Monitoring and Improving Customer Service - Assignment Example

CSR quality ratings measure the competence of customer service representatives in providing solutions to various customer service requests. It also measures the customer relation skills of the customer service representatives.

Overdue customer requests
Measures service delivery of the organization by determining customer requests that the customer service fails to complete within a certain time duration specified by the organization.
Monitoring team members' performance against the KPIs
A check-box customer service questionnaire can help monitor customer satisfaction. The questionnaire is left at the cash register table of any place with frequent contact with customers and next to a place of collection. The questionnaire can help measure customer satisfaction by encouraging customers to quantify their experiences with customer service user satisfaction levels such as “very satisfied,” “at least satisfied,” and “unsatisfied.”

The head of the customer service department can listen in on calls between customers and staff, and read through various email exchanges and chats to gauge the amount of time before a customer service responds to a call or replies to an email from the customer. Such monitoring may help reduce average wait time and improve customer service.
Customer surveys can be used to measure the first call resolution rate and call resolution performance of customer service. Using these methods customers can complete an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) survey immediately after their call or they may be surveyed within a few days after their call. Most employees find customer surveys to be effective and credible in measuring customer resolution performance (Bailey, 2002). Quality Assurance call monitoring and evaluators can determine if the customer request was resolved within the time limit specified by the organization. Various software applications can also help monitor quality service representative ratings to capture whether customer requests are resolved.

Sample Customer Feedback Questionnaire
1. How long did you wait on hold before speaking to our customer care representative?
2. How well did you feel that our customer service team understood your concerns?
3. Did you feel that the customer service representative was eager to help you? If yes how well?
4. What is your opinion on whether our customer service representative gave you a solution to your problem or answered your questions quickly, slowly, or neither?
5. How knowledgeable was our customer service representative to you?

6. To what extent was the response provided by our customer service representative clear?
7. Among the problems you had, how many did the customer care representative resolve?
8. Do you think our customer care representative is helpful to you?
9. Can explain your experience with customer service at our company?
10. Overall, are satisfied with the customer service you received at our company?
11. Would you refer or recommend a friend or a colleague to this organization?

Recommendations for improving customer service
Emphasis on improving customer service is crucial to organizations or businesses because the organizations or companies need their customers to be satisfied with their services to be successful (Sharma, et al., 1999). Therefore, an organization needs to develop various approaches to improving its customer service delivery. Various methods can help improve customer service including:

Prioritizing customer needs
The organization should incorporate its clients first in its customer service plan. The customer service model should be determined by the target audience. For those customers who prefer technology, the organization should provide a constant internet service that may support these customers. For those who prefer live support, the company should also provide live help to these customers. Despite the response method, the most important thing is for the organization to develop and set its customer service model to fit the needs of the customers. Prioritizing customer needs will guarantee customer satisfaction (Hendricks, 2003).

Improve responsiveness
The organization should improve the resolution response rate and keep customers happy at all times. Technology can make sure that the customer service department is available at every time. To ensure responsiveness in the customer service department, modern-day organizations should provide multiple customer service options for their customers. Due to the extent of technology available currently, available customer service options include live chats, email, and video conferencing. The Internet can help improve service delivery in an organization (Wang & Zheng, 2006). The new technologies coupled with old methods such as phone call ensures effective communication between customers and customer service thus, improving the responsiveness of the organization.

Training
Well-trained customer service representatives may help improve service delivery of the customer service. The employees must be trained on the products and services offered by the company, the organization's goals, and on their communication skills (Noe, 2010). Such training programs must at ensuring that the customer care representatives and polite to customers and can answer customer questions promptly. Read More