Customer Focused Environment Customer Relationship

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Without doubt, customer is very important to the organization. Study customer needs and wants is necessary and crucial to the organization. There are several major components to overcome and improve the customer relationship. The following are the major components which need to focus on:

Understand and fulfill customer wants and needs

As a highly successful customer service representative must be aware of customer’s facial expressions and emotions such as happy, customer's frustration, anger, disappointment, elation, pleasure and other emotions alongside that customer allowing them to better understand the customer's needs and take the steps necessary to fulfill customer’s satisfaction. This action will be helping to improve the overall business plan due to the improvement of the overall service provided by the customer service representative. Based on the service industries, as all known that the front line of the customer service representative plays a very important role, the front line customer service representative is representing company to sales and promote company’s product. The improper attitude and one mistake was taken by the customer service representative will directly destroy the company’s opportunity to do a business transaction with customer.

Understand customer expectation and exceed customer expectation

In very competitive service industries customer service representative way of service has to pay attention on. In order to set the company apart as one that places a high value on customer relationships, customer service representative must go above and beyond common expectations to meet customer requirements. Customer service representative have to respect customer when having conversation with the customer. Be more patient and focus on the customer request. Respond immediately when customer asking a question and also respond with the accurate information. Every purchase can be done by just having a simple short conversation. Customer will expect certain amount of fawning from the customer service representative. This acts of differentiating a company's customer service and helps set the company apart from competitors in the customer's mind and also ensure repeat business from customer satisfaction.

Completed Facility and Comfortable Environment

Facility and environment is one of the very important roles to focus on and is also a part of the customer relations improvement. A strategic place will never fail the company business plan. Complete facilities will provide a chance to attach with the customer, for an example a shopping mall with plenty of parking lot will never worries about a customer satisfaction on the parking issues. With this facility company already fulfill customer satisfaction even the before the purchase transaction has been made. Cozy environment will provide a sense of security to the customer and the customer will be pleasure walk around and also increase the opportunity to fulfill the customer satisfaction. Tidy and cozy Environments also represent the company image and it also represents the company attitude and vision. Some of the shopping mall invest large amount of money to improve the wash room cleanness. As the management knows a dirty and smelly wash room will be affect company image and makes the customer not satisfied.

System, proper guideline, scenario plan and positive attitude

Planning is very important to a company, when comes to customer service planning is very important. Before the customer asking for something customer service representative must have the end in mind what the customer request is. A proper planning, training and guideline for the customer service representative in order make the team always ready for the customer. This will improve the speed of serving the customer. System is crucial also, system now just in arrangement only and is creating a flow that provide to the customer the complete of conduct a purchase on the company product. This will improve the serving time on each of the customer and these systems no just need to be relying on the customer service representative but need the current technology to assist the whole system. When every the system take place customer service representative will having more time and space to taking care the customer. In a rushing situation, customer service representative emotion will be affected. Customer service representative can be serving with a heart and a very positive attitude. This will be indirectly improving the quality of customer service. To encourage and support customer is a part of the responsibilities of the Customer service representative.

Immediate respond to customer request

Waiting is a type of suffer for customer. Time is very precious to a certain level of customer, keep the customer waiting will cause dissatisfaction in customer mind. Most of the service industries fail to attend to its customer due to management issues or facing a crowded situation. Based on the research of CRM (customer relationship management) found that most of the customer are not willing to wait in front of the shop without be attended. As the matter of fact there no one likes to spend their time doing nothing. Customer must be attended by the customer service representative one the customer step foot in the company. This will shows that how efficient of the company customer service and also shows that the serious attitude the company try to deliver. As a part of it, immediate attend to the waiting customer is also a type of greeting to customer and it also let the customer knows that which status customer were in. Without an immediate respond to serve the customer, customer will just feel lost in direction give up the chance to conduct a purchase and this will cause dissatisfaction in the customer mind set and end up more complaint and bad rumors to tear down company reputation.

Investigate root cause of the customer dissatisfaction and self measurement

In the certain level of extend, company cannot achieve 100% satisfaction. There so many types of customer to be serve, and there are so many variations on customer thinking. Understand customer fundamental requirement is one of the method can be study on. There are a saying in SUN TZE Art of War "If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle". Customer satisfaction is company goal to be achieved but before achieving the goal the company or the customer service representative have to understand the targeted customer actual want and need and find out the actual root cause of the customer dissatisfaction. This will acquired lots to experiences to understand and study customer thinking. Before offer the commitment to the customer the customer service representative and company have to self understand what can be done and what can be provide to the customer or else will loses customer loyalty and destroy company reputation. Management of the company have to aware the potential damage can be done, a research need to be conduct on customer want and needs to be clearly pass down to customer service representative in order to reduce the conflict. In order to prevent over commit to the customer, self measurement is very important. A good reputation will help the company to improve more in future and also attract lots of customer based on the good reputation.

Consistency on quality of the service

Company must continuously exhibit quality customer service and keep auditing the quality of the customer service. As customers come to expect nice treatment, they will spread the word about their experiences with the company to friends, neighbors and family that may bring future business to the company. Company needs to the keep the quality of the service due to future customer maybe carrying a very high expectation due to the good word were spread. When these customer having a poor quality customer service if the origin customer may aware of the degradation of the quality of service, the origin customer and the new customer will disappointed and dissatisfied to the company. In order to eliminate these issues, company have to ensure uniformly positive customer experiences, company must place an unending emphasis on customer service.

Loh Guan Lye Specialists Centre is a private hospital serving the patient with a vision and mission. Their vision when there is patient, the patient will think of Loh Guan Lye Specialists Centre and their mission is commitment to customer service excellence. Although hospital is just a place which cure patient but Loh Guan Lye Specialists Centre treat the patient not just patient and doctor relationship but as a provider and customer relationship. LSC provide a very standard of services with ISO audit to ensure the quality of service. This centre provides an inclusive and advanced quality healthcare service and facilities designed from prevention, professional diagnosis and treatment to exquisite procedure and health screening package in a warm and caring environment for rest and recover.

LSC are helping their patients to cure the disease and medical conditions. Nurses, doctor, general admin and etc are the hospital’s customer service representative. Mostly doctor, nurse, receptionist and emergency health care team are the front line customer service representative of the LSC hospital. There are several examples that LSC hospital carry out the point as mention above to treat and serve their customer effectively.

In environment and facility wise, LSC provides a very nice and tidy environment to the customer. As the pictures below show that several facility and environment provide by LSC.

On the lobby side there the cozy area with television and magazine for the customer relative or friend to relax while the patient having the treatment. From the picture also shows the part of garden which well decorated is besides the heritage building, the garden for the patient resting are. LSC creating relax and resting environment for its patient and guaranty the quality of service.

LSC also designs a multi reception to serve the customer without customer waiting. LSC immediate responds to customer request with better attitude and without creating frustrate environment for the patient. LSC understand and fulfill customer wants and needs, before the patient starting a treatment LSC’s nurse or doctor will provide a free consultation section with its customer in order to explain the technical, medical information and explain the advantage and risk of the operation. This act will provide a sense of security to its customer and also eliminate the tension of the customer. The picture below shows that LCS serving the customer without seeing queuing situation.

LSC will always remain the consistency on quality of the service nurses and doctor will always follow the system that designed by LSC. As the picture below shows that the customer service representatives are wearing types of uniform. The purpose of the uniform is helping the public, new customer and patient to identify the identity and position of the customer service representative. Doctor and nurse will also send for extra hard skill and soft skill training in order to maintain medical knowledge and also improve the presentation skill. This will be ensuring the consistency on the quality of LSC service.

Bibliography

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Question 2

Customer is the main concern of a company, a company gain or loses in profit all depend on the customer spending on the company’s product. Customer relationship management is very important. Customer relationship is a direct interaction with current customer and future customer. Nowadays, customer relationship not just depends on the customer service representation only, it also includes technology to organize, automate, and synchronize sales, marketing, customer service, and technical support. In this big market, competitor is all around the world and creates variation of choices to the customer to choose on. In order to be outstanding in the current market and be well aware of the new customer, customer service is one main fundamental element have to focus on. Customer dissatisfaction toward company is very important nowadays. Based on the customer dissatisfaction company can clearly understand or study company’s current weaknesses. In order to gain back the customer satisfactions at first have to eliminate customer dissatisfaction.

Been selected and assigned by Pizza Hut Sdn. Bhd. to handle customer complaints the first step is to understand why customer want to complaints and what types of customer have to facing and encounter. Varieties of customers are having variety of emotion that includes positive and negative emotion. Variety of negative will always cause the customer service failure, type of negative emotion include anger, disappointment, self pity, discontent, impatient and anxiety. There negative emotion will affect customer point of views and also evaluate the service recovery effort and presumably customer decision to return to the Pizza Hut. Most of the customers are very passive about their dissatisfaction; normally they will say and doing nothing. This will cause the company sales drop due to company let the customer carry negative emotion and dissatisfaction after the purchase transaction was made and the company doesn’t know about it. Those who do not complaint are least likely to return. If these situations keep occurring, sales of the company will clearly drop and company will trap in dilemma. For Pizza Hut, customer passivity in the face of the dissatisfaction is threat to Pizza Hut future success. There are varieties of customer complaint apart from complaining about damaged of the goods or dissatisfied of the goods. There are possible customer will be complaint about lack of communication or attitude from the customer service representative or sales person, delay in providing or delivering the goods or bought from the retailer or service provider and cost that were not initially brought to the attention of the customer.

As the Pizza Hut customer complaint handler there are three important complaint process steps has to be done, firstly is actively seeking customer complaints, secondly recognizing the type of customer that is complaining, and lastly responding appropriately based on the type of complainer.

Seeking Customer Complaints

Customer comment or complaint is very important to the company, and the correct way is not just respond effectively to the customer complaint but to actively seek the complaint out from customer. Company should provide an opportunity for the customer to register their dissatisfaction and need to narrow down what is the actual root cause which causes the customer dissatisfied. Most of the customer will just remain silent and take the businesses opportunity to elsewhere. As the result, as the Pizza Hut customer complaint handler will work hard to providing our customers opportunities to complaint. There are so many ways to seek the customer complaints such as prepare a short questionnaire for customer to fill up and from the questionnaire will understand customer dissatisfaction. There are no company will deliver the message which is dissatisfaction or source of complaints from customer do not exist. No dissatisfaction or complaint from the customer regarding to the company performance is not necessarily good news for the company. This will prove that failure on the customer relationship management due to management never seek for the truth of customer wants and needs. The company will not improve due to there are no weakness been stated out.

Types of customer and customer complaints

There are four types of customer complaint usually seen which is passive type, voices types, irate types and activist types. Every types of the customer have their own characteristic and there are always a way to encounter the dilemma which customer service representative having.

Passive customer

Passive type of customer will least likely to take any action even there are dissatisfaction in the customer mind. This group of customer will not say anything or make any comment to the company. Passive type of customer will not spread negative word of mouth and will not complaint to the third party also. This group of customer will often having doubt the effectiveness of complaining and always thinks that complaint just wasting their precious time and the effort they will expend. Normally company will not pay attention to this group of the customer due the there are any comment were made. These groups of customer are loyal, satisfied and long term customers that company has no risk of losing the customer unless the company totally screws up.

Response and corrective action to Passive customer

Have to frequently communicated with these groups of customer and must work hard at soliciting comments and complaints and act appropriately to resolve complaints. Or else can provide a small paper note or questionnaire for the customer after the purchase transactions were made.

Voicers or constructive customer

These groups of customer will actively complaint to the company and less likely to spread to negative word of mouth. They will not complaint to switch patronage or go to the third party to complaints. This group of customer will treat company as their friend and actively complaint but give a second chance to the company. They believe that complaining will gain social benefits and they will not hesitate to voice out their opinion. Company and customer service representative treat them as the messenger, this group of customer will just point out what is not working in the company.

Response and corrective action to Voicers or constructive customer

Customer service representative listen completely to the customer and ask for the customer suggestion or opinion. Have a small agreement on the problem existence and suggest what will be done and give out the due date when would be done. Highlight to the management to be aware the problem existence.

Irate customer

These groups of customer will be more likely to engage in negative word of mouth to friend and relative. They will definitely change their choice of company and won’t give company another second changes. They feel alienated from the market place and will get angry with the company or customer service provider. The purpose of doing that, they believe that complaining to the company or customer service representative will draw the attention of their friend or to gain the social benefit. Normally these groups of customer will not return due to their hold up the pride or self ego. These groups of customer will keep complaint about everything and anything. It like they have no other interested in life. They just want he the attention the authority and they will happy to air their grievances or opinion.\

Response and corrective action to Irate customer

Remain unfailingly objective. Stay calm when listening to the customer due to this group of customer will use some negative word. Analyze the problem and statement properly and use accurate quantified data to backup the response going to make. Make some benefit adjustment for the customer to chill up and calm the customer attitude and be sure the adjustment is in keeping with what the company would normally do under the circumstances. Consider asking "What can I do to make things right?" after the first "not good enough."

Activist’s customer

Activist’s customer are having aggressive characteristic. They will complaint to the company directly and will keep tell others how bad the company was and they are more likely will compliant to the third parties. This group of customer will spread the word and as soon as possible some rumors will be created. Sometimes these groups of customer will take extreme action toward the company or the customer service representative. They will have above average propensity to complain on all dimensions.

Response and corrective action to the activist’s customer

As the first action has to be done is to do recover from the customer service breakdown. Listen to the customer respectfully and actively and question carefully to fully determine cause. Ask: "what else?" and correct the situation. Extraordinary patience is required when listening to the customer and beware that customer might be aggressive in return and the aggressive customer will not respond well to excuses or reason why the service or goods was unsatisfactory. Customer service representative must listen carefully and completely and never let one's anger get aroused. A sympathetic ear and an honest effort to correct the situation are likely to be the most productive. Most of these groups of customer required an apology and appreciates when the crew is listening to him. But when problem resolve successfully, these groups of customer mostly will spread the good word for the company.

As a Pizza Hut customer complaint handler want to hear about every complaint their customers have. Only when a complaint has been expressed can the appropriate corrective action be taken. Otherwise without customer complaints management will assume that everything is under control.

As in the scenario below, this is one of the scenarios taken from the compliant board.com. As the customer claims as below "I have had several meat lover deep pan pizzas at Pizza Hut before and that wasn't even close to what I have had before. The only meat that was on one half (meat lovers half) was 3 kinds and nothing else. And if that was deep dish, I am glad I didn't order the regular one. It was brought out on the big wooden flat thing they use to take the pizzas out of the oven. The waitress said something like, he didn't put it on a serving plate and she said that was ok, she would serve it like that. We were given old fashion paper plate, kind of like cardboard. The smell in there was awful and I mean awful...it made me sick to my stomach."

From the scenario above show that this is one of the customer seen the abnormal serving way from the local branch he attended to. As a customer complaint handler have to investigate on behalf this event. Firstly have to interview the local branch customer service representative and get the clear picture. Second step would be contact the customer who making statement and get more information from the customer who made the complaint. And comparing the statement whether is the truth. If the statement was truth, action must be taken to gain back customer confidence.

In order to improve the customer service representative’s customer service, have to implement the eight- step customer complaint procedure for handing customer complaint.

Below are the eight-step which design for the Pizza Hut customer service representative:

Provide customers with the opportunity to complain.

Give customers your full and undivided attention and attend the customer immediately

Listen completely and be patient until the customer finish

Ask the key question: "what else?"

Agree that a problem exists; never disagree or argue or add in any personal statement.

Apologize on behalf of company.

Resolve the complaint and ask again the key question: "what else?"

Thank the customer for bringing the complaint to attention.

By implementing this eight step complaint handling procedure to overcome the customer service representative attitude issues and also improve from the mistakes.

All the customer service representative need to be trained in handling customer complaints effectively and being empowered to respond in a positive manner. Customer service representative is the front to handle the customer complaint. Company management level has to ensure that the training and the procedure carry out properly.