Develop a Customer Service Plan Assignment

Introduction

Innovative Widget is a small firm which provides widgets to customers. In this report, the customer service provided by the Innovative Widgets will be discussed. The report will consist of the development of a customer service plan, managing, and development of the team, and monitoring and improving the customer service. The report will include various policies and procedures followed by the Innovative Widgets in order to provide the best quality products to the customers and solve all their queries. It will include the policies through which customer are giver proper support and their complaints are being recorded.

Assessment 1

2. Development of customer plan

1. a) Vision and mission statements

Innovative Widgets Customer Service Charter

Welcome to Innovative Widgets! Our vision and mission: Vision: The vision statement of Innovative Widget includes how the company provides services to its customers in the future. In five years, Innovative Widgets aim to be the leader in providing satisfaction to the customers. Mission: It includes what measures company take to accomplish its vision. The mission of the company is to provide the best experience to the customers.

1. b) Internal and external customers

Who are customers?
Our internal customers are:   Representatives of customer service.                     Our external customers are: Buyers of the products.	Our internal customers require: Options of the advanced and best customer. services. Safe and secure working environment. Our external customers require: Providing best customer service. Products of higher quality. Immediate response to the issues, queries.

 

1. c) Product standards

We’ll give you what you need… and more! We promise to deliver a widget that’s right for your needs: Dimension of the Widget = 10mm Tolerances +/- 3% (0.03) variance = all the widgets inclusive of the tolerances = 10.3mm – 9.7mm Competitive pricing strategy will be used and can be determined by the widget’s material and size. The material of the widget is metal and plastic Delivery is guaranteed by the Innovative Widget either through courier or picks up after 24 hours after ordering. We promise to support you: The Innovative Widget promises to deliver the products within 3 days if delivered through courier. In case of pick up facility, the customer can pick after 24 hours of ordering.

1. d) Policies and procedures

We’ve supported our people to support you! Innovative Widget’s policies and procedures that support customer service include: Complaints policy and procedures Market research and customer information policy and procedures Managing data and records policy and procedures

1. Customer service policy and procedure

Innovative Widgets Customer support policy and procedure- collecting market research Purpose- The purpose of customer support policy is to provide the best customer support to its customers and gain a competitive advantage. The purpose is to become the leading distributor and manufacturer of the customer needs. Scope- The scope is to provide customer support by the employees of the Innovative Widget Resources- Hangouts, support, technical tools, internet, etc. Relevant legislation, etc.-  Australia’s Spam Act, 2003, Privacy Act, 1998, Competition and Consumers Act, 2010. Updated/ authorized: The policy was updated by CEO in 2014. Customer Support process/es Step 1: The customers are to be contacted either through emails or telephone in order to determine the expectations, needs, and experiences of the customers. Step 2: Employees of the Innovative Widget should use their communication skills and listening skills in order to provide correct response and updated information to the customers. Step 3: The RATER model of a survey is to be used to determine the experiences of the customers. RATER model specifies the reliability, assurance, tangibleness, empathy, and response (Brody, 2018).

1. Responding to customer complaints

Innovative Widgets Customer complaints policy and procedure Purpose: The purpose of customer complaint policy and the procedure is to ensure that the Innovative Widget’s management carries the complaints fairly, consistently, and by maintaining transparency and according to the requirements of the organization. Scope: Department of customer service Resources: Notepads to note the complaints, computers, laptops, internet servers, etc. Relevant legislation, etc: Equal Opportunity Act, 2010, Occupational Health and Safety Act, 2004, Privacy Act, 1998, Competition and Consumer Act, 2010. Updated/ authorized: The policy was updated by the CFO of Innovative Widgets in 2011. Customer complaints resolution process/es Step 1: The customers should be greeted properly and employees must introduce themselves. Step 2: The complaints of the customers should be noted and understood properly. Step 3: Ask the customers relevant and required questions so as to clear the doubts, if any. Step 4: Do not engage in the arguments with the customers. Step 5: Confirm from the customers about what resolution they want from the company in the particular problem.

1. Managing records and data

Innovative Widgets Recordkeeping policy and procedure Purpose: The purpose of the recordkeeping policy and procedure is the establishment of the framework so as to implement and maintain the data and information for the management. The purpose is to meet the needs of the business of Innovative Widgets and of the accountability and legal requirements. Scope: The scope of record keeping policy and the procedure is followed by the management team of the Innovative Widgets. Resources: Registers, computers, internet connectivity, pen drives, etc. Relevant legislation, etc: Anti-discrimination legislation, Industry codes of practice, Privacy Act, 1988, Do Not Call Register Act, 2006. Updated/ authorized: The policy of record keeping was updated by the CEO of the Innovative Widgets in the year 2014. Record keeping process/es Step 1: The data provided should be transparent and clear, and must maintain accuracy. Step 2: The data and information should be understood and easily accessible by the accessory. Step 3: The data and information of the customers should be kept confidential and privacy shall be maintained according to the Privacy Act, 1988. Step 4: The customers should be allowed to have access to their information which the company possesses. Step 5: In the case of incorrect or wrong information is provided; it should be destroyed or charged.

 

3. Reflection on the developed plan

The Innovative Widget is operating its business quite well and aim to provide satisfaction its customers. I believe that by using RATER model, employees of the Innovative Widgets can provide effective customer service and delivers the product in time and gains trust and confidence of the customers. According to me, the customer service plan as developed will be helpful for the company in attracting more customers and reduced number of customer issues. It will also help in providing higher quality of products. 

4. Documents required

1) Plan proposed 

2) Template of customer service plan

3) Emails and letters for implementation of the plan to higher authorities.

Assessment 2

Part A

 

• Review the information about innovative widgets that you are gathered in assessment task 1.

 

Manager reviews the innovative widgets and gather the company internal as well as external customers’ needs, and complete it, deliver product quality, give the facility of customers guarantee included time, cost, and services. Company support to their customers by customers policies and procedure and listen carefully to their problems and solve quickly.

 

• Review the customer service call data in appendix2 and analysis data to identify possible causes of customer service shortfalls.

 

When review the customer services data in appendix 2 it shows numbers of calls is increasing, changes in numbers of calls according to the last year is also increasing. But the customer service staff is disturbed and shows fluctuations, complexity is arising in their schedule and management.  As a manager of this firm analysis, some causes of customer service shortfalls and evaluate that. The company doesn’t obtain to manage time and efforts in the recruitment process and choose the correct employees. But on the other hand Mia and jones customer service officers’ continually work to the firm. So its shows lack of the interest of employees towards the there company, some other causes are lack of kindness towards employees, lack of esteems for customers, lack of trust of a product and the company, sometimes lack of guidance to train the employees is also another issue for shortfalls. Appendix-2 customer service data also shows some new joining of the employees in middle year, so this shows not hire the right persons to the company, company perform is decrease and they don’t perform well in customer service.

3. Write a Briefreport (No more than 1 page) to the board of innovative widgets to:

a) Summarize customer service team performance

As a manager of innovative widgets firm, it is necessary to check and analysis the performance of their customer service team as they show the data of previous years with their teamwork average in the range and they will manage work with effective manner but after sometimes complexity is arising due to the lack of dedication towards work and after sometimes some employees leave in the middle of the year. Company team performance is disturbed, manager evaluates the quality of their employees work and find out some issues regarding misunderstanding with their clients.so overall company needs to improve their customer service team management and their performance to provide better facility to their customers.

b) Identify possible causes of customer service shortfalls.

Manager find some causes of customer service shortfalls  as they  lack from their  kindness towards their employees, lack of esteems for employees, not hire the correct persons for their position, employees trust are reduced to products and the company, Firm don’t take time and efforts regarding to recruit to the new employees.  

c) Identify option to address the problems.

Manager identify the problems are arising because of misunderstandings, communications hurdles due to that they are not able to  communicate clearly with their customers, and also find out the there team performance are decreased due to each other coordination.   

5) Follow the customers’ complaints policy and procedures provided in appendix3 of this task to draft an email to Yore mine Co. to clear up the misunderstanding and address their concerns. Ensure that your support of the customer service provided is consistent with principles of customer service set out in the innovative widgets business plan and customer service plan you develop in assessment task1.

 

Business Email

To: Yore Mine Co.  Cc: Bcc: Subject: Clear up the misunderstanding and notice the customer complaints policy  Respected sir This gives us to shows some issues of the customers’ complaints, misunderstanding between the clients and the employees, also some hurdles are arising towards the performance of the employees of the firm. Company solve their issues by the help of customers complaints policy and procedure and give facilities is receive customers complaints, deal with it and give a positive response with the effective manner and helps to take their satisfaction. Innovation widgets complaints policy and procedures take the responsibilities to manage all complaints of the customers and solve it on time. Apologies for faults products can  never  be argued with their customers are also the best solution for customers’ problems. The company creates plans for their internal and external customers’ to fulfill their needs listen carefully customers’ problems and summarizes it quickly, find out the solution for their problems.  Kind Regards, Alex Thomson Customer Service Manager Innovative Widgets 6574358971

Part B

 

• Prepare to participate in a role –play with Mary (your assessor) to address her performance issues. You need to prepare

• Run structured coaching session

 

As for the way Mary does, no one else does this kind of mistakes. For this a coaching session will provide in the Innovative Widgets:

Structures of coaching session are:

1) Agreement of coaching plan the particular issue

2) The objective of the session is to hear the issue of clients 

3) Solutions of client issue

4) Assurance to constant deed

5) Recognize the result of each assembly

6) Provision the client to preserve responsibility

b) Ask question to understand and clarify Mary’s perspective

Questionnaire between Manager and Mary:

Question) why this misunderstanding happened?

Answer) The customer was discussing many issues at the same time.

Question) why she did not let them, other employee or manager?

Answer) at that time she understands, the customer will argue on the yesterday’s product which was not received by them.

 

Question) they informed about the legal issue?

Answer) Yes

c) Describe the policy and procedures for handling customer complaints

It is an assurance where the customer’s feedback is valuable and they committed their customers that their problem will surely resolve here in a very well-organized manner, appropriate and fair-minded. There is some step which needs to follow:

1)    Talk over

2)    Speaking

3)    Determining complaints or find a solution to the issue

d) Outline techniques for dealing with different types of customers according to their needs (eg. Dealing with small customers compared to dealing with significant customers such as Yore Mine Co.)

Types Of Customer	Techniques for Handling
The annoyed customer (like Yore Mine Co.)	1)Keep cool during the call 2)Give assurance the service will solve their problem
The restricted customer	1) Assure them the problem will be fixed without     involving the manager  2)Use polite manner with them
The conversational customer	1) Attention on the consumer, why they actually called. 2)Stick on the issue

e) Explain techniques for solving customer complaints.

There are some methods for dealing with consumer complaints:

1)    Resolve the customer‘s objection: It includes sorting the situation, resolves the problem using professional methods. 

2)    Listen to the customer: Understand what the exact issue is. Listening to the whole story and find the cause of the issue.

3)    Give the solutions to the customer: Find the solution or alternative ways to the respective issue.

4)    Learn to welcome complain: It is necessary to make temporary relation with the customer, initiating with the proper welcome (Simon, 2015).

f) Document the coaching session and it and its outcomes in accordance with the recordkeeping policy and procedures developed in Assessment task 1. 

INNOVATIVE WIDGETS:

RECORD KEEPING POLICY AND PROCEDURE

Purpose	Written document that follows by the customer and staff.
Scope	Make good decision in the day to day service Department of Innovative Widgets involve in the scope i.e. employee and manager
Resources	Customer is a valuable asset. Software’s make easier to connect with the customer and easy to make records in an electronic manner.
Relevant legislation	It will be used in any legal activities related to the customer complaint.
Updated/Authorized	Headway North London approved this policy in 2017

Record keeping Process:

1. Welcome the customer.
2. Ask the customer about their complain
3. Assure them, the service will resolve their issue
4. Give them the solution and in the last greet them again.

2) Arrange a time with the assessor to complete the coaching role play and complete the role play

Role-play: Mary is sitting on her seat, phone ring and she received. She welcomed the client. The client is in an angry mood and dissatisfying with the service. He said that he ordered widgets last Friday and they promised him that delivery of the product within 3 days.

After a week, he has not received the product. After calling the manager when he received the product, the product size is different according to their order. Now he warns that if he is not receiving the product in today, he will take legal action towards the service. Mary misunderstands the whole topic and she thought customer arguing over his last order.

Manager: Mary was not a good listener. She will not assure the customer that they will help them.

 

3) Submit the required documents for assessment as per the specifications below. Be sure to keep a copy for your records.

• E-mail to Yore Mine Co.
• Report on customer service performance

Assessment 3

2. Develop a set of KPIs for Innovative Widgets customer service representatives. KPIs should address the areas of customer and business requirements.

A KPI for customer service is a performance measurement which is used by customer support management to monitor, analyze and optimize customer relations with the help of 360-degree customer view.

The most important customer service KPIs are as follows:

 

• Time-to-resolution

 

TTR helps the organization to track average time taken by good customer service reps for resolving customer issues and complaints. It is measured from the time customer submits the request to the time the request is successfully handled.

 

• Customer satisfaction

 

It is the most important performance metrics which every organization aims for. This is important to measure the quality of service being provided to the customers regarding their issues.

 

• First, call resolution rate

 

FCR shows the efficiency of a team to resolve the issues on the first contact of the customer. It measures the efficiency in understanding and addressing the problems without needing the customer to call back for the same issue.

 

• Conversion Rate

 

Does it show how likely are the customers to take the products or services after having an interaction with the customer service team? If the customer service is good then the conversion rate would be very high, which is beneficial for the organization.

 

• Quality

 

Quality is referred to the level of service provided to the customer, which helps in determining the efficiency of customer service representatives to satisfy the customer by understanding and resolving their issues.

 

• Customer retention

 

Customer retention is the number of customers that the organizations have retained. The quality of customer service provided helps in increasing the customer retention rate (Francis, 2017).

3. Develop a plan or procedure for monitoring team members’ performance against KPIs.

For the purpose of monitoring the performance of team members’ against the set KPIs following plan or procedures have been prepared:

• Regular monitoring should be done for checking the average time a customer service agent takes to understand and resolve the issues of customers. This can be done by keeping a record of the contact between the customer and the reps and performing quality analysis, to check and rectify the faults, if any.
• Providing better quality of resolution to the customer, understanding their issues and helping them with the solution makes the customer satisfied with the organization and its services.
• For the purpose of increasing customer satisfaction, the employees should focus on providing first call resolution which will reduce repeated calls as this increases the number of complaints and also creates a negative mindset in the customers regarding the organization.
• For the purpose of increasing the conversion rate, the organization needs to make sure that the customers have a decent experience and receives quality service when contacting the customer service department. This would make the customer take the products and services again.
• Customer retention is very important for any organisation because according to the book Marketing Metrics, businesses have a 60-70% chance of selling to an existing customer and 5% -20% chances of selling to new customers. So, every business needs to focus on increasing customer retention rate. Along with providing good quality of products and services, the organization must focus on providing good quality of after-sales services as well, which would provide a good experience to the customer (Steil, 2017).

4. Questionnaire

Question 1	Does employees are capable to resolve all the problems of the customers? Yes No
Question 2	Are you satisfied with the services provided by Innovative Widgets? Yes No A bit
Question 3	On the basis of your past experience, would you like to buy more products from the company? Definitely yes Most probably yes Most probably not Definitely not
Question 4	Did you like the quality of the products? Yes No
Question 5	Will you promote and recommend the products to your acquaintances? Yes No Maybe

5. Arranging of meeting with manager

In order to make the improvements in the delivery, the meeting would be conducted at 2:00 PM at 11, Glassford Road, Australia, so as to receive the feedback and performance data from the customers.

6. Issues and solutions

The problems Innovative Widgets face and its solutions are:

1. Timely delivery: The Innovative Widgets offers 3 days delivery to its customers and is not able to deliver the products on time because of the miscommunication employees having during a conversation with the customers. The problem can be resolved by providing training to the employees as to how to have a conversation with the clients and understanding their demands.
2. Proper behavior: Another problem is employees get frustrated and talk in a rude behavior with the customers which may lead to loss of the customers. The problem can be solved by providing coaching to the employees as to how to talk to the customers and tell them to behave calmly. The problem can be solved by giving warnings to the employees. The employees should provide friendly services to the customers.
3. Resolving issues of the customers: Employees does not understand the issues of the customers and fails to solve their problems which results in a diminishing of the goodwill of the company. The problem can be solved by providing training to the employees and preparing them to handle all the situations and every problem of the customers.

7. Analyze performance data and feedbacks of the customers to identify systematic customer service issues and trends

From the feedback received through the questionnaire conducted, the customer service issues and trends can be analyzed. The issues and trends are:

1. The employees are not capable enough to solve the issues and complaints of the customers.
2. The products of the Innovative Widget do not match the quality mentioned.
3. The employees of the company do not pick up the telephone and do not provide a satisfactory response.

8. Preparation of the report

a) 3-4 recommendations

Recommendation 1: The employees should provide satisfactory responses to the queries and issues of the customers.

Recommendation 2: The employees should talk to the customers in a polite manner and should not be rude to them.

Recommendation 3: The employees of the Innovative Widgets should maintain a loving and caring environment and should build relations with its customers. This will help in increasing public relations of the company.

b) A rationale for recommendations:

 

• Problem identification and resolution: The management team of the Innovative Widget should identify the problems faced by the customers by conducting research and provide solutions to them. The management and other employees should determine the areas in which the company lacks and take steps to improve its services.

• Managing customer service and customer relationships: The employees should take corrective measures to solve the queries and complaints of the customers. The employees should talk to the customers in a polite manner and should not involve themselves with any sort of arguments in order to maintain the relationships with the customers.

• Managing quality customer service delivery: The employees should provide a higher quality of products to the customers in order to attract them and retain them. The Innovative Widgets should deliver the products on time to attract more customers and build brand image.

• Procuring appropriate technology to address customer needs: The Company should install software so that they can track the delivery of the products and deliver the products on time. By making optimum use of technology, the Innovative Widget can develop software through which it can determine the needs and requirements of the customers. 

 

9. Documentation

1) Report on KPIs

2) Questionnaire prepared

3) Notes inclusive of the complaints of the customers

4) Resolutions provided

5) Quality management certificate

6) Plan developed.

Conclusion

From the above report, it is concluded that the Innovative Widget will prepare a plan for customer service and develops various policies and procedures to solve customer complaints and provide customer support. The report will include the problems and issues Innovative Widgets face in providing satisfaction to the customers. It will also include a role play and a questionnaire to know the feedbacks of the customers.

References:

1. Simon, A., Kafel P, Nowicki P, &Casadesus, M. (2015). The development of complaints handling standards in companies (case study). International Journal for Quality Research
2. James, J. (2015).  The Top 5 Reasons for Poor Customer Service and How to avoid them [Online]  Activia training.  Available at:https://www.activia.co.uk/blog/the-top-5-reasons-for-poor-customer-service-and-how-to-avoid-them  [Accessed on: 6 February 2019]
3. Burke, C. (2015). Customer Service Performance Review Best Practices [Online] Insight squared. Available at: https://www.insightsquared.com/2015/04/customer-service-performance-review-best-practices/ [Accessed on: 6 February 2019]
4. Francis, F. (2017). 6 Effective Customer Service KPIs To Measure Customer Satisfaction. Retrieved from https://www.softwaresuggest.com/blog/measure-good-customer-service
5. Steil, T. (2017). The 6 Customer Service KPIs You Should Be Tracking. Retrieved from https://www.userlike.com/en/blog/customer-service-kpi
6. Brody, S. (2018). Treating Employees Like Widgets: The Legal Impact of Workforce Management Systems on Contingent Workers.