Excellent customer relationship services

Excellent customer relationship services

Final project report

What Does Excellent Customer Service Mean?

Customer service is a highly important part of every business. A company’s most vital asset is its customers. Without them, company could not exist in business and can’t grow .Companies that are unable or unwilling to properly service their customers stand to lose the customers ‘and their business. However, several key variables or characteristics set excellent customer service. A company that best demonstrates these excellent customer service characteristics will have a distinct advantage over its competition.

Significance

One of the most important elements for achieving excellent customer service is training. Customer service employees must be trained on product features, prices, warranties and even the various technical aspects of products. A company must create a seamless customer service experience. In other words, a company's customer service department must be as efficient as sales, marketing and all other departments.

Accessibility

Excellent customer service means acknowledging a customer's question in a timely manner. When someone calls a company, he expects the customer service department to answer the phone, or at least be easily accessible. Once the caller reaches customer service, he expects his questions to be answered promptly. Excellent customer service means having more experienced people or supervisors available to answer.

Function

When customers have problems with their products, excellent customer service means solving these issues and problems quickly, or at least executing a reasonable plan of action. For example, a customer may call a small Internet service provider because she cannot access the Internet. The Internet provider's customer service department should stay on the phone with the customer until she gets her service back. If the problem remains unsolved, the company should send a service representative to the woman's house. The company should provide the date and time of the service call--and stick by that appointment.

Considerations

Excellent customer service requires effective listening and communication skills. A company's customer service representatives should listen carefully to what the customer needs. The answer or solution to the problem or question should accurately address the nature of the call, excellent communication skills are crucial. A customer should be able to easily understand what the customer service representative is saying. The representative must speak clearly, and use common terminology that everyone understands, not highly technical language.

Prevention/Solution

A company should periodically measure key elements of its customer service department, such as timeliness, accuracy and problem-solving effectiveness. Companies can then use the feedback to correct aspects of customer service that have shortcomings.

What excellent or best practice customer service.

The practice of customer service should be as present on the show floor as it is in any other sales environment

1.      Know who is boss. You are in business to service customer needs, and you can only do that if you know what it is your customers want. When you truly listen to your customers, they let you know what they want and how you can provide good service. Never forget that the customer pays our salary and makes your job possible.

2.      Be a good listener. Take the time to identify customer needs by asking questions and concentrating on what the customer is really saying. Listen to their words, tone of voice, body language, and most importantly, how they feel. Beware of making assumptions - thinking you intuitively know what the customer wants. Effective listening and undivided attention are particularly important on the show floor where there is a great danger of preoccupation - looking around to see to whom else we could be selling to.

3.       Identify and anticipate needs. Customers don't buy products or services. They buy good feelings and solutions to problems. Most customer needs are emotional rather than logical. The more you know your customers, the better you become at anticipating their needs.   

4.      Make customers feel important and appreciated. Treat them as individuals. Always use their name and find ways to compliment them, but be sincere. People value sincerity. It creates good feeling and trust. Think about ways to generate good feelings about doing business with you. Customers are very sensitive and know whether or not you really care about them. Thank them every time you get a chance. On the show floor be sure that your body language conveys sincerity. Your words and actions should be congruent

Help customers understand your systems. Your organization may have the world's best systems for getting things done, but if customers don't understand them, they can get confused, impatient and angry. Take time to explain how your systems work and how they simplify transactions. Be careful that your systems don't reduce the human element of your organization

Appreciate the power of "Yes". Always look for ways to help your customers. When they have a request (as long as it is reasonable) tell them that you can do it. Figure out how afterwards. Look for ways to make doing business with you easy. Always do what you say you are going to do.

Know how to apologize. When something goes wrong, apologize. It's easy and customers like it. The customer may not always be right, but the customer must always win. Deal with problems immediately and let customers know what you have done. Make it simple for customers to complain. Value their complaints. As much as we dislike it, it gives us an opportunity to improve. Even if customers are having a bad day, go out of your way to make them feel comfortable.

Give more than expected. Since the future of all companies lies in keeping customers happy, think of ways to elevate yourself above the competition. Consider the following:

·         What can you give customers that they cannot get elsewhere?

·         What can you do to follow-up and thank people even when they don't buy?

·         What can you give customers that are totally unexpected?

Get regular feedback. Encourage and welcome suggestions about how you could improve. There are several ways in which you can find out what customers think and feel about your services.

·         Listen carefully to what they say.

·         Check back regularly to see how things are going.

·         Provide a method that invites constructive criticism, comments and suggestions.

Treat employees well. Employees are your internal customers and need a regular dose of appreciation. Thank them and find ways to let them know how important they are. Treat your employees with respect and chances are they will have a higher regard for customers. Appreciation stems from the top. Treating customers and employees well is equally important.

The difference between customer service in a monopoly situation and a competitive situation, and what costs are involved in maintaining excellent customer service.?

Monopoly situation

A situation in which a single company or group owns all or nearly all of the market for a given type of product or service. By definition, monopoly is characterized by an absence of competition, which often results in high prices and inferior products.

Types of monopoly

Ø  Natural monopolies: include public utilities, such as electricity and gas suppliers.

Ø  Legal monopoly: arises when a company receives a patent giving it exclusive use of an invented product or process. Patents are issued for a limited time, generally twenty years.

Competitive Situation 

the standing of an organization in its markets, relative to its competitors, when all players are described in terms of their size, resources, capabilities, product range and quality, marketing strategies, opportunities, goals, intentions, behavior and similar variables In perfect competition, there are many small companies, none of which can control prices; they simply accept the market price determined by supply and demand. In a monopoly, there’s only one seller in the market. The market could be a geographical area, such as a city or a regional area, and doesn’t necessarily have to be an entire country.
Types of monopoly

Natural monopolies: include public utilities, such as electricity and gas suppliers.

Legal monopoly: arises when a company receives a patent giving it exclusive use of an invented product or process. Patents are issued for a limited time, generally twenty years.

Key Differentiate between monopolistic competition and perfect competition

Ø  Perfectly competitive markets have no barriers of entry or exit. Monopolistically competitive markets have a few barriers of entry and exit

Ø   The two markets are similar in terms of elasticity of demand, a firm's ability to make profits in the long-run, and how to determine a firm's profit maximizing quantity condition.  

Ø  In a perfectly competitive market, all goods are substitutes. In a monopolistically competitive market, there is a high degree of product differentiation.  

Similarities

One of the key similarities that perfectly competitive and monopolistically competitive markets share is elasticity of demand in the long-run. In both circumstances, the consumers are sensitive to price; if price goes up, demand for that product decreases. The two only differ in degree. Firm's individual demand curves in perfectly competitive markets are perfectly elastic, which means that an incremental increase in price will cause demand for a product to vanish). Demand curves in monopolistic competition are not perfectly elastic: due to the market power that firms have, they are able to raise prices without losing all of their customers. Also, in both sets of circumstances the suppliers cannot make a profit in the long-run. Ultimately, firms in both markets will only be able to break even by selling their goods and services. Both markets are composed of firms seeking to maximize their profits. In both of these markets, profit maximization occurs when a firm produces goods to such a level so that its marginal costs of production equal its marginal revenues.

Differences

One key difference between these two set of economic circumstances is efficiency. A perfectly competitive market is perfectly efficient. This means that the price is Pareto optimal, which means that any shift in the price would benefit one party at the expense of the other. The overall economic surplus, which is the sum of the producer and consumer surpluses, is maximized. The suppliers cannot influence the price of the good or service in question; the market dictates the price. The price of the good or service in a perfectly competitive market is equal to the marginal costs of manufacturing that good or service. In a monopolistically competitive market the price is higher than the marginal cost of producing the good or service and the suppliers can influence the price, granting them market power. This decreases the consumer surplus, and by extension the market's economic surplus, and creates deadweight loss.

Another key difference between the two is product differentiation. In a perfectly competitive market products are perfect substitutes for each other. But in monopolistically competitive markets the products are highly differentiated. In fact, firms work hard to emphasize the non-price related differences between their products and their competitors'.

 A final difference involves barriers to entry and exit. Perfectly competitive markets have no barriers to entry and exit; a firm can freely enter or leave an industry based on its perception of the market's profitability. In a monopolistic competitive market there are few barriers to entry and exit, but still more than in a perfectly competitive market.