PART 4

Lesson 1: Delivering Excellent Customer Service

I.OVERVIEW

With increasing competition characterized by technological innovation capable of

removing product differentiation almost overnight, companies and organizations not
providing a total customer solution as their value-added differentiating attribute will
be at a disadvantage. While product quality is important, it it nothing compared to
market advantage. One way market advantage can be achieved is to have excellent
service quality as part of offering a total customer solution. As most companies
would aim for the same excellent customer service goal, companies must be
innovative and pioneering to make their services stand out in the market place.
Unfortunately, many untrained salespeople are only after sales, while other staff
members may be minding only their own business, without realizing the impact of
leaving “orphans” (customers without the benefit of service) behind (Go &Escareal-
Go, 2010).

To achieve customer satisfaction, each employee must know and competently

provide what the person next to him needs to accomplish his job well. The manner
of treating each other as both a customer and supplier must be a way of life in the
organization which will translate to delivering fast and efficient service. Satisfying
customers does not solely rest on the marketing department but the whole company.
However, the creation of a corporate culture of excellence in customer service may
take time to develop and will need constant follow through by all team leaders. It is
important that top management provides for and leads this culture of service as this
sends a message to the entire organization to work together as seamlessly as
possible.

II.LEARNING OUTCOMES

After successful completion of this lesson, you will be able to:

:
1. Apply strategies on delivering good customer service .
2. Identify the characteristics of an excellent customer service.
3. Practice the Golden rule observed in delivering excellent customer service 4.
Discover some of the poor practice in customer service in order to avoid
committing mistakes.

III. COURSE MATERIALS

“We work all the time, seven days a week. Even if we are the leader, we make it a point to
serve and to be served.” Wilson Lim , President, Abenson Group of
Companies

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Most people say that the customer is the best marketing tool for every business.
The experience our customers will have when they interact with our organization
determines whether it’s positive or negative

Delivering Excellent Customer Service is a highly important part of every business.

Companies that are unable or unwilling to property service their customers stand to
lose the customers’ business. However, several key variables or characteristics set
excellent customer service apart from mediocre customer service. A company that
best demonstrates these excellent customer service characteristics will have distinct
advantage over its competition.

Customer service skills include the ability to make a good impression with
customers. Representatives must know how to project a professional image, both
in the way they act and dress. They must be courteous to customers, handle their
questions and issues in an easy-going manner and demonstrate a keen knowledge
of the company’s products and services.

Strategic Customer Satisfaction Management – Three Critical Components

1. Market Segmentation
Since different groups of customers have different expectations, marketers
must apply market segmentation to choose the specific type of customers or
groups of customers that they can serve competently.

2. Leadership
External customer satisfaction activities not aligned with internal customer
satisfaction activities are of doubtful value. Leadership is critical as it
decides on what kind of corporate vision and culture it wants. Studies reveal
that 80% of successful change of turnaround programs were linked to the
presence of a new chief executive officer and strong external market forces.
The signals leaders initiate (rewards is an example) , investment in customer
service technology and empowerment of employees to produce customer
service champions would directly affect the levels of customer satisfaction.

3. Feedback and Reward System

Customer satisfaction measurement can be quantified. The results can be

used for competitive benchmarking and can unearth gaps in the existing
system that must be plugged even before efforts are done toward service
innovation. Customer feedback also allows companies to learn key
attributes in the product or service design that are most important to
customers as well as give companies a chance to recover in case of service
failure.
Rewarding employees who did well in customer service reinforces its
mission of customer satisfaction – that the company values its customers
and thus makes their customers happy and in the same breath, giving
rewards communicates the company’s commitment to maintaining happy
and affirmed employees.

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Customer Service Examples that Provide Great Service
1. Respond as quickly as possible
One of the biggest factors in good customer service is speed, especially when a
client is requesting something that’s time sensitive. Several years ago,
STELLAService conducted a response time report and found that the average email
response time for the top 100 retail companies was 17 hours. Today, it's not much
better as own customer service study found that the average response time is 12
hours.

2. Know your customers

Great interactions begin with knowing your customers wants and needs. Customers
love personalization. Get to know your customers, remember their names and
previous conversations. If needed, make a note of what was discussed previously
so you can refer to it the next time you meet. In January 2020, Starbucks launched
their "Every name's a story" campaign focusing on improving relationships with their
customers. The award winning campaign promotes inclusivity, recognition and
acceptance at Starbucks stores across the world. The video, a focal point of the
campaign, has generated more than 2.8 million views on YouTube.

3. Fix your mistakes

Not taking responsibility of your mistakes is a sure fire way to getting a bad
reputation. Transparency is important in business and customer service is no
different. Always strive for a high quality output as it shows you have a high level of
standards. An Amazon customer ordered a new PlayStation for his son for
Christmas. When the shipping company delivered the parcel, the customer was
away and had a neighbor sign for the package. The neighbor left the package
outside the customer’s house and unfortunately, it soon disappeared. When the
customer realized what had happened, he was left in complete shock! Even though
Amazon was not to blame for this mistake, they were quick to resolve this by not
only sending a new PlayStation in time for Christmas, but did not charge for the extra
shipping. The Customer Success team at Amazon showed great empathy here
towards the customer. Rather than sticking to their refund policy, then chose to do
good. And that's what matters most.

4. Go the extra mile

Going the extra mile will not only result in an indebted and happy customer, it can also
go a long way in terms of keeping yourself on their radar for future business.

A three year old named Lily Robinson wrote a letter to Sainsbury’s, a UK grocery
store, a letter asking why ‘tiger bread was called tiger bread and not giraffe bread?’.
Lily was clearly onto something, as the bread really does look like a giraffe print!
In most cases, these types of suggestions are met with a simple "Thank you".

But, to Lily’s surprise, Chris King, the customer service manager of Sainsbury’s
responded with “I think renaming it to giraffe bread is a brilliant idea!”. Several
months later, the bread was renamed to giraffe bread.

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5. Think long term – A customer is for life

Think long term when dealing with customers. By keeping customers happy, they
will be loyal and through word of mouth, will do the marketing for you. In fact,
according to author Pete Blackshaw, a satisfied customer tells at least 3 friends,
whereas an angry customer tells 3,000!

The Importance OfA Good Customers Service: Case Study With

Lufthansa By: Julien Rio
Source: https://www.julienrio.com

There is nothing more frustrating in life than facing a stubborn careless customer
service. If you are yourself taking care of customer service, bear in mind the following
rules, they might save or even improve your image.

We have all experienced this. Automatic hotlines never leading to answers,

customer services ignoring us, expensive hotlines forcing you to pay to complain,
emails never receiving any answer, people sending you from a department to
another constantly asking you to repeat your story... bureaucracy and administration
are as necessary as there are harmful for your company's image.

Recently, I have experienced what might have been the worst customer service
experience I ever had.
In this article, I will study this specific case and try to highlight what would have been
the correct behavior, how this company could have saved a customer without
necessarily spending money.

Lufthansa and the inexistent customer service

Early September 2012, I fly Lufthansa with my friend. We booked tickets way earlier
and we are now ready to fly. Problem is: Lufthansa's staff is on strike. As I am
French, I can hardly blame Germans for being on strike: in my country, this is almost
a national sport!
My flight is changed to another airline and confirmed. All good.
We fly with my friend, but starting then, nothing goes right: we can't sit together, our
flight gets late, we miss the next flight, our luggage is lost, we are sent for three
hours from one counter to another, then we are asked to pay our Metro tickets by
ourselves to reach a train station that might help us reaching our destination... hell
on earth.

A few days later, I prepare a long, polite, detailed and well organized email to describe
my exact situation to Lufthansa's customer service, convinced that I will get a quick
and efficient answer.

After a few minutes, I receive an auto-reply:

Dear Customer,

Thank you for your email.

We will contact you with an answer to your query as soon as possible. In the
meantime, your patience is highly appreciated.

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 Thank you for choosing Lufthansa and we look forward to serving you online
and in flight.

Lufthansa Customer Service & Support Center

Great! I will receive a quick answer.

A week later, I still have nothing. I send another email, copying the original message
and asking if my case is being handled. Same automatic answer.

Another week passes. I check online and find that there are several "customer
service" lines for Lufthansa. I decide to try calling. This time someone answers me!
And the answer is clear and precise: please send us an email..................

I send a third email asking if I can expect receiving an answer someday.

Dear Mr. Rio,

Thanks for your email.
As a complaint case, please kindly contact our Customer Relation Center at
email XXXXX. Thank you.
Yours sincerely,
Lufthansa Customer Service & Support Center

Great, I am now redirected to another customer service center, still from Lufthansa.
Could they have not redirected me in the first place? Anyway. I repeat the same
procedure and re-send my email, precising this is already the third one.

Not even an auto-reply.

I leave this all story aside for a while. After a month, I send a fourth email and a fifth
one, one for each customer service line. I also go on Facebook and find that
Lufthansa has a page: I leave the same complaint there.

My two emails got absolutely ignored but my Facebook message is almost instantly
replied:

Hi Julien, I'm sorry to hear you still haven't received a reply from Customer
Relations. I will send them a message, asking them to get back to you as soon
as possible.

Great! Finally, something happens!

Well, not really...

45 days after the initial email, I still got no answer and I lose patience. I go back on
the Facebook page and check out other people's messages: I AM NOT ALONE!
Hundreds of people in various languages are complaining the same way as I do for
similar reasons.

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Enough is enough: I decide to take another approach. I create a Facebook page:
"Lufthansa's disappointed customers".

I go back on Lufthansa's page and remind them that it has been over 45 days since
my original complaint and I have received no feedback so far . I mention my new
page and invite all disappointed customers to join and share their stories.
A minute later , I received the following message:
Hi Julien , I have contacted Customer Relations. A decision regarding your
case has been made today, you will be contacted shortly .
Magic, isn't it? You wait for 45 days and nothing is done, but the day you create a
facebook page for disappointed customers things get better !
Well... not that much actually. My case might have receive a decision, but still haven't
received any feedback.
The customer's point of view

As a customer, what do you think about this situation?

You paid for service . You received a much lower quality of service and went
through endless troubles. When you would expect to receive apologies and/or
compensation, you are asked to wait.

After sending several e-mails and request, after waiting for 45 days, you still get no
feedback, no one takes interest in your case. How could it be more frustrating? The
result from the customer's perspective is obvious:

1. I will not fly Lufthansa again

2. I will spread my message and share my bad experience with people around
me

For Lufthansa, this is both a customer loss and a bad advertisement .

The golden rules for customer service

Earlier this year, I wrote an article called "How to answer customers' emails". If you
haven't read it yet, I encourage you to give it a try: in this article I list some of the
most important aspects of customers' emails and how to answer them properly.
There is one thing each entrepreneur, manager, or customer service staff should
keep in mind at all time: regardless the quality of your product or service, if your
customer service is not up to customers' expectation , all your work is worth
nothing.

Try considering the following situation: you spent some great time in a luxury hotel
for a very reasonable price and everything was almost perfect. Only a small detail
bothered you and you would simply like to discuss it with the hotel's customer
service to find some solution. But the hotel ignores you, never gets back to you and
does not even take time to thank you for your comment . Would you not be
frustrated? Would this not completely spoil your earlier satisfaction?

Customer service is the last contact between a company and its customer and
this is why it has to be perfect

1. Empathy

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I would actually have preferred keeping this point for later , but it is definitely the
most important of all . Empathy. Empathy is the absolute solution to all problems
you might ever encounter with your customers. Simply put yourself in your
customer's shoes why is this person so frustrated and what can I do to make this
person feel better?

If you have to hire someone for your customer service this is the only thing
they absolutely me to check: is this person capable of empathy ?

2. Respect

This is another essential point. It might seem obvious, but it is sadly too often forgotten
by customer services.

The client is what brings money in the company. The customer is what pays your
salary. Regardless his level of anger, his level of rudeness, he is the king. He paid
for a service and he is not satisfied. He might be right, he might be wrong, but this
matters not in the way you must answer him: with respect. You must be humble at
all time and reply with calm.

3. Plan ahead

You should be able at all time to plan ahead and expect your customer's need
before those appear.

When a customer sends you an email, he should receive right away an automatic
answer. This auto reply should contain basic information such as "Thank you for your
message" and

"We will reply you within X days".

This is important: the customers should know at the time he sends an email,
when can he expect an answer.

If you feel like you can't answer him within the time frame, get back to him BEFORE
the deadline has been reached.

"Dear customer, we took your message into consideration. Unfortunately, we are

currently unable to reply your request but will give you an answer within X days. We
apologize for ..."

That way, the customer does not need to send a second email, and this is an
absolutely essential point.

Put yourself in the situation where you sent an email to a customer service. If they
promised getting back to you within 48 hours and you still have no answer after 3
days, you are frustrated. Now, if before the end of those 48 hours a representative
gets back to you explaining the dancer will be delayed but that they did not forget
you, you have no reason to worry about being ignored.

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Whenever you can keep up to your promise, get back to your customer
BEFORE it is too late and inform him. You should always be able to get back to
him before he needs to remind you of your words.

4. Be human
You certainly have rules and procedures to follow. For each situation your customer
might face you probably have a "prepared answer".

For example: "if you want to return this product, you will need to provide us with the
ticket, the proof XYZ , the certificate XKY , etc ...". Be human, you are not a machine.
There are situations in which following the rules word by word is just impossible.
Answering a human need with an administrative response is not efficient.

Of course, you have to follow those rules, but try to be flexible, understanding and
reply in a human way.

Earlier this year I faced the situation as a customer: living in Hong Kong, I have a
French international insurance. My insurance asked me to get my doctor to fill in a
medical certificate written in French. It took me forever to try to get my interlocutor
to understand that Chinese doctors do not speak or read French. I took an
international insurance, it would have seemed obvious that I would live abroad and
require international documents. But sometimes, customer services are stubborn
and refused to think: they stupidly follow the procedure without taking the human
aspect into account.

5. No excuse

You were late in your reply because of a strike? Because your colleague was sick?
Because of a computer bug?

Customers don't care.

If you are late, if you can't give a straight answer, if your service lost the
customer's file ... don't give him excuses. Don't start explaining the reasons why
it happened and how it isn't your fault. Go straight to what matters to him: the
solution.

"We are sorry we had to delay or reply. We are now checking your case with our
team and will get back to you within X days with the proper answer. Once again, we
apologize for our late reply and thank you for your patience and understanding".
That is all. As a customer, you want fact .You want to know when and how you will
get what you want. The rest does not matter to you.

Some companies restrain the type of comments left on their page and "moderate"
those by deleting anything negative. This might be the wrong approach: either you
accept to open your company to critics, or you don't. This behavior shows a
motivation to be transparent but the desire to keep control: this is the wrong
message to give people.

Some others will let customers post anything (as long as it follows some basic ethic
rules), positive as well as negative, and simply answer the feedback as they come.

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This might be the best way to use social media. However, you have better be
pretty confident with your quality of service: if all the messages you receive on the
platform are negative, this exercise of transparency will soon become a huge
problem for you to handle.

A thing to keep in mind is that Social Media and customer service are two
different things. In the end, you must reply your customers individually with
personal answers and potentially private details. The Social Platform should only
"guide" the customer in the proper direction and advised him to save time,
but only the customer service will be able to provide the correct answer.

Make sure your customer service is at least as efficient as your Social Media team:
it would be very frustrating for your customer to get instant reply on Facebook and
to wait two months for a customer service's reply!

7. Hotlines

Hotlines can be extremely painful for customers.

First, if you offer a hotline for your customers to give feedback or complaint, make it
free: companies charging people who complain have no idea about the very
concept of customer service.

Second, you are entitled to use those "automatic hotline" systems directing the
customer to the right service. But if you do so, use EMPATHY! These systems are
conceived to save the customer's time and make the problem solving process more
efficient. Unfortunately, most of the time, the system are extremely inefficient and
get the customer more frustrated than he was before calling! Test your own system
as if you were a customer and update it from time to time to make sure it is
always working its best in the customer's interests .

Third, hotlines are useless is their purpose is to redirect people to the email solution.
If you provide customer with a solution, make sure this solution is going to bring
answer on its own, otherwise you are wasting your time as well as your customer's
one.

Fourth, you are entitled to outsource your hotline or to host it in a different country
from yours. However, make sure that the person your customer will have on
phone speaks clearly and fluently your country's language and that this
person has a very clear understanding of what your company does and how
it deals with problems. Too often hotlines are simply unable to help the customers
because they simply follow guidelines without trying to understand what the
customer really needs.

For hotlines, there is a very simple rule to follow: test it yourself once in a while.
Create yourself a problem a customer might encounter and call your hotline. If you
get in any way frustrated, then something is wrong and you must restructure it.

Lufthansa's customer service: the pros and cons

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My personal experience with Lufthansa has been disastrous. But things could have
easily been different.
Let's go back to the case study and try to see how things could have been handled
better.

1. A bad experience

The first point to note is that I paid for a service I never had and that I instead
experienced successive problems.
What, as a customer, I would have expected would have been, first, apologies for the
situation, then, some kind of compensation.
But before all, what all customers are looking for is respect.

2. A first contact with the customer service

After I sent my first email, I immediately received an auto-reply. This is a good point.
Howeve, the auto-reply wasn't bringing much information: we will contact you
as soon as possible". When I read this message, I did not expect that 45 days later
I would still be waiting! "As soon as possible" means nothing: for some people it
might be 24 hours, for others "one day when I have time". Be precise! "We will
contact you within a week" would have been a better answer.

3. No answer

After a week, anyone would expect something to happen. This is the second
negative point: Lufthansa did not get back to me.
The proper handling of the case would have been a second (personalized for
automatic) answer: "Dear customers, We apologize for the delay of our answer.
Unfortunately, we are currently unable to reply your request. We are trying our best
and we'll get back to you within 7 days".

This type of answer is already quite frustrating for the customer, but, at least, this one
knows that he hasn't been forgotten. With such answer, I would have waited longer
without getting impatient.

4. Hotline
Lufthansa's customer service hotline hasn't been able to give me any other answer
than "please use our email service". Then why having a hotline?

5.Too much delay

Whatever the reason, a month is the maximum a customer can accept before
receiving an answer. If Lufthansa isn't able to reply customers within 30 days,
then they have a serious customer service problem and it is time to solve the
problem by hiring and restructing their service.

6 . From A to B
Lufthansa sent me from a customer service to another, once by phone, once by email,
without ever solving my problem.
If you're not the right service to contact (that can happen), don't tell your
customer to ask somewhere else: transfer his request yourself!
Lufthansa should have redirected my request to another service by itself if it was
wrongly addressed.

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7. The Social Media
Here we have a very positive and a very negative point.

Lufthansa's Social Media service is great. They accept all comments, both positive
and negative, try to answer everyone within a reasonable time frame, are always
polite and try their best to be useful.

Unfortunately, Lufthansa Social Media team is much more efficient than their
customer colleagues and they have absolutely no power of action.

The Social Media team keeps promising that "the request has been successfully
sent to our customer service department", but nothing happens after this. Another
great promise with No action behind, what a shame!

Customer service is all about your image.

You might follow step-by-step all my guidelines and still face difficult situations: that
is normal. Customer service is more of a social science than a business. It
requires you to really understand people's mind and needs and not everyone is able
to do so.
But if you follow all the steps previously stated, you shall at least be able to limit the
frustration of your customers.
Remember that a happy customer might share his experience with one person but
a disappointed one will share it with 8 others. Bad word of mouth can kill
companies. Take very good care of your customer service.
Customer is all about changing feelings, not facts. Whatever bad experience
your customer went through is past already: what you can, what you must change
is his perception and feeling about your company. You must convince your
disappointed customer that they can trust you again. Changing feelings involves
dedication , empathy and respect — it doesn't require money. Most people will be
satisfied with a fast reply, apologies and — eventually — a discount, a small gift or
some advantage. Make your customer feel important and involved: that costs
nothing and that creates loyalty. If you would like to develop your strategy and go
further in terms of customers' loyalty, I invite you to read my article "Mismanagement
of customers loyalty.
To conclude this article, I would like to invite you to read about Dave Carroll's story.
In 2009, Dave Carroll's expensive guitar was broken by United Airlines. The
company ignored his complains and requests. As a result, Dave decided to write a
simple song about his story "United Breaks Guitars". Within 4 days airing on
YouTube, the stock price value of United Airlines dropped by 10%! This is a story
all customer services should keep in mind: you can't disrespect your customers and
expect no consequence. Sooner or later, misbehavior has consequences. To read
Dave Carroll's full story, have a look here: United Breaks Guitars.
Last update: 2020-07-22 Tags: bad customer service good customer service
customer service Lufthansa's customer service Dave Carroll united breaks
guitars Lufthansa.

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 III. ACTIVITIES / ASSESSMENT

Discussion Questions:

1. Answer the following questions briefly “ (5 points each)

a. How do you deliver an excellent Customer Service ?

b. What is an excellent customer service ?
c. What is the golden rule of customer service ?
d. What causes poor customer service ?
e. What happens if customers are not satisfied Case Study:

“The Importance Of A Good Customers Service: Case Study With

Lufthansa” by: Julien Rio
Please be guided by the following format:

1. Title
2. What happened
3. Who was involved
4. How it happened
5. Intervention/Action Taken

Lesson 2: Internal Company Methodology and Standards

I.OVERVIEW

ISO management system standards (MSS) help organizations improve their ... of a
generic management standard in a specific economic or business sector. .ISO has
released ISO 19011:2018 providing specific guidance on internal company
standards. A process is any activity or set of activities that use resources to
transform inputs into outputs. The ISO 9001 standard is based on a process
approach. (Establishing effective and efficient processes that are consistently
followed and improved upon is the basis for most management standards).

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 II. LEARNING OUTCOMES

After successful completion of this lesson, you will be able to:

1. Identify the generic management system standards ?

2. Describe and apply the quality management principles?
3. Make use of the different company standards that define management
system.

III. COURSE MATERIALS

What is ISO?

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is a worldwide federation

of national standards bodies from more than 145 countries, with one body
representing each country. ISO is a non-governmental organization established in
1947 and based in Geneva, Switzerland. Its mission is to promote the development
of standardization and related activities in the world; to facilitate the international
exchange of goods and services; and to develop cooperation in intellectual,
scientific, technological and economic activity. ISO's work results in international
agreements, which are published as International Standards and other types of ISO
documents.

An important development in quality is the ISO family of standards , which was

formulated by the Geneva-based International Organization for Standardization
(ISO) . It is a series of quality management and assurance standards which define
the elements required to achieve a quality system regardless of the product
manufactured or the technology used . By adopting ISO standards, a company is
able to establish its reliability as a supplier with a quality system that conforms to
international standards. This becomes more relevant with a global trend to
increasingly deregulate foreign trade as can be seen in the formation of European
Economic Community (EEC) among European nations; North American Free Trade
Area (NAFTA) among the United States , Canada , and Mexico; and the Asian Free
Trade Area (AFTA) among countries in the ASEAN region in the early 1990s .

Companies adopt the ISO on a voluntary basis . However, since over 150 countries
have so far used ISO standards, export manufacturers would eventually have no
choice but to change the ISO system in order to survive in the international market
.

In the ASEAN region , Singapore adopted the ISO system in 1989 , thus gaining the
early advantage among ASEAN members . Malaysia adopted the ISO system in 1990
. The local ISO program was launched in the Philippines through Bureau of Product
Standards (BPS) of the Department of Trade and Industry in April 1992 . Thailand and
Indonesia launched it almost at the same time as the Philippines . Among the
companies granted the ISO certification early in the Philippines are electronics
companies such as Electronic Assembles, Inc. and Amkor/ AnamPhilippines .

An ISO certification is valid only for the plant that have been assessed and does not
automatically extend to other plants of the company even if they are manufacturing
exactly the same product . Other plants are assessed separately. Plants given the
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 ISO seal are monitored every six months for three consecutive years to ensure that
the employees continue to follow the standards that have been set. The company
will have to apply for a renewal of its ISO certificate at the end of every year . Now
on ISO 9001:2008 standard, the ISO provides a tried and tested framework for
taking a systematic approach to managing the organization's processes so that they
consistently turn out products that satisfy customers' expectations .

Top management commitment in having a total quality management system and

their perception of the role of people in maintaining quality is the first step in getting
an ISO certification. Each department of a company is visited by a BPS team to see
how they are confirming the quality requirements. Quality Control documents are
submitted and assessed, Systems such as how records are filed in a company are
observed to see how a company exercises control. Another criterion of the ISO 9000
series is the internal audit system, which should not be limited to financial audit but
also includes audit about the company's production process and quality system .
Aside from this management review, adherence to the recommended corrective
actions is also important .

WHAT IS ISO STANDARD?

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) defines a standard as a

"document, established by consensus and approved by a recognized body, that
provides – for common and repeated use – rules, guidelines or characteristics for
activities of their results, aimed at the achievement of the optimum degree of order
in a given context."

Standards can serve many purposes, including:

• Determining the fitness of an object or process for a specific purpose or its

compatibility and interchangeability with other objects or processes
• Contributing to safety
• Providing protections for the environment
• Providing for product protections against climatic or other adverse conditions

Management System Standards

ISO management system standards (MSS) help organizations improve

their performance by specifying repeatable steps that organizations
consciously implement to achieve their goals and objectives, and to create
an organizational culture that reflexively engages in a continuous cycle of
self-evaluation, correction and improvement
of operations and processes through heightened employee awareness and
management leadership and commitment.
 The benefits of an effective management system to an
organization include:

More efficient use of resources and improved financial performance.

Improved risk management and protection of people and the environment,
andIncreased capability to deliver consistent and improved services and

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products, thereby increasing value to customers and all other
stakeholders.MSS are the result of consensus among international experts
with expertise in global management, leadership strategies, and efficient and
effective processes and practices. MSS standards can be implemented by
any organization, large or small. (www.iso.org)

 ISO MS Standards:

• Make the development, manufacturing and supply of products and services

more efficient. Provide for global acceptance of certified organizations.
• Allow for sharing of technological advances and good management
practices • Provide governments with a technical base for legislation and
conformity assessment.
• Make life simpler by providing solutions to common problems.
• There have been more than 21,000 ISO standards issued by the
International Organization for Standardization, the most popular of which are
the ISO management system standards such as ISO 9001 (for quality
management systems) and now ISO 20000-1 (for IT service management
systems) and ISO 27001 (for IT security management systems).
• For aerospace companies, the ISO 9001 standard is enhanced in the
aerospace standards: AS 9100 for the design and manufacture of aerospace
products, AS 9110 for aviation maintenance facilities and AS 9120 for stock
list distributors of aerospace components.
• QMS Solutions offers consulting and training support for the following
standards, among others, and would be pleased to work with your
organization to achieve certification to these standards or to improve
your management systems.

 ISO 9000 is a procedure for the internal quality certification. ISO 9000
standards certify that organizations have a quality management system that
meets ISO 9000 criteria. It does not certify individual products.
 An accredited registrar assesses a company's quality program and
determines if it is in compliance with ISO 9000 standards. If it is in
compliance, the registrar issues a certificate and registers that certificate in
a book that is widely distributed. (moderate)

ISO 9001: Quality Management System

• ISO 9001 is the leading international standard for a quality management

system. The standard specifies the requirements for a quality management
system which are recognized as being aligned with accepted good practice
for running a business. ISO certification is rapidly becoming mandatory in
order to do business with other countries, the government and prime
contractors.
• The ISO 9001 standard was completely revised in 2015 to make it user
friendly and easier for small and medium sized companies to achieve
certification regardless of whether they produce a product or provide a
service.
• There is now only one requirement standard, i.e., ISO 9001:2015. It is
structured to follow

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 the process approach for implementing a quality management system. The
emphasis is no longer on documentation but rather on the effectiveness and
improvement of the quality management system and the business to
enhance customer satisfaction by meeting and/or exceeding customer
expectations and requirements.

 ISO 20000-1: IT Service Management

• ISO/IEC 20000-1 is the first worldwide standard specifically devised for IT

Service Management (ITSM). It describes an integrated set of managed
processes for the effective delivery of services to the business and its
customers. It is aligned and complimentary to the process approach defined
within ITIL. ISO/IEC 20000 consists of several parts, two of which are:

• ISO/IEC 20000-1:2011 is the formal Specification. It defines the

requirements to deliver managed services of an acceptable quality for its
customers. It is used to assess conformance for certification.
• ISO/IEC 20000-2:2012 provides guidelines for the application of ISO/IEC
20000-1. It describes the best practices for service management processes
within the scope of ISO/IEC 20000-1. It is of particular use to organizations
preparing to be audited against ISO/IEC 20000 or planning service
improvements
• A new version of ISO/IEC 20000-1 is expected in September, 2018, which
includes adoption of the ten-clause High Level Structure for ISO
management systems.

ISO-9001-2015 and 8 Quality Management Principles

For more than half a century, the International Standard for Organizations (ISO)
has been developing standards to protect society from potential errors. It’s been 26
years since the introduction of the Quality Management System standards model,
ISO 9001, specifically.

The most current version, ISO 9001:2008 was adopted to address fulfilling
regulatory requirements and customer satisfaction through continuous improvement
of the quality system. The standards apply worldwide and provide consumers with
a base-level confidence in an organization’s ability to provide conforming products.
Theoretically, it’s been working, but for those concerned with quality, it certainly
makes sense to evaluate whether there’s room for improvement.

A systematic review of ISO 9001 completed in March 2012 indicated that while there
was still significant satisfaction with the current version of the standard, most people
considered a revision appropriate. ISO’s Technical Committee (TC 176/SC 2) spent
the last three years planning the standard’s next iteration which is expected to guide
quality management system standards for, at minimum, the decade ahead. ISO
9001: 2015 is due for release this fall.

Ensuring a Passing Grade

The intention of the 2015 revision is to keep ISO 9001 relevant, reflect changes in
its environment, and ensure it continues to deliver “confidence in the organization’s

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ability to consistently provide product that meets customer and applicable statutory
and regulatory requirements.”

According to ISO’s Technical Committee, the revised standard should (among other
things).

• Remain generic, and relevant to all sizes and types of organization operating
in any sector.
• Maintain the current focus on effective process management to produce
desired outcomes
• Take account of changes in quality management systems practices and
technology since the last major revision in 2000.
• Reflect changes in the increasingly complex, demanding and dynamic
environments in which organizations operate.
• Apply Annex SL of the ISO Directives to enhance compatibility and alignment
with other ISO management system standards.
• Facilitate effective organizational implementation and effective conformity
assessment by first, second and third parties.
• Use simplified language and writing styles to aid understanding and
consistent interpretations of its requirements.
• Provide a stable core set of requirements for the next 10 years or more.

CUSTOMER PERCEPTION OF TQM

One of the fundamentals of the TQM philosophy continuous process improvements.

This concept implies that there is no acceptable quality level, therefore, the
customer's needs, values, or expectations are constantly changing and becoming
more and more demanding.

Many people checked consumer's magazines or serve their internets, before making
final decisions on major purchases. The American Society for Quality Control
(ASSOC) conducted a survey on customers' perceptions of important factors that
influenced purchases show the following ranking:
1. Performance
2. Features
3. Service
4. Warranty
5. Price
6. Reputation

The factors of performance, features, and warranty are part of product quality,
therefore, it is evident that product quality and service are more important than price.
Although this information is based on the retail customer, seemingly, to some extent,
it is also true for the commercial customer.

1.Performance

Performance involves "fitness for use" this phrase tells that product quality and
services is ready for the customer's use at the time of sale. Other considerations
are: (1) availability, which is the probability that a product will operate when needed

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;(2) reliability, which is freedom from failure overtime ; and (3) maintainability , which
is the ease by which the product can be kept operable.
2.Features

Identifiable pictures or attributes of a product or service or psychological, time-

oriented, contractual, ethical, and technological. Features are secondary
characteristics of the product or service . Example: the major function of the car is
transportation, whereas a stereo system is a feature.

3.Service

The emphasis on customer service is greatly emerging as a method for business

organizations to give the customer added value. Customer service is intangible; it is
made up of many small things , all directed to change/improve customer's
perception . Intangible characteristics are those traits that are not quantifiable, yet
contribute greatly to customer satisfaction. Providing excellent customer service is
different from and bored difficult achieved an excellent product quality.
Organizations that emphasize service never stop looking for and finding ways to
serve their customer better, even when their customers are not complaining.

4.Warranty

Product warranty represents a business organization's public promise of a quality

products supported by a guarantee of customer satisfaction. Furthermore, it also
represents a public commitment to guarantee a level of service sufficient to satisfy
the customer.

Product warranty requires the organization to focus on the customer's definition of

products and service quality.A business organization has to determine the
characteristics of product and service quality and the importance the customer
attaches to each of those characteristics.

Product warranty gives feedback by providing information on the product and

service quality it also forces to organization to develop a corrective action system.
Thus, product warranty motivates customers to buy a service by reducing the risk
of the purchase decision and it generates more sales from existing customer by
enhancing loyalty.

5.Price

Present customer serving to spend a higher price of obtain value. Customers are
constantly evaluating one business organization's products and/or services against
those of its competitors to determine who provides the greater value. But in our
highly competitive business environment, each customer's concept of value is
continually changing. Present efforts must be made by everyone having contact
with customers to identify, verify, and update each customer's perception of value
in relation to each product and service.

6.Reputation

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Total customer satisfaction is based on the entire experience with the business
organization, not just the product. Good experiences are repeated to six people and
bad experiences are repeated to fifteen people; therefore, it is more difficult to create
a favorable reputation.
Customers are very much willing to pay a premium for a known or trusted brand
name and often become customers for life. It costs five times as much to win a new
customer as it does to keep an existing one; therefore , customer retention is an
important economic strategy for any business organization. Although it is difficult for
a business organization to quantify improved customer satisfaction, it is very easy
to quantify an increase in customer retention. Investment in customer retention can
be a more effective bottom-line approach than concentrating on lowering operational
costs. An effective marketing retention strategy is achieved through the use of
feedback from information collecting tools.

A Primer for Quality

With these intentions met as a whole, global commerce should see a bump in overall
quality levels going forward, but no one should panic that “everything is about to
change.” For example, let’s focus on the last bullet point. The core set of
requirements within the revised ISO 9001 standard will not differ from the current
requirements. However, the language will be standardized, as will the approaches
to management, based on the introduction of eight major quality management
principles.

These principles were developed in the mid-1990s by a small group of experts who
were familiar with the teachings and philosophies of the well-known quality gurus of
the last century.

The Eight Principles of Quality

1. Customer focus - Organizations can establish this focus by trying to

understand and meet their customers’ current and future requirements and
expectations.

2. Leadership- Organizations succeed when leaders establish and maintain

the internal environment in which employees can become fully involved in
achieving the organization’s unified objectives.

3. Involvement of people- Organizations succeed by retaining competent

employees, encouraging continuous enhancement of their knowledge and
skills, and empowering them, encouraging engagement and recognizing
achievements.

4. Process approach- Organizations enhance their performance when leaders

manage and control their processes, as well as the inputs and outputs that
tie these processes together.

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 5. System approach to management- Organizations sustain success when
processes are managed as one coherent quality management system.

6. Continuous improvement- Organizations will maintain current levels of

performance, respond to changing conditions, and identify, create and
exploit new opportunities when they establish and sustain an ongoing focus
on improvement.

7. Factual approach to decision making- Organizations succeed when they

have established an evidence-based decision making process that entails
gathering input from multiple sources, identifying facts, objectively
analyzing data, examining cause/effect, and considering potential
consequences.

8. Mutually beneficial supplier relationships- Organizations that carefully

manage their relationships with suppliers and partners can nurture positive
and productive involvement, support and feedback from those entities.

 These principles form the conceptual foundation for the ISO portfolio of quality
management standards and serve as the basis for the Good Manufacturing
Practices (GMP), Good Clinical Practices (GCP), and Good Laboratory
Practices (GLP) required by most government regulatory bodies. But these
principles are not just the backbone of quality systems; they’re also simply
good business principles to put into practice across
an enterprise. The standardization of management approach based on them
will be driving global improvement and process excellence for at least the
next 10 years.

Ringing in the New Standard Era

Organizations can continue to audit their existing integrated management systems

against the current revisions of ISO 9001 (2008 version) until September 2015. After
that, with the ISO 9001:2015 standard in place guiding users toward better quality
practices, organizations will find it easier to incorporate their quality management
system into the core business processes and gain greater business benefit.

Putting it all into Practice

Like the eight quality principles, an automated enterprise quality management

system built on the ISO standard has far-reaching impact on the total operation of
an organization. SmartSolve quality management software from ISO 9001-certified
Pilgrim Quality Solutions, provides the tools to automate quality processes but also
makes it easier to deploy them across an organization’s entire value chain,
impacting the opportunity for success from top to bottom.

IV.ACTIVITIES/ASSEMENT

Discussion Questions: (5 points each)

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 1. Discuss the long-run effects of quality improvement on a firm's profitability.
2. Define and explain quality
3. The benefits of an effective management system to an organization.
4. Enumerate and explain the 8 principles of quality. (5 points each).
5. Enumerate and explain the customers' perceptions on important factors that
influenced purchases. (5 points each).

Lesson 3:Internal Customer Satisfaction

Measures I and Lesson 4: External
Customer Satisfaction Measures II

I.OVERVIEW

Measuring customer satisfaction may be a new concept to companies that have

been focused almost exclusively on income statements and balance sheets.
Companies now recognize that the new global economy has changed things
forever. Increased competition, crowded markets with little product differentiation,
and years of sales growth followed by two decades of flattened sales curves indicate
to today’s sharp competitors that their focus must change. profits from its investment
Measuring customer satisfaction doesn't have to be complicated or expensive. In
fact, it's fairly simple to incorporate customer satisfaction measurement into your
current customer success strategy. No matter how you cut it, measuring satisfaction
comes down to gathering customer feedback via surveys and customer data. To
accurately gauge customer sentiment, we'll need to ask people how their experience
was then compare it against quantitative reports. Of course, there are multiple ways
you can execute a survey, from the design to timing, sample, and even how you
analyze the data. Regardless of the approach you choose, there are some
fundamental steps that need to be taken to ensure your business.

II.LEARNING OUTCOMES

After successful completion of this lesson, you will be able to:

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 1. Relate the effective practice of customer service to the development
ofpersonal leadership/ social competencies.
2. Discuss customer service concepts and how they relate to each other.
3. Identify the difference between service qualities , service standards and
service excellencetheir importance to the organization.
4. Describe COPC and National Malcolm Baldrige National Quality
Award.Identify the different measures to customer satisfaction.
5. Identify the difference between service qualities and service standards
andtheir importance to the organization.
6. Describe COPC and National Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award

III.COURSE MATERIALS

Customers are the greatest need of any organization. Hence it is obvious that they
should be satisfied. Satisfying customers requires adoption of PDCA. Every
organization needs to carry out PDCA as given below so that the customers are
satisfied.

 Plan for satisfying customers

 Implement the identified measures to satisfy them.
 Check whether they are really satisfied.
 If not take corrective action.
 If so take preventive action
 Revisit the plan

Definition of Service

Service is the interface between the organization and the customer and by the
organization’s internal activities, to meet customer needs.

The results generated in the case of manufacturing is a product. However, in the

case of service, it may be a product or may not be a product. The definition of
service could be understood easily by visualizing a few common services. For
instance, an organization supplying electricity to a household is a service
organization. The objective of the organization is supplying electricity for various
purposes. In achieving its objective, the organization undertakes internal activities
such as generation, transmission and distribution, so that the power is available at
the customer’s doorsteps. Thus, definitely electric power is an intangible product,
provided as a service by the electricity provided.

Importance of Service

There are numerous service providers such as colleges, schools, internet

café, hospitals, restaurants, hotels, banks, government departments,
transport organization, insurance agencies, chartered
accountants,publishers, software organizations, telecommunication service,
real estate agencies, security services, house-keeping services, taxi
services, training organizations, test laboratories, etc.

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Leadership and Management Competencies

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WHAT IS THE MALCOLM BALDRIGE NATIONAL QUALITY AWARD (MBNQA)?
 The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) is an award
established by the U.S. Congress in 1987 to raise awareness of quality
management and recognize U.S. companies that have implemented
successful quality management systems. The award is the nation's highest
presidential honor for performance excellence.

Three MBNQA awards can be given annually in six categories:

• Manufacturing
• Service Company
• Small Business
• Education
• Healthcare
• Non-profit

The education and healthcare categories were added in 1999, while the government
and nonprofit categories were added in 2007.

The MBNQA award is named after the late Secretary of Commerce Malcolm
Baldrige, a proponent of quality management. The U.S. Commerce Department’s

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National Institute of Standards and Technology manages the award, and ASQ
administers it.

THE SEVEN MBNQA CRITERIA CATEGORIES

Organizations that apply for the MBNQA are judged by an independent board of
examiners. Recipients are selected based on achievement and improvement in
seven areas, known as the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence:

1. Leadership: How upper management leads the organization, and how the
organization leads within the community.
2. Strategy: How the organization establishes and plans to implement strategic
directions.
3. Customers: How the organization builds and maintains strong, lasting
relationships with customers.
4. Measurement, analysis, and knowledge management: How the organization
uses data to support key processes and manage performance.
5. Workforce: How the organization empowers and involves its workforce.
6. Operations: How the organization designs, manages, and improves key
processes.
7. Results: How the organization performs in terms of customer satisfaction,
finances, human resources, supplier and partner performance, operations,
governance and social responsibility, and how the organization compares to
its competitors.
8. The 2019-2020 Baldrige Excellence Framework is available for the
business/nonprofit, healthcare, and education industries. The criteria
focuses on managing all components of an organization as a whole,
cybersecurity risks, and understanding the role of risk management within a
systems perspective of organizational performance management.

Service Standards and Service Excellence….are Not the Same Thing!

“Once we set our service standards we’ll start growing.”

Organizations often work to establish standards for common service transactions.

While specific standards for service performance can be useful they can also be
counter-productive, because setting and achieving service standards is not the
same as achieving service excellence. Let’s consider the importance of each, and
the difference.

Service standards are applicable to many jobs. Customer service reps, bank branch
employees, retail salespeople, call center staff and distribution and delivery
functions all benefit from clear standards for service. Standards are also commonly
applied to technical support roles and shared services.And there are certainly good
reasons to establish service standards. They provide staff with a clear set of
guidelines for delivering predictable levels service. For example, establishing
expected follow-up time and communications format when an IT department
responds to a technical support call. In such cases, standards provide a useful
benchmark, especially for new employees learning how to do the job.

Standards can also support your brand. They help deliver consistency in brand
identity across multiple customer transactions. Something as simple as always

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giving your name, the company name, and saying “How may I help you?” at the
beginning of call, or “Is there any other assistance
I can provide?” at the end of a call, can offer support to the company-wide brand
value of “Customer Focus.”

But service standards can also be too rigid, or too scripted, and inadvertently
degrade a service experience or cause damage to a service brand. For example,
one call center manager shared with me that one of their required service standards
was to use each customer’s name three times on every call. Imagine every
employee trying to squeeze your name into the conversation three times on every
call, including simple inquiries. The standard is too rigid. The actual experience
becomes artificial and customers can see and hear right through it. We know that
someone is just going through the motions, following the standard, and not really
giving us great service.

Customers would rather hear an empathetic tone of voice, or be asked an

understanding question, than hear their name robotically repeated three times. A
better guideline would be: “Use the customer’s name at least once and personalize
the conversation.”

The even bigger danger is seeing “service standards” as the primary key to
achieving “service excellence.” Bringing everyone to a pre-set standard and then
assuming that service will be excellent leaves little room to adapt to customers’
individual situations. Inadvertently, standards can drive service providers to deliver
the minimum actions instead of sparking their imagination to think “What can I do to
delight this customer? What else could I do to serve them?”

At Uplifting Service we say: “Service is taking action to create value for someone
else.” Excellence in service is not taking a prescribed set of actions. Rather, service
excellence is taking the next right action to create new value, better value, or more
than expected value for someone else; an internal colleague or an external
customer. Service excellence is the commitment – not merely to predictable
standards – but to continuously stepping up. And for my seatmates on the airplane,
this passion for perpetual service improvement is the key the business growth.

Service standards are an important component for process quality and

efficiency, while service excellence is a measure of the actual customer
experience.

 We do need to follow essential steps and provide information during a

service transaction. But it is possible to tick all the boxes on a checklist and
deliver a horrible service experience! What we really need to do – if we
wish to gain loyalty, win advocates, and achieve business growth – is
create experiences for customers they genuinely appreciate and value. And
if everyone is focused only or even primarily on the checklist, you will miss
countless opportunities to provide genuinely appreciated service.

 Consider this example. On a flight at the airplane door for an attendant to

personally seat me. But that attendant was delayed helping an earlier
passenger. In an attempt to meet the standard of “personally seat each
premium level flyer,” this standard process created the opposite effect and
frustrated me at the doorway. I would have happily seated myself and been
greeted a bit later by the flight attendant.

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  Service standards have their place, and we are not advising you to ignore
them. But standards are tools to deliver service, and meeting those
standards is not the definition of excellence in service.

Tips for using Service Quality and Service Standards for achieving Service
Excellence.

SERVICE QUALITY
 When defining the concept of service quality, one should always start with
customers, as quality is the most important factor for customers and also it
is their basis of their opinion, which will then result in the fact that service
quality is achieved if the customer expectations are achieved.

 It is a combination of two words, Service and Quality where we find emphasis

on the availability of quality services to the ultimate users. The term quality
focuses on standard or specification that a service generating organization
promises. We can’t have a clearcut boundary for quality. Scientific inventions
and innovations make the ways for the generation of quality. More frequency
in innovations, less gap in the process of quality upgradation.
 Like the goods manufacturing organisations even the service generating
organisations are found instrumental in promoting research and devising
something new that makes the services, schemes distinct to the competitors
and creates profitable market opportunities to capitalise on. It is against this
background that in the developed countries, the process of innovation is
found more frequent.

 The created quality shapes the boundary of expectations since the users
tasting the sweetness, of world-class services expect the same from other
organisations. The expectations pave the avenues for satisfaction or
dissatisfaction. If we succeed in fulfilling the expectations of users, they are
found satisfied and the satisfaction makes the ways for increasing the market
share.

 It is right to mention that the service quality satisfaction is the outcome of the
resources and activities expanded to offer service against the expectations
of users from the same. It is also opined that the service quality can be
broken into technical quality and functional quality.

 For the purpose of improving the levels of the quality of services that we
offer. The service generating organizations are required to identify the
reasons entailed behind mounting dissatisfaction amongst the users and to
activate appropriate measures (technical or functional) to minimize it.

 Service providers define and attain the service quality, while consumers
perceive quality during the service delivery process.

 The way consumers perceive moments of truth is directly reflected on the

evaluation of total quality service, especially in services whose deliveries are
repeated, which implies a highly professional approach to moments of truth,
aimed at building and maintaining longterm consumer relations.

 Quality-based service company management should especially focus on

four key areas important for achieving quality:

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 • Service encounters (moments of truth);
• Service design
• Service productivity
• Service provider’s corporate cultureSERVICE STANDARDS
• First and foremost, create standards as a guide to orient people to a
job, not as the definition of their job.
• When you create standards, get input from real customers. What is
their expectation? What do they desire?

 Standards in your industry may differ from those in another. Don’t simply
borrow standards from other companies.

 Set minimum standards only on very key critical steps in a service process.

 Don’t make standards too complex or inflexible. Pick only the most valuable
measures of time, accuracy, or behavior. Allow employees to adapt to each
client’s unique needs.

 Review service standards periodically and update or delete as necessary.

Customer expectations change over time and your service standards should
reflect this.

 Communicate the role of standards by having a standard of “exceeding the

standard”.

SERVICE EXCELLENCE

 Focus your service education on creating a mindset for service excellence.

Instead of training to a script, educate your staff to understand what
customers and colleagues really value.

 Make “experience” the focus of your service brand identity and use this
understanding to drive actions and behaviors.

 If you conduct service quality audits, evaluate the service experience, not
just the list of service standards.

 Motivate, recognize, and reward employees, not for meeting standards, but
for adding greater value.

 Look for “hot spots” where service experience consistently lags. Look
beyond the standards. Focus team conversations on what customers’ value
and how you can step up to create more and better value. Focus coaching
and recognition on these key areas and ideas.

 Make “stepping up” the ultimate standard of great service performance.

COPC Standards

 A Performance Management System for Call Center and Customer

Experience Operations

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  COPC Inc. is based on the COPC Customer Experience (CX) Standard,
which provides guidelines and best practices for managing and improving
the performance of your customer experience operations. Major brands
throughout the world rely on the COPC CX Standard for their customer
experience management program. The COPC CX Standard comes in three
versions: for customer service providers (CSPs), for outsource service
providers (OSPs), and for vendor management organizations (VMOs).

Quality Best Practices, Services and Software for Call Centers and CX
Operations

Quality monitoring, especially in call centers, is the best window into the customer
experience, and the most effective listening post for gathering valuable insights. Yet
many organizations view monitoring as mostly a cost function. COPC Inc. believes
your quality program can be a significant return-on-investment if executed correctly.

We have developed and perfected quality best practices that produces results. Our
approach can be a predictor of customer satisfaction and can identify detailed root
causes of issues impacting performance. We do this through a combination of
quality program design, training, and technology.

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