Effective Customer Service

Staff

In most businesses, it is the staff that customers first come into contact with. Staff can create a good or bad first impression of the business. It is, therefore, vital for customers to receive good customer service that staff are properly trained and can provide what customers expect.

Appearance

Customers expect that staff will be dressed appropriately for the job they are carrying out and for the type of goods or service that they provide. They also generally expect them to be tidy. When dealing with food or personal contact with customers, it is expected that staff also have high standards of personal hygiene.

The appearance of staff at Chester Zoo is vital as they present Chester Zoo as an organisation, giving off either a positive/negative image dependant on their appearance. At Chester Zoo, all staff are provided with a uniform consisting of a green jumper with their logo at the same height as their name badge. They are also given a pair of green trousers and black boots, which are only to be worn once entering Chester Zoo, and not outside or on the way in to the zoo. Their uniform must look immaculate at all times and worn correctly. They should have a neat haircut and tied up if long enough to do so. Staff that work with the animals wear a different uniform to those members of staff who work at the zoo. After handling the animals or their food, it is essential that the staff wash their hands before moving on to the next task in order to maintain certain hygiene standards and as part of health and safety.

I think that appearance is a weakness at Chester Zoo because the uniform is plain and boring, it is not easily recognisable and does not stand out as well as it should, making it difficult for customers to easily seek help or advice from a Chester Zoo employee prohibiting the employees to provide Chester Zoo’s customers with excellent customer service. However, the strengths of Chester Zoo’s uniform are that their name badge and the logo is worn at the same height so that visitors know who they are, and that they work for the zoo. Their hair is always tied up and this makes them look more presentable to the zoo.

Teamwork and Training

Effective customer service would entail the staff to work together as a team; they could clean out the animals together or feed them together, clean out by as this provides the best service possible to their visitors, also providing an efficient service. All staff undergo Chester Zoo’s training programme which includes Presentation and personal appearance, they are explained the aims and Chester Zoo’s mission statement, they are taught how to communicate effectively, the importance of their own role in the organisation, specific departmental training, they are also trained to handle complaints procedures efficiently.

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Some new staff who may have never worked in this type of environment and can easily adapt to their requirements. Training helps to build up the staffs team-working skills as a part of their training course, even where staff have good customer service skills it will be necessary from time to time to provide additional training. In this programme, the staff both train and use their team working skills to play group activities and games.

Chester Zoo has both strengths and weaknesses because firstly their staff play the more individual roles within the zoo. The training that staff receive is ...

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