Responding to customer needs
Training in customer service
All new colleagues have to attend the three – day induction course before they are allowed to serve customers.
While doing this course they are also taught on the aspects of customer service, which includes:
- How to approach a customer within the stores – Richer Sounds has several policies on approaching a customer such as: Not to approach a customer as soon as they have entered the store for any help, Once a customer enters they should greet them by saying hello and most strict rule is to not approach anyone from behind because it may scare them and only approach from the side or from the front
- The appearance of the colleagues – all colleagues working in the sores have to were the Richer Sounds uniform with a name badge on it
- How to cope on busy days – All tills must be used to serve customers and try to serve quite faster. When the queues are very long colleagues should offer customers standing and not standing in the queues a cup of tea or coffee. Usually no customers like to wait in queues especially when the store I very crowded.
- How to ask questions to customers – colleagues should ask questions relating on the type of product they are looking for and not to encourage customers to buy items they don’t wont because richer sounds believe this is the worse thing to do.
- How to handle payments – the company uses all types of credit cards or any type of purchase whether the item is 99p or even if the item is £99.99. This is because there are times when people wont to pay later for the item they need because you get a time period to pay the amount and there are times when customers may have forgot their money at home but want to purchase the item so they can use the credit card. Due to this reason no one may leave the store without anything just because they forgot their money.
- How to cope with technical questions
- Health and safety – each colleague should know how to take actions in emergency to do this they may need this training
- How to deal customers who have disabilities – All colleagues should have respect for customers who have disabilities and should help them in all ways for which product they are looking for. All colleagues should be truthful in what they sell and how much they take because if there is a blind person needing a tape player the colleagues shouldn’t charge more money to what it should be.
How Richer Sounds Identify Customer needs and Expectation
There are three main ways how richer sounds identify customer needs and expectation, which are:
- The till receipt questionnaires – these are most important questionnaires because everyone who purchases a product will receive and if they taught they did get treated well at the store then he/she may fill the questionnaires. These questionnaires are also seen everytime the customers will see the receipt and so next time when they may come back to the store to purchase another item then they could also bring the filled questionnaires with them.
- Write to us
- Analysing all the feedbacks – these will include the receipt questionnaires
How Richer Sounds encourage their customer suggestions
On the till receipt questionnaires there is always space given for customers to give suggestions on improvements to be made by the business. Customers can also complete ‘We’re listening cards’
However there are many suggested improvements made by customers that are not practical or it could even cost lots of money to introduce it. This is because they don’t understand the business. Such suggestions are:
- Introduce new large car parks
- Recruit many employees to work in the stores
- Give free delivery to any place even if the product cost less than the cost of petrol.
These suggestions cannot be made or introduced because to do these things, the company will have to raise prices to meet the costs, and this can be possible because Richer Sounds wont to be cheaper than any company store or even local store
However people also give great suggestions that the business can introduce such as on person suggested to introduce the queuing system for the busy days. This sounded good, so Richer Sounds than introduced this system and now each and every store has this system.
Richer Sounds methods of checking their Customer Service
There are two methods on how Richer Sounds checks their stores customer service, these are:
- They use an independent mystery shopper – every month an unknown person visits all stores to check on the stores services. After each store is visited there will be a report sent to Richer Sounds saying how well each stores services were. Richer Sounds then send off theses results to the appropriate store with their points that they have been awarded. These points are always recorded on the Richer Way League every month
- They carry out internal checks twice a week – this include the mystery telephone calls to the call centre and the stores
Dealing with customer problems
How Richer sounds deals with complaints
No business like to see complaints made by the customers, however Richer Sounds encourages the customers to tell them any complaints they have for the business.
This is because Richer Sounds wants to put things rights
The call centre deals with telephone complaints and the store colleagues will with face-to-face complaints from the customers. To do this all colleagues working in the stores and the call centres have to get proper trained on customer service so that they can resolve as many complaints as they can within the spot. Colleagues can also give refunds or exchange any item if the customer is dissatisfied with the product but unfortunately this is only able to do within the 14 days of purchase. But if any item stopped working or has technical faults then the company will repair the product for free.
Every week Richer Sounds collects all the complaints from the stores and call centres and then divides into two categories:
- Avoidable Complaints
- Unavailable complaints
Available complaints are complaints that could be avoided by the business such as avoiding colleagues talking rudely to customers
Unavoidable complaints ate types of complaints that are unavoidable because the company cannot do anything about it such as one person stated the car park was fool, or the stores are small
How Richer sounds deals with problems and returns:
Richer Sounds gives 100% guarantee scheme. Product can be returned or exchanges within the period on 14 days and the product should be kept in the original conditioned. They obviously give refunds to fault goods or an exchange
Products that develops fault at any later stage, will then be dealt with the companies Repairs and Servicing department.
Richer Sounds After – Sales service
Customers can either ring the call centre or email the customer services department for any queries or if they need support. After sales service is provided by the service and repairs department.
- Richer Sounds accept all serviceable products for repairs
- Most product have manufacturer guarantee of 1 year
- The average time for the company to repair any faults will be 5 working days
- After the repair has been don’t the customer would get 3 months engineer warranty in-case if the product had any extra faults caused while repairing
