K J SOMAIYA COLLEGE OF SCIENCE AND

COMMERCE

TYBMS
2021-2022
SEM-V

SUBJECT: CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP

MANAGEMENT
TOPIC : CUSTOMER CARE

PROFESSOR NAME: ASST.PROF. POONAM

KHADKE

NAME: SHANTANU SANTOSH KALYANKAR

ROLL NO: 2108881

DATE OF SUBMISSION: 21/08/21

 DECLARATION

I Shantanu Santosh Kalyankar hereby declare that this project report entitled “CUSTOMER
CARE ”, submitted by me, under the guidance of Asst. Prof. Poonam khadke, of K.J. Somaiya
College of Science and Commerce is my own and has not been submitted to any other University
or Institute or published earlier.

Date: 21 August 2021

Submitted by: Shantanu Kalyankar

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 ACKNOWLEDGMENT

I would like to express my gratitude towards Asst. Prof. Poonam Khadke Ma’am for guiding me
throughout the project. I also feel thankful and express my kind gratitude towards our Principal
Dr.Pradnya Prabhu Ma’am for allowing me to conduct services marketing environment project.
The mentioned project was done under the supervision. I thank all participants for their positive
support and guidance.
I feel thankful to the college for giving me such a big opportunity. I believe I will enroll in more
such events in the coming future. I ensure that this project was done by me and is not copied.

Shantanu Santosh Kalyankar

Roll Number: 81

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SR.NO INDEX PAGE NO.

1. INTRODUCTION 6

2. MEANING 7

3. CONCEPT 8

4. FEATURES 9

5. MERITS 11

6. DEMERITS 19

7. CASE STUDY 22

8. SUGGESTIONS 24

9. CONCLUSIONS 25

10. REFERENCES 26

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CUSTOMER CARE

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 INTRODUCTION

Customer care department is the front-facing department as it takes a personal approach in

dealing with their customers to make them feel valued. When you show that you care you are
indirectly showering respect, and this creates an unbreakable bond between the brand and their
consumer.

Customer care is, no doubt an important key in maintaining good and healthy relationships.
Companies are working doubly hard to ensure the highest level of customer satisfaction.

A separate team is entrusted with customer care department where an important number of
employees work as the face of the company and deal directly with consumers and an equally
good number work behind the scenes to ensure that everything takes place as it should.

There are lots of ways by which you can connect with a customer care team. You can approach
them directly and have a face-to-face interaction. If it is not possible, you can opt for their
helpline numbers and make contact.

Chat portals, telephone conversation, email, and online helpdesk are other important options that
you can use in accordance to your suitability.All these facilities have been created for showing
the customers that the brand or company cares and is willing to hold out its hand for further
assistance.

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 MEANING

Customer care is an act of assisting customers and working on behalf of business firms. Most
companies opt for “call center services” to dissipate these services efficiently. Their roles include
providing services and product information and resolving any issues about the products and
services offered by the organization. Customer care services are also a great way to attract new
customers by delivering valuable information to the users and introducing them to new products
and services.

The professionals of call center services strive hard to create a high level of customer satisfaction
and loyalty towards the brand, offering after-sales as well as operational information at the
behest of the customer. A customer support center is a place for doing business with the help of
phones and other communication platforms. The service providers offer a range of support
services to customers including assistance in planning, installation, training, troubleshooting,
maintenance, upgrading, and disposal of a product.

Customer care is a provision of service that every customer avail of before, after, or while
purchasing business offerings. Good customer service plays a pivotal role in the success of the
business. Every single customer call allows improving your reputation with customers and
increases your brand value and further sales. It helps in increasing the ROI of the company.

Great customer care and support enhance brand loyalty as well as the help gaining recognition
much needed by companies today. Generating positive word-of-mouth helps the business in the
long run and helps to achieve long-term as well as short-term goals. Customer care services are
also a great way to strengthen the relationship between you and your customers. A great way to
do that is by remembering and appreciating the repeated customers and offering higher value
propositions to them. A personal touch to your dealing will help the customer as well as the
business in the longer run. By being active listeners and having empathy towards your
customers, companies can build a brand image that will last for years to come.

Taking the after-sales services and the customers seriously is the essence of customer care
services. With intentions to solve the queries of the customers, these services play a vital role in
the success of your brand and the realization of your organizational goals.

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 CONCEPT OF CUSTOMER CARE

The concept of customer care has always been in existence, but in recent years it has gained due
prominence. Business entities have recognized the worth of satisfied customers and are working
towards building an encouraging relationship.

Business is not only about selling and making profits. It is the customers who play the most
important role in any organization. You can sell a product or service once to any individual but
to do so a second and a third time requires careful handling.

Companies have recognized the power that a satisfied customer has over a company and are
working very hard to ensure maximum customer satisfaction. It is important that a business
entity or a brand listens to the voice of a customer and address any concern.

Taking care of existing customers is more important than creating new ones. Put your onus on
customer retention by building loyalty so that you can increase your revenues and of course,
profitability.

Remember a loyal customer will visit your outlet repeatedly and will also prove a good source of
promotion via mouth publicity.

Once you build a good and loyal base, you will be able to save extra expenses. It is possible via
good customer care and service experiences.

Separate customer care departments have been created so that they can take a proactive and if
necessary reactive steps to ensure best possible customer care services. Employees must have
accurate and complete information so that they can deal with arising issues promptly.

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 FEATURES OF CUSTOMER CARE

Customer service is the way a business or individual understands and meets his customers' needs.
When a company provides effective customer service, clients will continue to do business with
that company and may recommend it to others. Many factors of customer service are vital to a
business' survival and growth.

Time
Customers value their time and respond well to companies that do business efficiently. Promptly
answering a phone call, responding to an email or delivering a service are examples of effective
customer service. Everyone's time is valuable, so show the customer that you care about how she
spends her time; you don't want her to feel she wasted it doing business with your company.

Effective Communication
Learning to communicate clearly and effectively is vital to good customer service. Clearly
written directions and manuals -- and an easily navigable website -- are ways your business can
demonstrate effective communication. Customers don’t want to search long for an answer to a
question about your products. Communicate clearly with customers to keep them satisfied.

Compassion
Adding the human element to your business can help customers feel welcomed and happy.
Speaking to a person on the phone -- instead of a machine -- and interacting with familiar faces
each time a customer interacts with your business is important for customer satisfaction.
Customers generally respond well when they interact with friendly individuals who care about
their needs.

Professionalism
Always approaching the customer with a professional attitude is crucial in successful customer
service. Professionalism can help breed trust and credibility with customers, which will keep
them coming back to your business. Hiring professional employees who dress in appropriate

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attire for the business environment can help your company maintain a professional appearance.
Let the customer know you value him by always being professional.

Reliability and Responsibility

To keep customers satisfied with your business, show that your company is reliable and
responsible. Follow through with promises and always strive to correct mistakes in any way
possible. Keeping the customer happy with your company is one of the most important factors of
customer service.

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 MERITS OF CUSTOMER CARE

When building a successful business, everything screams for attention. Within that flood, why
prioritize customer service?

In short, happy customers lead to more money, growth, and sustainability.

1. Revenue increases with good customer service.

Revenue dictates every business decision. Companies measure success or failure based on
money in minus money out. Profitability is king, regardless of whether it happens on day one or
day 1001.

The number one reason why customer service is important in a business is because it correlates
to revenue: 84% of organizations working to improve customer service report an increase in
revenue.

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The keyword in that chart is “working.”

Simply prioritizing good customer service in an organization increases revenue.

While it’s harder to show the one-to-one correlation between customer service and
revenue, customer experience analytics provide the framework. Pick a few customer-related
metrics to measure, and track revenue in parallel, to see the connection.

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2. Happy customers build a better reputation.
Positive reputation leads to higher growth. Reputation goes a long way in a business. It attracts
customers, investors, partnerships, and employees. When seeking to improve reputation, start
with excellent customer service.

After a positive customer experience, 69% would recommend the company to others.

For consumers overwhelmed with options, a recommendation from a friend often tips the scales.

The best way to sustainably grow a company is through word-of-mouth.

Viral social media campaigns and paid ads have their place, but nothing beats the oldest trick in
the book. Great customer service leads to happy customers who talk about your product or
service with future customers.

3. Retention correlates to customer satisfaction.

Customer retention carves the clearest path to business success. Keeping current customers
happy results in more stable revenue and more accurate predictions. When you master not just
attracting customers, but retaining them, it sets a solid foundation for your entire organization.

And, why is customer service important to retention? 75% of people would return to a company
with excellent service.

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The majority of consumers sight good customer service as a reason for sticking with a company.
Beyond product satisfaction or value, customer satisfaction reigns supreme in today’s landscape.

Your unique product or service may reel them in, but customer service keeps them.

4. Churn decreases with more customer care.

Churn measures the amount of customers who leave a business after purchasing. It provides a
fairly cut-and-dry measurement of satisfaction. Customers churn when they’re unhappy.When it
comes to churn, the importance of customer service is clear: 89% of consumers begin doing
business with a competitor following a poor customer

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.

Products have issues. Services have flaws.

But if you can provide a seamless customer service experience, people will be forgiving.

Rather than push them right into the enemy’s arms, focus on excellent customer service to
prevent customers from churning.

5. CLTV improves with better customer service.

CLTV (customer lifetime value) reveals the amount of money a customer potentially brings to a
company over the course of their engagement. CLTV correlates directly with revenue.

How does it relate to customer service, though?

(For one, it’s got “customer” in the name. And anything involving the customer, involves the
customer service team.)

These data points reveal a more specific breakdown: Highly engaged customers buy 90% more
frequently, spend 60% more per transaction, and have 3 times the annual value compared to
other customers.

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A highly engaged customer refers to one who reads your emails, follows you on social media,
and interacts with customer support (whether through individual correspondence or more general
blog posts and knowledge base articles).

A good customer service team is involved in all of these mediums. Better customer service
means higher engagement, which leads to more dollars spent.

6. Employee happiness correlates to customer happiness.

Customers aren’t the only ones who have options. Good employees are in demand in any
economy. Especially at startups, employee happiness goes beyond a paycheck (and I’m not
talking about snack perks).

Gallup found that highly engaged employees achieve a 10% increase in customer ratings.

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Source: Gallup

Create a mission-driven company where employees return everyday to find new ways to please
the customer. Give your team a chance to be a part of something larger than themselves. Let
them know how much each customer depends on their work.

The intangible feeling of having a purpose motivates people far longer than free food ever could.

7. Company culture strengthens with improved customer sentiment.

When you create a culture of serving people, your employees follow suit. Engineers help the
sales team. Product listens to customer support reps. Teammates work together with kindness,
compassion, and, above all, respect.

The term “company culture” elicits a buzzword, startup-y vibe. Like customer experience, it’s a
new term used to describe something that’s been around forever.

Some companies write it on the office walls or make their employees memorize it. You don’t
need to do all that. Company culture exists whether or not you define it.

Company culture strengthens with improved customer sentiment

By valuing customers, and tirelessly working to serve them, you simultaneously create a
company culture of helpfulness. Work gets done faster, productivity goes up, and both employee
and customer sentiment thrive in a more collaborative environment.

8. Brand awareness soars with positive customer experiences.

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Popularity doesn’t lose its significance after you leave high school. If anything, once you enter
the business word, it’s value compounds.

The coolest brands on the blocks — meaning, those with the most and best brand awareness —
get all the fame and fortune.

Positive customer experiences play a huge role in brand awareness, as they often lead to word of
mouth advertising. 55% of customers become a customer of a company because of their
reputation for great customer service.

Provide a positive experience for existing customers and watch them rave about your
brand. Analytics help you track awareness by measuring everything from online reviews to
social media sentiment to recommendation potential.

When you build a brand awareness strategy around customer loyalty, you’ll see authentic and
sustainable growth.

9. Marketing spend lessens with more customer advocates.

Customer marketing involves turning existing customers into advocates. Save money and time
with every loyal customer. Not only do they purchase more, but they also bring in new business.

Your customers become your sales reps.

In fact, 56% of people would recommend a company with excellent service to family and
friends.

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Keep customers loyal with great customer service and they’ll be happy to promote your brand.
What’s more, customer experience provides the personalization that marketers crave.

Before putting money into a marketing campaign, look at what’s already being done in your
inbox and maximize its value as much as possible.

10. Valued customer service unites goals and processes.

When everyone at a company has the same end-goal, the entire workflow becomes streamlined.
Place the ultimate emphasis on your customer, then move through each department to align them
behind customer service.

For instance, when everyone is on the same page, the flow for bug reports should look something
like this:

To make sure this collaboration spans the long-term, set a larger goal to improve a customer
experience-based metric, like NPS. Then, put the responsibility on every department to move the
needle.

You’ll have happier customers, more streamlined processes, and easily hit your KPIs.

11. Business longevity relies on satisfied customers.

Business owners take a huge risk when founding a company. For scaling start-ups, providing an
excellent customer service experience is the surest way to keep up momentum and minimize
loses.

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According to Fundera, 20% of small businesses fail in their first year, and 50% fail by their fifth
year. Reasons for failure range from lack of funds, to misunderstanding of market value, to
inability to sustainably scale.

Satisfied customers resolve each of these issues:

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 Demerits of customer care
An important reason for the failure of any business entity is the inability of the entity to offer
good customer care experience to its customers. Remember, unsatisfied customers means one
less customer because he will not repeat his horrible experience at your door.

Several disadvantages of customer care are as follows-

1) The overall increase in expenses

It is not easy to set a customer care department. The overall increase in expenses is a huge
problem for any new firm as it is not possible for the company to tolerate them.

Setting up will take out a huge chunk of your finance, and hence, most companies do not prefer
to maintain a proper customer care department at the beginning of their journey.

This can prove a disadvantage as unhappy customers will not have a place to air their grievances
and resolve related issues.

2) Time-consuming process
Setting up a customer care department is, no doubt a time-consuming process.

You just cannot ask any employee to take hold of this department as he will have to face some
unhappy customers. Without any proper training, it is like letting loose a non-swimmer in the
river.

The interaction will become impersonal and seem unprofessional and unhealthy to the customer.

3) Long waiting time

It is a myth that every customer care department maintains a high standard of interactions.

Most of them are overloaded with issues and do not have enough manpower to deal with them.
The long waiting time seriously pisses off the customers and can work against the reputation of
the brand.

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Remember if a customer is unhappy, he will have his say in front of his friends and family and
will create a bad reputation for the organization.

Good customer care

There is a self-explanation in the words customer care. Caring for your customers involves
customer care.

How you can take care of your customers is an important question. You just cannot ask every
employee in your company to approach a customer and take care of him in whatever manner he
deems suitable.

It is certainly not feasible as it will involve unnecessary wastage of valuable resources. The best
option is to create a separate department that will deal with customers efficiently and take proper
care of any issues or grievances.

I) Courtesy is a necessity during empathetic interaction and who better than a trained
employee to handle the customers who are life and blood of a business house.
Representatives must be knowledgeable and accessible.It is their willingness to help
that attracts the customers and ultimately results in conflict resolution. It is important
that all the employees in customer care are fully trained to handle all the different
types of issues that they will have to face during their interaction.

II) Appoint employees who are good at listening. This is an important skill to have
because the consumers connect quickly with those employees that show such traits.

III) The next important aspect is a strong speaking skill because until and unless you are
not clear, precise and distinct in your diction the customers will not be able to
understand whatever you are trying to say to them.

IV) Patience, along with a calm demeanour, is a job requirement of employees that work
in the customer care department. You will be getting different types of people, mostly
at the end of their patience, and it will be your soothing hand that will help them to
calm down.

V) Be sure to include people who are good at thinking on their feet because sometimes
the circumstances require out-of-the-box solutions to please the almighty consumers.

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VI) Timely attention along with the need to resolve the issue is what can make a
difference between retaining and losing a consumer. Be prompt because a customer
does not like to be kept waiting and becomes irritated quite quickly.

VII) It is the perception of a customer that is important because if he feels valued and all
his demands are met in accordance to his satisfaction, he will become a regular
customer of the brand. If not, he will shift his allegiance to another brand, and you
will lose an important client.

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 CASE STUDY
Spotify — Personalized Customer Interactions

One of the best ways to foster a relationship is to personalize the service experience. When your
team provides a personalized response, customers become more engaged with the interaction.

That's because they feel more valued by your business. They're not being rushed through as
another service case that needs to be closed. Taking the time to craft a thoughtful response is an
excellent way to demonstrate customer care.

Spotify does exactly this with its social media team. In fact, they created a dedicated Twitter
account for responding to customer messages. It’ll respond to customer questions and complaints
with creative, customized solutions. For example, one customer tweeted that they liked the app
but was still learning how to use it. So, Spotify responded with a special playlist that welcomed
the new user.

Spotify could have just said this in a tweet, but the company took a satisfied customer and,
through customer care, turned them into a viral advocate.

The further image shows the company’s response and the innovative customer care strategy.

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 SUGGESTIONS

Spotify is a Swedish audio streaming and media services provider founded on 23 April 2006 by
Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon. It is the world's largest music streaming service provider, with
over 365 million monthly active users.

The company is known for creating innovative brand image and a good relationship with the
customers.

Following are some of my suggestions for the company to satisfy the customer with its services:

1. The company should simplify its operation systems.

2. The company can also make a portal for every particular problem and its solutions.

3. They can do frequent surveys for analyzing their services.

4. Spotify can also offer personalized offers and deals for its loyal customer to maintain the
relationship.

5. The company can also can make a WHATSAPP service or a char bot server for the
customers so they can get the solutions for their problem way more easily and
conveniently.
6.

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 CONCLUSION

The project report on the CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT has helped me

understand and analyze the factors affecting a business and its activities interally and externally.
The project allowed to learn and get to know the customer care services closely and deeply. This
project is detailed analysis and the thesis of the CUSTOMER CARE and the factors
,advantages ,disadvantages and so on. The case study has also allowed me to understand the
application of the theory in the real life scenario in the business environment. This was a really
helpful and a learning experience for me. I am glad I have got an opportunity to make the project
and gain the knowledge in depth.

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 REFERENCES

1. Marekting91.com

2. blog.hubspot.com

3. groovehq.com

4. customer relationship management- Sunny Fernandez

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