Customer Service and Various Aspects of Recognizing and Dealing With Customers - Essay Example

SERVICE Grade Instuctor’s Table of Contents ASSESSING SATISFACTION 3 SERVICES ASSESSMENT 4 TYPES OF LANGUAGES 7 REFERENCES 10 This paper is about discussion regarding customer service and various aspects of recognizing and dealing with customers. ASSESSING CUSTOMER SATISFACTION The three most common means of assessing customer satisfaction conducted by majority of the businesses are (Clow and Baack, 2007): On-line Surveys: Using this for assessing customer satisfaction is at times effective and other times misleading. The reason being that these are usually close ended and provide just excellent, good, bad or poor choices. The questions depend on the business’s assessing requirements and may not address the actual customer issues. Email follow-ups: This type of assessment is very effective if catered properly and if the customer replies promptly. More often than not, the emails tend to end up in spam where they would be deleted without the customer reading it, making most queries a waste but if he/she responds, a lot can be learned about their preferences in general. In addition, if the language used in the query or reply is not courteous and polite, the customer is most likely not to reply back. Directly addressing customers or Phone call follow-ups: This type of follow-up has mixed results. Either they will be annoying for the customers making their responses the same annoyed ones or planning to get rid of the person or honest opinion will be given. Usually this is entirely dependent upon the person calling or talking to the customer. If they are polite, friendly and precise, the customer is more likely to give an honest opinion rather than just wanting to get rid of the question being asked. CUSTOMER SERVICES ASSESSMENT To assess the customer services, I went to a local call centre “Insta Call Centre”, a local mart “Mini Mart” and a shoe manufacturer for a shop “Comfort Shoes”. The call centre is outsourcing its services to various small companies. Their aim is to expand their services to larger outlets. For the time being, their focus is providing the best possible services to the customers. These services are prompt and accurate. For this purpose, they train every employee in the specified product information they are servicing before letting them work in the call centre (Kotler et al., 2009). This training enables them to be precise and helpful to the customer as much as they can. They also focus on hiring people with a pleasant personality, clear accents and voices so that the customer does not feel offended talking to them. Professionalism is highly encouraged here in all aspects whether it is answering queries or helping a difficult customer out. Rewards are also given to employees who offer the best support for the month. Employee input for improvement in service is also taken under consideration. The local mart also has a high value of customer service. It is a family run business and slowly they are expanding due to their high service quality, word of mouth and repeat customers. Their policies include always putting the customer first. Any sign of discomfort or dissatisfaction is immediately noted and accordingly work upon it. In addition, at least one manager is roaming around to make sure the sales people are doing their job correctly and helping, not harassing customers. They also take customer feedback during the rounds from time to time and personally cater them, if the sales person is unable to understand or provide prompt service. At the time of checkout, one person is there to wheel the cart till the cars for their comfort (Kotler et al., 2009). Furthermore, every month they send out sms or emails to their registered customers for feedback and suggestions for further improvement. The sales personnel are trained to be polite and to be professional and provide accurate information. In case of customer returning an item, they are given first priority in addition to asking for feedback regarding the product they are returning. 7 days warranty is given to exchange grocery items. The shoe manufacturer in comparison is least interested in customer feedback. He just makes shoes and styles with what they consider are of good quality and have a no-refund or exchange policy. His policy says that once a shoe is worn, it is useless for them since they cannot resell it therefore once it is sold it cannot be returned or exchanged. In case the shop personnel inform of potential problems or client complaints, he/she tells them to handle the customers according to the policy. The main sales are made through the sales and discounts offered in the shop. IMPORTANCE OF CUTOMER SERVICES FOR A BUSINESS Customer service is a very important part of any business. The reason being that if the customers have some queries or issues with the service or product they have bought then they can call the customer service for help. Bad or no customer service has high chances of the business losing the customer. I had a bad customer service experience at a super mart near my place. I went to get grocery and other items. First, there were hardly any sales people around to help me find the stuff. I had to waste time and energy finding the items. The one sales person I did find, hardly knew about where, what was placed and if they had it or not. Then at the time of checkout a couple of items were missing the price tags while others were being charged a higher price than the original price. On the missing tag products, instead of asking the sales person to check the price tag, that person told me this one does not have a tag so I cannot charge it and kept it aside without confirming. When I asked him about the overpricing, he just said that you must have picked it from the wrong shelf although I double-check everything before buying. No considerations and very ill mannered way of talking. This experience left a bad taste in my mouth and now I only go there if I absolutely have to because of its location near my place. TYPES OF CUSTOMERS There are around 4 common types of customers found in the market place and approaching each type as a marketing professional requires different strategies (Guiltinan, 1996). Need based or Ready to buy Customers: These types of customers have a list of things they need to buy on urgent basis. To approach these types of customers as a marketing professional, one needs to understand and cater their exact needs without offering advice on products they do not need. If they are satisfied with the experience and service, they would make repeat purchases. Repeat Customers: These are the main source of income for any business as they keep coming back for more. These customers need to be treated with special care and be catered to every time. It is their previous satisfaction with the service that makes them come back and it is important to keep providing them with the same level of service whether they are high or average spending customers (Hunter, 2012). Potential Customers: These types of customers just come in for browsing and looking around. As a marketing professional, the way to approach and ensure that customers make a repeat purchase, it is important to offer them items available on a good price, discounts or special sales being offered at the time. If these customers are catered with patience and with the right information, they will be interested in making repeat purchases. Impulse Customers: These are very similar to potential customers. The only difference is that they tend to buy the essentials they came to buy, then stay making decisions on-spot to get something which appeals to them while surfing without any prior plan or reason. A marketing professional instead of approaching them, needs to put in catchy slogans or decorations on shelves and sales to gain their attention and get the customer. Sales & Discounts Customers: These customers only tend to come in while there are sales going on or special discounts being offered. To appeal to these customers, marketing professional needs to provide good quality and appealing sales items that would attract them to make repeated purchases during the sales. TYPES OF LANGUAGES They types of languages are discussed as follows (English et al., 2005). Informative Language The most suitable example for this type of language is the documentaries. Documentaries mostly consist of a neutral voice that is neither emotional nor favouring to anything it is saying. It just shows and portrays the viewpoints of various people, cultures or events without any conclusions or opinions. These cold hard facts and impartial information appeals to the masses and helps them in retaining the information. Figurative language This language is an elaborate form of the literal language. While literal language states the facts, this tends to emphasis in imaginative and elaborative manner. An example would be “The teacher felt her temperature reach the boiling point when her rowdy students continued to fool around then listen to her.” Formal language Since this language is not restricted to any occasion or classes, it has a wide set of examples. Textbooks cater to this format immensely, as the purpose is teaching with proper use of grammar and various words present in the language to increase the knowledge base. Literal language This language always keeps the original context and does not change the obvious therefore it is known as literal in the literal sense. An example would be any event going on with the person thinking in those terms rather than making it into something else. For example: “She was watching the magic show and wondering how in the world the magicians do all these tricks so flawlessly?” Imaginative language An apt example for this language would be literature. There are all types of literature available and they do not deal in fantasy. Rather they deal in showing various aspects of life and events in various aspects to appeal to the readers’ emotions. These literatures take form of screenplays; stage plays etc for a broader appeal. An example would of the Shakespearean plays widely appreciated and applauded everywhere for the content and the emotional appeal and entertainment. DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE FOLLOWING Selling Selling is the process often known as the art of persuading. A sales person has to get well acquainted with the customer to get the insight of the requirements and then exchanging the items of equal value i.e. buyer getting the item and the seller getting the price of equal value. This is an on-going process (Rich et al., 2008). Publicising Publicising is making the product or service known to the masses. To do this marketing is utilized for recognizing the market and the strategy in approaching them. Publicising makes the market aware of a specific item, product or service available for use. Marketing While selling deals in direct dealing, marketing focuses on a broader aspect including sales. In marketing, it is required to recognize the market and the customer, to satisfy them and retain them. Strategies in approaching and appealing to customers also come under this heading. Advertising This is a form of communication, which targets a specific market in an appealing manner to persuade or encourage them to go out and buy a certain service or product. It is used for publicising and for targeting specific market by the marketing department (Rich et al., 2008). REFERENCES Clow, K. and Baack, D., 2007. Integrated Advertising, Promotion, and Marketing Communications. 3rd ed. Pearson Education. English, T. et al., 2005. Language Functions and Examples of Forms Language Function. Education, (2004). Guiltinan et al., 1996. Marketing Management: Strategies and Programs. McGraw Hill/Irwin. Hunter, M., 2012. 5 Types of Customers - Loyal Customers - Customer Loyalty. [online] Available at: http://sbinfocanada.about.com/od/customerservice/a/customertypesmh.htm [Accessed: 11 May 2012]. Kotler , P. et al., 2009. A Framework for Marketing Management. 4th ed. Prentice Hall. Rich, G. et al., 2008. Management of a Sales Force. 12th ed. McGraw-Hill Irwin. Read More