Task 3
In customer service there are two types of customer, which are external and internal customers. Therefore you will need to be aware of providing service to both types of customers easily.
Internal customers-
Safeway’s meets the needs for internal customers by:
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Giving discounts, this would make employees happy and make the workers work harder ,smoother and quicker
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Benefits, e.g. if you are not able to come in work Safeway’s is ok with that if you have a good reason why
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Christmas bonus, once you start working for the whole year Safeway’s gives you a Christmas bonus for a job well done.
External customers-
External customers are very important because with out them there would be no business. External customers have to be treated well so they would come back to buy Safeway’s products or services. The following are the benefits for external customers.
- Special offers- customers would come back again for different offers to buy and this would give a good image to the store
- Discount is a good way to bring customers in to the store because customer would be getting products cheaper then any other stores and that is true because the Safeway store on Holloway road has a lot of products on discount all the time
The ways in which the organisation meets the expectations of both internal and external customer’s are:
- doing an survey on the business
- Value for money
- Reliability
- Sales
Customer needs
Safeway’s is very good at customer needs because it provides the followings:
- A range of different products and services- Safeway has all types of food or household equipment along with a few services such as mini cab, loans and home deliveries.
- Products available at the right time- Safeway’s has a system called E.P.O.S. ( Electronic point of sale) using this system it allows Safeway’s to see what has been selling and what stocks needs to be ordered along with this system is a another system called E.D.I. (Electronic data interchange) this automatically does an invoice on what is needed.
- Products available at the right place- e.g. Safeway’s has peanuts next to their alcohol.
- Safety- Safeway’s is always careful with safety e.g. if the floor is slippery there would be a sign saying be careful of slippery floor.
Task 4
In Safeway complaints are handled by specially trained customer service staff which customer may complain to. Most of Safeway outlets have a complaints procedure. This states how staff should deal with complaints. It is important for staff to know this and abide by it.
At Safeway complaints fall into two broad categories. There are basic issues which can usually be quickly resolved. Then there are complaints about serious issues, some even could take legal actions against Safeway’s
Examples of basic complaints:
- Location of goods (not being able to find a product)
- Poor facilities (e.g. lack of trolleys or long queues at checkouts
- The attitude or behaviour of staff
- Faulty goods or goods found to be damaged or with parts missing
- Goods being out of stock or not available for some reason
- The price of an item (e.g. a price increase since last week).
Examples of serious complaints:
- unsafe conditions that resulted in a customer having an accident
- a claim that food purchased contained a foreign object or caused illness
- a claim that an unsafe product caused injury
- Serious complaints about a member of staff e.g. swearing at a customer, drunkenness, fraud etc.).
When Safeway’s is dealing with complaints they:
- Listen to the customers
- No matter what the customers are right or make them feel they are right
- Respond in a polite way and do not use slang
- The tone of your voice has to be understandable
- If there is a situation you are not sure what to do you should get the manager.
Task 5
Safeway’s has to have some customer records because in the future the organisation might want to send information about on Safeway’s e.g. special offers or new Safeway’s sites. The type of customer records that Safeway’s uses are:
- Your home adders, so Safeway’s could send you information
- If you have any babies, so Safeway’s could send e.g. vouchers on baby food or nappies
- Religion, This is quite important because Safeway’s could send e.g. if you are a Muslim or Christian cards could be sent to customers houses when its Xmas or Ed
- Date of birth, this is used so Safeway’s could know what type of age group shops at Safeway’s or Safeway’s could send birthday cards when its your birthday so customers could think that Safeway’s is thinking about them.
- Your telephone Number, with this Safeway’s could phone if e.g. you won an competition, or if Safeway’s need to call you when got an refund on a product
With this information Safeway’s would have a clear picture of its business and helps it to plan for the future e.g. a health club, personal fitness plans and medical details.
Task 6
For this task I am going to do an evaluation on Safeway’s customer service with suggestions for improvements. As you can see not all organisations are perfect because all of them have a bit of problems sometime. Safeway’s is always improving their standards e.g. checkouts layout of store and their customer service desk. Here is a list of some of Safeway’s strong areas but also I m giving suggestions for improvements:
- Value for money – Safeway’s is very cheap when it comes to its goods. Safeway’s provides mulitpacks, special offers on certain products, discount and most of all their pricing strategies are best value they price their products so customers can think that they are getting more on what they spend on so they would be happy shopping at Safeway’s.
- Different rang of products & quality – Safeway’s has a variety of different rang of stock; they are now stocking international products like Turkish, Greek/Cyprus because the majority of different race is increasing rapidly, using this method is giving Safeway’s a very good image but this might not work all the time because most Turkish people go to places e.g. Haringey to buy their Turkish products and could be much more cheaper. So it best for Safeway’s to keep the Turkish section small and this goes out to all other national food.
- Checkouts – Safeway’s checkouts are very organised because there are a lot of them near the exit so when customers buy their shopping they can leave easily and they also have lower checkouts for disabled people too. This is very important for Safeway’s because if customers don’t feel comfortable at the checkouts they could leave but Safeway’s should improve it by making more space when there are que’s because it really hard to pass through if you have to get through them.
- Method of payment – Safeway method of payments are credit card, debit/solo card and cheque these are all expectable in all supermarkets but Safeway also provides a re-drawn service this is a service that allows you to take out some cash from your account. Safeway also has their own store card with this customers can earn points and customers don’t have to pay using their cash or debits cards all they have to do is pay it off during a cretin length of time. H.P is also available at Safeway too, this service work by first you buy some think and then you will have to pay if off bit by bit every month it’s a good way to pay off stuff that costs quite a lot of money but the bad thing is that the interest is very high so the person that is using H.P is going to end up spending a lot of money.
- Trolleys and waiting at the checkouts - is a problem because on busy days e.g. weekends its very crowed at the checkouts so I think to overcome this problem is to employ more staff to work at the new checkouts that Safeway should build. More trolleys is needed too because people that come to shop on the weekend is probably going to buy one weeks shopping so I don’t think a basket would be enough, that could explain why there are a lot of spare baskets around to use during them times.
Task 7
Safeway’s has a few legal constraints affecting the customer service because with out any legal protection customer might not feel protected when buying good from Safeway. Safeway has to think abut the customers so on top of the legal protection that the law provides they are being kind by giving refunds when they don’t have to.
Here are a few legal obligations to its customers; customers need to be protected when buying goods, if, for instance:
- Goods are damaged, broken or unusable – Safeway has to give a refund if the product if faulty if they don’t to customer could press charges on Safeway
- Goods are not fit for the purpose for which they were bought for e.g. if a customer brought a DVD form Safeway and didn’t work the customer has the right to bring it back and get an exchange or refund back.
- The seller has described the goods inaccurately. e.g. If Safeway has described a C.D player’s battery life to last 24 hours and don’t the customer could get a refund back or exchange.
Safeway’s would need to understand that customers can complain against these problems and the following laws protect them:
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Sales of Goods act 1979 – One of the most important Acts today is the Sale of Goods Acts 1979. Since it was passed this has been amended three times – by the Sale of Goods Acts (Amendment) Act 1994, the Sale and Supply of Goods (Amendment) Act 1995. This covers the fundamental requirements of purchasers, i.e. that goods must be:
- as described, this means that goods must conform to their description e.g. waterproof must mean the item dose not leak
- of satisfactory quality – in relation to the price paid, the description, the age of the item
- fit for the purpose for which they are intended – goods must carry out the purpose they are made for e.g. a pen must make a clear legible mark
- The goods must be fit for any specific purpose which the buyer has made clear the seller at the time of the sale.
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Supply of Goods and Services Act 1982 – Service standards are covered by this Act, as in buying the services of a plumber to repair central heating or a garage to service a car. Buyers are protected against shoddy workmanship, delays and exorbitant charges. The Act states that all services should be carried out:
- for a reasonable charge
- within a reasonable time
- with reasonable care and skill
- Using satisfactory materials.
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The Trade Descriptions Act 1968 – This Act is designed to prevent the false or misleading description of goods, e.g.:
- selling goods which are wrongly described by the manufacturer
- implied descriptions, e.g. a picture on a box which gives a false impression
- Other aspects of the goods, including quantity, size, composition, method of manufacture etc.
Evaluation of customer service and suggestion for improvements
I am investigating Safeway as my business that needs improving on customer service and I am going to doing an evaluation too. With the research I have done Safeway’s customer service is not that bad. But still I suggest they can make some improvements in a number of issues such as:
- availability of goods and service
- friendliness
- speed of delivery
- customer safety
- exchange and refund
- Access to building.
Exchange and refunds
Safeway’s does Exchanges and refunds on goods that are faulty. Safeway has a clear policy on returned items, so that customer service are not frequently having to ask their boss for assistance or clarification. Safeway will accept any goods back within a limited period, providing the customer has kept the receipt, and will refund the money. Safeway dose not clearly explains the refund policy to a customer at the time of a purchase is made, and the importance of keeping the receipt should be stressed, this is quit a bad way for Safeway to show that they care about the customer by telling them what they should keep after shopping at Safeway.
Speed of delivery
Safeway’s delivering service is quit good because you could buy your shopping over the internet and have your purchase be delivered within a day or two but the bad thing about Safeway’s delivery is that they don’t deliver to your house when you shop at the store and this is very bad when you have other big companies e.g. Iceland Tesco competing against you. As well as Safeway’s knows that no customer wants to purchases a large, heavy item and then find’s out that Safeway’s don’t do no delivery the customer may decide the whole transaction is too much trouble and go elsewhere.
Customer Safety
Safeway is very concerned with safety because it is a very common thing that happens to everyone. Not only customer has to be safe but also the employers and employees have to be in a safe working environment. When some think is split e.g. ketchup on the floor a worker has to clean it up and put a sign saying slippery floor before a customer has an accident which would be very bad image for Safeway’s company but not all the time the employees react quickly enough to an serious matter all the time and for this problems they should have a few workers walking around the store looking for any think the is not correct.
Friendliness
At the customer service desk the workers are always friendly to the customer even when a customer is making a complaint so I must say that section of Safeway is very good but the rest of the workers that work are very unfriendly and customer even my self can tell from their body language and by their voice tone same goes to the worker that work on the tills Safeway might need to make some improvements by changing the working hours on the tills because it becomes quit boring after a while or a higher discount could be given of a bigger bonus could be given.
Availability of goods and services
The availability of goods is always excellent at Safeway because the company have a system called epos which keeps a record of what is selling and what is not selling but with there is another system called and this system orders the products that are running low automatically when the epos system say so e.g. there’s 1000 cans of bens in total but when 900 of them are brought there’s 100 left so he system automatically order another 1000 tins of bake bens.
Access to the building and services
Safeway’s has a few types of access to their stores e.g.
- car park, this will attract more customers to shop at Safeway because they would not have to worry about where to park when they arrive there but not all the time there are spaces to park your car this is because some people park their car so they could shop around the local area for Safeway to overcome this problem they should issue a ticket when you go in their to park your car and the ticket should be only for two hours
-Lifts, are very important to because most car parks are two floor so customers could take their shopping easier up to the second floor. Disable people could use it too it they can’t walk up stairs
-Café coffee shop, after shopping some of the customers are going to a bit tired so they might go in to the café to have a cup of coffee and even better is Safeway could do an offer (if you spend over £20 you could get a free cup of coffee)
-Children pen, for busy mothers shopping they could leave their children in a little area with a few trusted adults looking after them while you as a customer could shop more easier and quicker.
-Toilets, is could be a good way for customer to stay longer at Safeway because they could spend more money.
Safeway
If Safeway improves these issues they will be a bigger and better company. Safeway should not forget that the most important thing in a business is a customer that will keep the business running. Safe’s jobs is to treat their customer the way they will like to be treated.
