Customer Service Management

CAMBRIDGE MANAGEMENT AND LEADERSHIP SCHOOL

info@cmls.org.uk

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What is Customer Service

 Customer Service is not about how you handle a

transaction. It is about a relationship with people who are
an essential part of everything you do.
 To be a successful in customer service, you have to
develop an approach where you should identify
 How to provide the best customer service
 Understand what your customer want
 Act on your customer needs

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Great Customer Service

 Great customer service isn’t doing what you think your customer want; it’s
doing what your customer want.
 Customers can be people of any age with specific needs or corporate
customers such as companies limited or public.
 To provide the Great Customer service – Don’t assume what your customer
wants without getting to know about them.
 To understand customers, you need to get close to them, talk to them in
friendly and polite way, stay tuned into them, and think like them.

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 If you are directly serving customers – you should know that you are the only
one who can satisfy your customers requirements and increase their
satisfaction.
 Improve yourself and then understand your customers (Follow steps)
1. Identify your style of working and job requirements – do you like to work in group,
as a team or individually, how you understand your customers
2. Identify your strengths and weaknesses – find out what your strengths are and also
identify your weaknesses (ask others about your weaknesses and list them)
3. Identify your area of improvement – you’re your weaknesses and find ways to
improve them
4. Create your personal and professional development action plan (based on above
step 3)

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How to develop an in-depth understanding of
your customer – Follow the steps

 Develop a profile of your main customers and their

characteristics
 Segment them into small group with same characteristics
 Understand them with face to face interview, observation,
survey or questionnaire etc.
 Ask them questions about your company and staff – Like
‘Suggest us anything relating to our product, service or
customer service so we can provide you the best service’.

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 Once you have gathered all data and information, use those data and
information to develop your organization policies (rules)
 Act on that policy for sometime
 Get feedback from customers and staff through emails, comments,
complaints, forum or through any suitable method (Remember – Always try to
involve customers when you are planning to offer a new product or service)
 Review your organization policy and feedback together to see
 How effective you / your company were to engage with customers
 What has improved ‘Quality’ ? Or ‘Turnover’?

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Develop and Enhance Customer
Satisfaction
You can develop and enhance customer satisfaction by
 Developing a questionnaire or Survey with respect to each and every aspect
of the product or service or business function.
 Include specific questions relating to key areas of your business such as delivery,
quality, information, access and benefits of the customer service. Ask about
customers experiences, get their comments or feedback.
 Analyse the acquired data and information
 Find areas of improvement
 Put everything in the action plan with deadline and work towards
improvement

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 If you are leading a team to serve customer – develop a

positive and collaborative culture within your organization
and work collectively towards your organization common
goal to achieve ‘Excellent Customer Service’
 Ensure that all customers are treated fairly without any
discrimination or priority and inline your
company/business/organization policy.
 This will be confirmed when you evaluate feedback from
customers and staff

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 Data protection– ensure that when you deal with customers you should
maintain their confidentiality all the times exactly in the same way you
maintain your organization confidential information.
 Don’t ask questions from your staff or customers if they are linked to some
confidential information. Ask questions only related to the improvement of
your customer services
 Develop your staff attitude and make them professional with full training
manual.
 Give rewards and recognition to staff members and motive them

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Organise and deliver customer service

 You can ask a variety of information from your

customers. Will it be useful?
 No, because it will not only consume your time but also
suggest no improvement
 Therefore, only focus on the Quality of information –
relevant to the needs of customers.
 Always give due regards to comments, feedback and
complaints from customers.

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 Develop a best practice to achieve the good customer service

 Benchmark your performance against that of any other organisations and then
use that information to improve your service.
 If you are an individual then you can benchmark your own performance
against other person in your organisation, use that information to improve
your customer service.
 Learn from your mistakes and improve
 Ensure that if you receive ‘complaints’ or ‘feedback’ – resolve them within a
time limit, and ensure that ‘outcome’ is satisfactory for the customer.
 For efficient and effective customer services – timelines are so important.
Timelines tell your customer and staff that you do everything in an organised way
with deadline.

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Remember

 Quality services are oriented of all resources and all people in a company
towards customers satisfaction – not just those who deal with customers over
the telephone/face-to-face/fax or through letters.
 Quality services not only retain your existing customers but also attract new
customers – ultimately it increase your product/service reputation and
turnover
 Customer service is actually an interaction that your organization handles
through its policies, rules and regulations between itself (including staff) and
its customers.

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When you provide customer services –
Remember following principles
 Timelines – how quickly can you respond to your customers’ needs/demands?
 Flexibility – do you give your customers precisely what they want or are they constrained to
buy what you can offer?
 Friendliness – Are you friendly? Are you or your team members create friendly environment
to serve customers?
 Honesty – Are you or your team members treating each customer fairly without any
discrimination? Are you telling your customers upfront what you can do and what you cannot
do for them.
 Expectation – Do you keep your promises?
 Quality – do you get it right first time? Every time? Do you have a clear and measureable
targets for the quality of your product/services and overall your customer services. Quality
Services can be defined as ‘providing the right level of service to meet customers’ needs’
 Problems – what do you do when things go wrong?
 Values – are you doing enough to build your product and services values?
 Cooperation – are you cooperating enough with your staff member or line manager?
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Customer Relationship Management

 CRM is the process of managing all aspects of interaction a company has with
its customers.
 CRM includes
 Prospecting
 Sales and services
 CRM is an integrated approach to identifying, acquiring and retaining
customers. By enabling organisations manage and coordinate customer
interactions across multiple channels, departments, lines of business and
geographies.
 CRM helps organisations to maximise the value of every customer interaction
and drive superior corporate performance.

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Types of Customer Relationship
Management (CRM)
 Strategic – Strategic CRM is a core customer-centric
business strategy that aims at winning and keeping
profitable customers
 Operational – Operational CRM focuses on the automation
of customer-facing processes such as selling, marketing
and customer service.
 Analytical – Analytical CRM is the process through which
organisations transform customer-related data into
actionable insight for either strategic or tactical purposes.
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Models of CRM – the IDIC Model

 The IDIC model was developed by Don Peppers and Martha Roger, of the
peppers & Rogers Group – this model suggest that companies should take 4
actions in order to build closer one to one relationship with customers
1. Identify – who customers are and build a deep understanding of them
2. Differentiate – your customers to identify which customers have most value
now and which offer most for the future.
3. Interact – with customers to ensure that you understand customer
expectations and their relationship with other suppliers or brands
4. Customise – the offer and communications to ensure that expectations of
customers are met

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Models of CRM – the Value Chain Model

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 In the previous diagram, Francis Buttle’s Model is represented.

It consists of five primary stages and four supporting conditions
leading towards the end goal of enhanced customer
profitability. The primary stages of customer portfolio analysis,
customer intimacy, network development, value proposition
development and managing the customer lifecycle are
sequenced to ensure that a company, with the support of its
network of suppliers, partners and employees, creates and
delivers value propositions that acquire and retain profitable
customers. The supporting conditions of leadership and culture,
data and IT, people and processes enable the CRM strategy to
function effectively and efficiently.
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The Gartner Competency Model

 The model suggest that companies need competencies in eight (8) areas for
CRM to be successful. These includes
1. Vision
2. Developing CRM strategies
3. Designing valued customer experiences,
4. Intra-extra organisational collaboration,
5. Managing customer Lifecyle processes,
6. Information management
7. Technology implementation
8. Developing measures indicative of CRM success or failure.

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What matters in the Global Context to
Manage Excellent Relationship with
Customers?
 Customers’ orientation
 Product or Service Quality
 Customer Services
 Customer Satisfaction
 Customer Retention
 Customer value

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Benefits of Customer Relationship
Management
(Ederer, Seiwert & Kustenmacher, 2000, p.84)
 Every satisfied customer brings in at least three more customers
 An unhappy customer communicates his negative experience to ten more
potential customers
 The rate of repeat sales climbs with increased reliance and satisfaction with
the performance of their suppliers
 Regular customers exhibit less price sensitivity than new customers
 Customer-oriented companies can even charge higher prices than competition
 Marketing and sales costs for maintaining customer relationships drop.
 Reducing the level of customers leaving the firm by five percent can raise
profit as much 85% (Topfer, 1996, p.92)

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Assignment 1

 Consider a multinational company that you believe is focused on its

customers. Find if they have any customer related strategy and write a piece
of paper to discuss how that company is getting advantage by implementing
CRM. You can include a relevant model that company is focusing on develop
relationship with its customers. (Minimum 1000 words).
 Write an assignment to discuss how can a company achieve excellence in
meeting the customers’ requirements and how strategic, operational and
analytical strategies are linked with each others (Minimum 500 words)

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