Customer service is a very crucial to any organization for many reasons. First and foremost, it is difficult for a firm to survive without customer care. Haag, Cummings and McCubbrey (231) point out that the role of client departments in an organization include:
The customer care department solves and offers services to the organization’s clients. This is actually what makes an organization to get more clients, otherwise if the customer service department’s employees fail in their duties the firm would be compromised on crucial things, for instance customer base and sales.
Secondly, customer service acts as a link between the customer and the company. Thirdly, a firm with better customer service has a higher probability of getting repeat business from clients. Next, the client department is tasked with handling the complaints launched by the suppliers. In that sense, they also receive feedbacks from the customers. This is made possible through informational communication.
Fourthly, they are obliged to market the organization by offering quality customer service. Next role is that they are required to ensure they maintain the firm’s revenue in down economy. Retaining the clients in both the good and bad economic times attains this. Lastly, the customer service department is tasked with developing and maintaining a network of trusted customers. This is because a without a network of trusted customers who will test your products, you will be obliged to invest in extensive market research so as to learn how to better target your goods and services (Cummings and Worley 89-93).
The challenges associated with role of client departments in an organization
One challenge that faces the client department is lack proper training and knowledge...
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...er both financial and non-financial rewards since they form the basis of staff motivation and staff retention. As a consequence, there would be a generalized increase in employee performance thereby increasing the firm’s revenue. The employees would be motivated to figure out ways of keeping the existing customer, while at the same time figuring out how to cost-effectively reach for new customers.
The client department needs to segment the firm’s customer base into groups with same characteristics. This would enable the organization to better understand their clients and formulate the value proposition accordingly. The degree to which such segmentation is obtained is reflected in a firm’s commercial side structure. The segment balance has numerous long lasting effects on the direction of the firm’s optimization efforts as well as the ultimate competitive advantage.
The sales department would need information such as prices of products so that they can inform customers. They would also need to know if certain stock is available before talking to customers about that product. Marketing This function of the business is responsible for identifying the needs of customers and fulfilling the customer desires profitably. In other businesses sales and marketing may be combined into one department but
Earl Sasser Jr. discusses why customers matter in his lecture because customers are essential in every business that have been created. He began by providing a story about a local grocery store in Norwalk Connecticut that kept expanding. Their customers were dedicated to making their store the best it could be by providing suggestions and participating in focus groups that concluded in results from the suggestions. Sasser wanted to show businesses that were not efficient in their customer care why their customers should matter because there are some companies who have leaders that have instilled these ways in their companies but there are some that neglect the fact that their customers do matter. Sasser says that if you listen to all the CEOs
Without good customer service and keeping your promises, your company would have loyal customers. According to 5 Focusing Steps, “If you’re not yet sold on the idea, consider that a 2 percent increase in customer retention has the same effect as decreasing costs by 10 percent. Not only that, but it costs over six times more to get a new customer than it does to keep one.” Customer satisfaction should be a golden rule of all companies.
There are a range of segmentations that allows a company to target potential customers effectively.
...rs since the reward is tangible. Since 80 percent of profit comes from a small percentage of customers, programs should be developed to retain them. Companies will use resources that aren’t available to the entire customer base to ensure they are retaining their most valuable customers and offering incentives to encourage others to move up.
Close to the Customer: Customer satisfaction is very important throughout all the roles that the business plays. Many companies forget about their customers, whereas successful companies have an obsession with their customers. Excellent product quality and reliability will make a satisfied customer. Great service will keep the customer coming back.
It has been observed since the inception of Marketing that marketers target to only specific market and how they identify such market. There are certain criteria or base they use to identify the consumers who they would be serving to. Customers do have unique requirements satisfaction levels and aspirations. Some customers however are similar with respect to their requirements of goods and services. In such case if their needs are identified and they can be grouped in quantities of a specific size then it can be segmented. Now each customer group have specific expectations and businesses must cater to the needs of the segmented that has been targeted.
Once a business has successfully completed segmentation based on the market into various groups the targets will be chosen. As we all know no one unique strategy will be able to appeal to all consumer segments therefore being able to come up with different strategies for specific targets are a vital aspect of marketing.
The customer services styles are quite important when it comes to the direct dealing with customers. Besides the products or services that are being offered to the customers by the organization you are working for, the way in which the sales persons represent those products and services to the customers play a major role in the satisfaction of the customers. The customers often seek polite, genuine and helpful response from the customer service representatives and for that purpose the customer service representatives adapt different customer service styles depending on the priorities of the customers.
Providing great customer service and having the ability to retain customers require consistency in delivering the anticipated services. Customer service encompasses having the ability to provide a service or product to customers by means in which it was promised. However, there are times when unforeseen circumstances may occur, resulting in customer service breakdowns. Understanding the effectiveness of customer service relations provides the assurance needed to handle complicated service related issues. A well qualified customer service representative has the acquired skill to effectively defuse a potentially damaging service related matter. Service recovery influences customer retention and improves customer satisfaction.
Reward Management (RM) has been defined as the distribution of monetary and non-monetary rewards to employees in an effort to align the interests of the employees, the organisation, and its shareholders (O’Neil, 1998). In addition O’Neil (1998) also suggests that a RM system can serve the purpose of attracting prospective job applicants, retaining valuable employees, motivating employees, ensuring legal requirements relating to direct and indirect rewards are not violated, assisting the company in achieving human resource and business objectives, and ultimately assisting the organisation in obtaining a competitive advantage.
Market segmentation allows marketers to easily categorise customers in order to identify target markets and products for certain types of customers. Elaborating on this, Pine, Peppers and Rogers (1995) mention that market segmentation is a set of broad characteristics that focus on a group of customers. Furthermore, Kotler (1988) states that segmentation is the act of separating a specific set of customers, that open up markets, with apparent needs, behaviours and characteristics that require specific products. With this being said, marketers use this foundation in order to build and gain more information to target certain markets.
a) Good customer service is a critical component of a quality product. Collier (2011) states that service needs to be consistent, continuous, thoughtful and available. These are crucial in meeting and exceeding customer expectations. Collier also continues on to state that staff providing customer service must have appropriate skills, knowledge and personal attributes to execute a high standard of service. These skills have been identified by Collier as listening skills, punctuality, courtesy, integrity and grooming. The skills and qualities identified are reflected by the five key components of customer service tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy. The five components have been provided by the SERVQUAL service measuring
As Peter Duckers has put it, "The ultimate aim of all business organisation is - to create a customer". These days, for most products and services, the market belongs to the buyer. The customers e...
Our company are facing customer service problem now. Customer service defined as the process to ensure customer satisfaction with a product or service, and it is an important part of maintaining ongoing customer relationships that are key to continuing revenue (Investopedia, n.d.). We have received many customer complaints about the attitude of our staff. Customers commented the promoter always stand at a corner and do not serve them. When customers asked some information about the product, the promoter gave stand-offish attitude.