Unit 14 M2 D2 - Investigating Customer Service PDF

Preview

Summary

Unit 14 Assignment M2-D2...

Description

M2 Analyse different methods of monitoring customer service for a product or service in contrasting businesses. D2 Evaluate the benefits of improvement to customer service performance for the business, the customer and the employee. Keeping track of customer perceptions of your business is a way to help ensure you are providing optimum levels of care to patrons who support your company. Monitoring and controlling customer service practices in your business can help you retain customers, encourage repeat business and help you establish a good reputation through word of mouth advertising. The reasons businesses monitor the customer service is because by monitoring the quality of staff-customer interaction across multiple channels, organisations can learn from their customer's interactions, leading to better decision making, service and processes. The monitorization of customer service leads to: ● Remedy – To correct any problems (for example reoccurring complaints from customer feedback form/returns). ●

Introduce improvement (discontinue/change supplier) (for better decision making)

●

Build customer loyalty (repeat business, Amazon Prime/Asda loyalty cards)

●

Exceed customer expectation (what more can we bring to the overall experience, outdo competitors)

Surveys Businesses like Asda or McDonald‘s conduct regular surveys to find out what the customers think about the business. Develop your surveys or comment cards in such a way that they're easy to complete and yet allow you to gather specific information you can use to improve service levels. Vague or generic surveys can be time wasters that don't give you real information to work with. For example, if you run a small restaurant, don't ask customers to rate your food on a scale of 1 to 5. Instead, ask them to comment on selection, quality, temperature, freshness, taste or other factors you can use to improve service. Asda has recently created a new survey which consists of rewarding £1000/500 to lucky chosen people who complete the survey. This attracts a lot of customers to participate in the giveaway and complete the survey Asda runs a monthly, free to enter prize draw that gives our customers the chance to win £500. To enter, the customers need to do is visit the Tell Asda page and complete a short survey on how was their experience visiting Asda stores.

Focus Groups Invite current, past and even prospective customers to participate in focus groups to get realtime, face-to-face feedback about your service levels. Use a moderator to ask questions and make follow-up queries to provide you with an in-depth and well-rounded look at your service levels. For example, a retail shop focus group might start out with questions about price, merchandise options and employee friendliness. A moderator may then follow up with questions such as, “If you feel merchandise choices are limited, what suggestions would you

make for adding to the existing product lines?” This approach gives you valuable information you can use to improve service. Employee Feedback Your employees are your main points of contact with your customers. Regularly ask employees to share what they hear as common complaints, as well as company kudos. For example, if the cashier in your convenience store says customers constantly complain about long waits or malfunctioning coffee machines, this gives you a heads-up that you are understaffed and that your equipment is in need of repair. If your auto repair shop receptionist tells you customers complain about rude technicians or dirty, oily floor mats, that tells you you need to talk about appropriate behaviours and discuss post-service vehicle cleanup. Customer Service Training Once you have an idea about what customers like and dislike about your business, implement your findings into ongoing customer service training programs. Provide written guidelines for service expectations in your business, conduct thorough orientation on customer service training and host regular seminars on best practices in the service arena. Integrate role-playing, invite employees to share their own stories for interacting with customers and continually strive to improve your interaction with consumers. Benefits of providing good customer service The main benefits of providing good customer service are: ●

Customer satisfaction – happy customers will recommend the business to others through word of mouth or social media reviews. This could increase the market share of the business. Satisfied customers are also less likely to leave a negative review.

●

Customers are loyal and make repeat purchases – happy customers are more likely to choose the same business the next time they need the same product or service. This means the business will have customers with brand loyalty. Some businesses promote repeat purchasing through the use of a loyalty scheme, where customers are rewarded for regularly purchasing from the business.

●

Customers are willing to pay more money for a product – often, if a business has a good reputation, it is able to charge higher prices than businesses with poor reputations. This is likely to make the business more profitable.

●

Encouraging staff to value customers and provide good service allows them to be proud that they are working for your organisation. This will also result in positive interactions with customers, leading to happier staff, which in turn helps with employee motivation and retention.

Improving customer service is vital for any business as it can affect the business by benefiting new customers and an increase in profits. Take care of your Staff, and they will take care of the customer is an important phrase used by many. This is also affecting the customers who receive better customer service which provide a better experience at the store. For McDonald's to improve their customer service is simply to train their training for the employees to perform better. I have a friend who has previously worked in McDonald's and

asking them about the training, they have told me that they're training don’t provide any strategy or ways to deal with customer complaints. This notified me as its significant because my friend is unaware when it comes to helping customers as it waits to take him longer to fix a situation. He will need asking others how to solve a situation instead of taking on the responsibility himself, speaking from his experience. So, training effectively will benefit the employee as it can less stressful when handling complaints and therefore make them more comfortable and self-motivated as it lets them know they can help others and help themselves. Improving customer service will benefit the business as it allows customers to be more likely to shop at their stores again and again which increases brand loyalty. If a customer enjoys the customer service provided at the store, then most likely they will leave a positive review on the business and then it will allow others to shop at McDonald's which will increase customers and sales. Which then finally lead to business profits and overall success. This will also create an advantage over its competitors which will create more conversions and more customers. However, if the business does not improve its customer service than it can lose customers and its overall profits so this shows that customer service within a business must be maintained and must be improving all the time. In conclusion, customer service is very important as it also gives the customer the benefit of an enjoyable experience at the store and a very memorable one too this will allow them to visit again and again and slowly be a loyal customer. Improving customer service is I believe very vital as it can allow the staff to handle any complaints from customers very well and also answer any questions from the customers which will make them very confident which then overall will benefit the customer as it can leave a positive experience for both the customer and the well-trained employee and removes any hassle...