a particular way? How would you rate staff appearance? Is the company building appealing? Should it be? |
Facilities are required to be clean and tidy to build an effective workplace for betterment of employees and when the employees work under a healthy workplace, they are supposed to pay attention to customer service. Customer paper work is required to be clean and useful as this process helps to keep customer information. When the business reaches the maturity stage, it is highly essential to make it appealing. |
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Empathy Do you think the company cares when customers make telephone enquires? Does the company share customers concern when customers are making complaints? Are customers given the correct amount of attention? |
When a business receives frequent customer calls, the organization should understand that its service have some issues and it should pay attention to the service. |
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Responsiveness Response times for customer phoning through with enquires? Do you mind dealing with different people who handle your enquires or should it be the same person each time ? What should the complaints procedure look like to our customers? |
For responding to customer call or queries, usually 24 hours are taken. When handling with the customers, it is expected that customers can come from different cultural backgrounds; so it is expected that employees communicate with people with different cultural background. |
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Comments |
References
Aga, D.A., Noorderhaven, N. and Vallejo, B., 2016. Transformational leadership and project success: The mediating role of team-building. International Journal of Project Management, 34(5), pp.806-818.
Conrad, D., 2014. Workplace communication problems: Inquiries by employees and applicable solutions. Journal of business studies quarterly, 5(4), p.105.
Cook, S., 2017. Measuring customer service effectiveness. Routledge.
Eichorn, F.L., 2018. Internal customer relationship management (IntCRM) a framework for achieving customer relationship management from the inside out. Management, 2, p.1.
Keavney, A., 2016. Team building strategies. Training & Development, 43(2), p.26.
Khodakarami, F. and Chan, Y.E., 2014. Exploring the role of customer relationship management (CRM) systems in customer knowledge creation. Information & Management, 51(1), pp.27-42.
Khodakarami, F. and Chan, Y.E., 2014. Exploring the role of customer relationship management (CRM) systems in customer knowledge creation. Information & Management, 51(1), pp.27-42.
Seck, M.M. and Helton, L., 2014. Faculty development of a joint MSW program utilizing Tuckman’s model of stages of group development. Social Work with Groups, 37(2), pp.158-168.
Taherparvar, N., Esmaeilpour, R. and Dostar, M., 2014. Customer knowledge management, innovation capability and business performance: a case study of the banking industry. Journal of knowledge management, 18(3), pp.591-610.
Trkman, P., Mertens, W., Viaene, S. and Gemmel, P., 2015. From business process management to customer process management. Business process management journal, 21(2), pp.250-266.
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