BY MBABAZI OLIVIA, MBA, BBA , CONTACTS

0782802471, o.mbabazi@ur.ac.rw

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 Introduction

The concept of customer care has been necessitated by

the recent trend of the ups and downs of the economy
being controlled by customers. Customers have
changed the face of many businesses and the economy
today is a customer or service economy

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 A customer is someone who uses our goods or services
and pays for them or someone who uses the services or
products we are offering but don’t pay for it (Ted
Johns).

 Customer care is the act of responding to customer

needs and expectations in a way that will make them
have a memorable experience and motivate them to
come back and tell others.

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Satisfying customer expectations and
delivering excellent service

 Customer expectations are pre conceived quality

standards customers place on services or products they
will receive. To satisfy customer expectations
therefore, our businesses have to keep to the promises
made and deliver according to the standards of the
customers. A Service standard is what the customer
says: it’s not what your internal guidelines indicate is
satisfactory or your organization’s perceptions.

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Excellent service
 Excellent service means therefore, exceeding customer
expectations. To achieve excellent service is to keep to
what you promised to deliver and exceeding customer
expectations. “You under promise and over deliver” It
therefore requires:
 The right Skills
 The right knowledge
 The right attitude
 Self-esteem and that of their customers
 Empathy for the customers
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Monitoring distribtion
 Goods have traveled across the globe to be bought and
sold for centuries and merchants have tried to manage
the overall process from the manufacture through the
distribution as efficiently and risk free as possible
 The process of monitoring all available data points
(internal but largely external) around the distribution
of the product when it is available for sale to the
general world.

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 Whether the product is available online or through
channel partners only, whether is only available in
brick and mortar store or if it is a digital product or
available through all kinds of distribution channels,
the amount of data may vary but it is always available
to be gathered

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 When you make the investment into monitoring and
analyzing your marketing channels, you take the
guesswork out of your marketing returns and have the
opportunity to dig in and see how things are actually
performing.When your marketing strategy
performance is going well, you can use that data to
learn what works and follow those techniques to
ensure future campaigns in each channel will be just as
successful.
 If the levels of gain are low, you will have the ability to
drill down and figure out what the problem is..
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Benefits of monitoring
distribution
 Monitoring your distribution gives you the
opportunity to course correct quickly. When
channels, specific campaigns or content are not
performing, you can use the data you are gathering to
decide whether you need to. reinvest to improve
results or call it quits so you can focus on
something new
 Besides the ability to pinpoint highs and lows among
your marketing strategy, monitoring and analyzing
your marketing efforts can also benefit your brand in 4
other ways
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Other benefits
 Monitoring reputation
 Improved techniques
 Better understand your audience
 Stronger financial approach

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After sales service
 A company's after-sales service is all the help and
information that it provides to customers after
they have bought a particular product.
 After-sales support is a service that is provided
after merchandise or services have been sold. ... It is
designed to assist a customer in using a product
correctly.
 This helps in generating repeat customers, develop
brand loyalty among customers and ensure
customer satisfaction.

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 After sales service plays an important role in
customer satisfaction and customer retention. It
generates loyal customers and increase a brand value.
They speak good about the organization and its
products and service

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Types of customers
 Internal customers - are all employees in a company
who depend on each other to provide something they
need to get their jobs done.
 External customers - are people who visit our
companies/ businesses to buy our goods or services or
people who supply us with equipment to enable us to
supply our customers
 Exercise
 Outline internal and external customers of your
businesses or organizations

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Handling customer complaints
 Handling customer complaints refers to welcoming
complaints/Questions and treating them as
opportunities to learn what customers really want and
think. This means you tackle the complaint effectively
so that you retain your customers and encourage their
loyalty
 Managing customer relations will also help companies
to gain insight into the behaviour of customers and
their value in order to:

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 Provide better customer service
 Retain existing customers
 Identify new customers
 Increase profitability and productivity

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What are customer complaints?

 Customer complaints are feedback that customer

needs are not being met. Customer complaints are not
only on quality of service or product but also on
peripheral issues such as accurate information,
delivery arrangements and packaging, hassle-free
assistance and quick turn around. When the needs of
the customer are not satisfied, customers complain.

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Benefits of handling customer complaints

 Building long term relationship

 Understand your customer wants and needs
 Improvement on customer service
 An opportunity to implement innovations from
complaints

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Methods of an effective complaint
handling process
 Recording - listen to or write down complaints to
provide reference when planning action.
 Questioning - find out details of the situation by
asking appropriate questions to give a complete
picture
 Resolving - propose and agree on a solution that is
acceptable to the customer
 Implementing - carry out an action plan to rectify a
situation to agreed standards and schedule
 Following –up – ensure it is fully solved
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The role of a customs agent / clearing
agent in handling customer complaints

 Accept and welcome complaints as an opportunity for

change.
 Analyze the causes and trend of complaints so as to
handle the whole problem within the organization and
plan solutions accordingly.
 Encourage clients to point out your deficiencies and
involve them in finding a solution.
 Recording complaints for team members to provide
insights into what needs to been done to make
customers happy.
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Terms - Customer Satisfaction,
Customer Value, Customer Loyalty,
and Customer Retention
 Customer Satisfaction
 Customer satisfaction is the value that the
customer perceives the service or product to
impart. In other words when customers come to
you they have expectations, how well you meet
these expectations determines the levels of
satisfaction your customers feel. Services should
be at least that level that meets customers’ needs
and expectations. You should aim at surpassing
customer expectations.
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Customer value

 Customer value is the total value of the profit the

business gets on a customer over a given
period of time. Understanding customer value
enables companies to work out the investment in
attracting and servicing new customers to generate
worthwhile profits

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  Customer loyalty
 Is the measure of customers’ willingness and
commitment to continue doing business with you.
This is shown by the level of trust in you.
Customers will use the company’ services or
products on a regular basis and eventually you will
get advocates for your products or services.
Customer loyalty can develop if companies
build strong business relationships with the
existing customers
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  Customer retention-
 Customer retention is the ability of a company to
attract and retain new customers by servicing
its existing customers and creating a reputation
within and across its market.

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Benefits of customer satisfaction

 Increased customer loyalty

 Increased customer retention
 Improved profitability for the customer
 Increased productivity
 Improved reputation and image in the eyes of the
customer
 Stronger and long term internal and external
relationships
 Improvements to the operations of the company

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 Exercise: add to the list above other benefits of
customer satisfaction

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Dangers associated with
customer dissatisfaction
 Increase in complaints
 Bad reputation and company image
 Increased costs
 Reduced profitability
 Bad feeling about the company
 Poor relationships with internal and external
customers
 Good target for competition

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 Exercise: add to the list above dangers of
customer dissatisfactions

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Public Relations
 Public relations is about reputation—the result of
what you do, what you say and what others say about
you. PR is the discipline which looks after
reputation, with the aim of earning
understanding and support and influencing
opinion and behaviour. It is the planned and
sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill
and mutual understanding between an organisation
and its publics.

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 Public Relations is the management function that
establishes and maintains mutually beneficial
relationships between an organization and the publics
on whom its success or failure depends
 Planned and sustained program as part of
management function
 Builds relationship between organization and key
publics - two-way communication

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 Monitors awareness, opinions, attitudes and
behaviors - produces changes when needed
 Counsels management to adjust policies as needed
 Results in new and/or maintained relationships
between organization and publics

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 Other Related Terms
 Publicity: Information placed in the media at no cost
by an outside source because the information has
value. It is an uncontrolled method of placing
messages in the media.
 Advertising: Information placed in the media by an
identified sponsor because the sponsor paid for the
time or space. It is a controlled method of placing
messages in the media.

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Class work
1. Identify some valuable information to publicize
on RTV
2. Identify an advertisement of your choice to be
catered for by a sponsor

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 Tools of Public Relations
 Once you have agreed on which public to address,
communication media have to be selected. The
following are the tools or the PR media.
 The press – national, regional newspapers etc
 Audi-visual – slides and video cassettes, DVD
 Radio - national, local, international
 Television – national, international
 Exhibitions – special PR exhibitions, PR support for
public shows, overseas trade fair
. 33
 Printed materials – educational, informative, staff
induction print
 Sponsored books – either on organization’s subject
 Direct mail – an advertising medium of direct mail
may also be a PR medium
 Spoken word – “eyeball to eyeball” communication
over a meal, or drink, in the office or on telephone or
on the shop floor

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 Sponsorships – for arts, sports, expeditions, university
fellowships, causes and charities
 House journals – company newspapers. We have
internal and external company newspapers
 House style and corporate identity – things which
identify the organization. Everything is printed with
what represents that organization

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