In our short drama play we needed a Manager and an angry Customer. The Problem was that the customer had ordered a product and came to the collection at its due date, but then was told by the cashier lady that, that product didn't arrive yet. The customer was very angry and wanted to see the manager.
SCRIPT OF THE DRAMA PLAY
Manager= M
Customer= C
M: Good evening sir, I am the manager you wanted to see me?
C: Yes, I do.
M: So what happened?
C: Last week I have ordered a Mobile Phone. But the cashier lady said that it hasn't still arrived.
M: When was it supposed to arrive, Sir?
C: Well, on my order form it says that it should be here on 9th October 2008 at 10.00am. But because I was at work, I came at 6.00pm. And it still hasn't arrived. What is going on here?
M: You're right it was supposed to be here today, that's what it says on there. I am really very sorry for this. I apologise.
C: So when will I get my Mobile Phone?
M: Tomorrow morning I will check the Stock updates and inform you.
C: Why tomorrow, why not now?
M: I am very sorry, but because it’s our closing time our computer system are programmed to switch off. So I won't be able to check the stock updates now. I am extremely sorry. But I will inform you early in the morning tomorrow.
C: OK, fine. Thank you very much
M: I am again extremely sorry for any inconvenience caused. I apologise.
C: It's OK. CIA!
M: Good night Sir!
Things that went well in our group work:
To solve this problem I have contributed many ideas and shared my view about each and every idea that was suggested. When we didn't know what to say or talk about then I have moved the conversations forward by starting another topic or by suggesting more ideas.
M2- Explain why presentation, interpersonal and communication skills are important to customer service. For M2 you need to write a report.
Writing:
Imagine that you are working for the same retail organisation in the UK as the in the last task. You work as a sales assistant on the shop floor. Your will write a short report (400 words) on why presentation, interpersonal and communication skills are important to customer service in a retail organisation.
In a customer service there are three skills that are very important. These skills are interpersonal skills, presentation skills and communication skills. To be able to provide an excellent customer service you must use these skills in your service. It is very helpful if you know correctly how to use these skills.
Presentation skills are very important to be able to provide an excellent customer service. You can use this skill when you give out a presentation or when you present a product to your customer. Presentation skill means to give out a well-mannered and exceptional presentation. You need to be prepared, so that your presentation can be successful. Presentation skills have to do with a welcoming smile, appropriate clothes and smart appearance. For example many businesses have uniform for the staff. There are many advantages- employees do not have to worry about what to wear, customers can easily spot the staff and the organisation projects a consistent image. Other business provide their staff with a dress code or guidelines which tell staff what to wear and what not to wear at work. This makes it easier for the staff to decide what to wear. Also it makes the business look very smart and formal. It is straightforward for the customers to recognise a member of the staff because everyone is wearing the same clothes.
Interpersonal skills are very important to a business. It relates to the way the staff behaves when dealing with customers. Even if someone is very popular with their friends and families this doesn’t mean that, that person will be great to work with their customers. Neither does this mean that he will be automatically be skilled at handling customers. Interpersonal skills are about the attitude, behaviour and your first impression and greeting customers. Your attitude is influenced by the way you think. If you are upset because of some personal reason, then you will have a negative effect on your work. If you are fed up then you will be bored. But if you enjoy being with others, then you will be friendly. That’s why it is very important to have a good attitude, so you can work well and so that you can enjoy working with others. If you enjoy doing your best, then you will be focussed and motivated. Whilst this is important when you are dealing with customers, many employees think that the most valuable attribute is to be positive. There are several reasons for this. Positive people always think yes or I can do it. They don’t think no or can’t do or never been done. They look at problems or difficulties as a challenge and an opportunity to show what they can do.
Behaviour is an important aspect in interpersonal skills. If you’re a positive person, you will normally behave in a very positive and cheerful way. If you accept that you get paid to act in a mature and professional way, then that will mean that you won’t be behaving in a bad and irresponsible way.
Your internal personal skills start when you start with greeting your customers till the time you say goodbye to them. There may be an official greeting to greet external customers and there might be different rules on how to address customers if you don’t know your name.
Effective communication is all about conveying your messages to other people clearly and unambiguously. It's also about receiving information that others are sending to you, with as little distortion as possible. Doing this involves effort from both the sender of the message and the receiver. And it's a process that can be fraught with error, with messages muddled by the sender, or misinterpreted by the recipient. When this isn't detected, it can cause tremendous confusion, wasted effort and missed opportunity.
In fact, communication is only successful when both the sender and the receiver understand the same information as a result of the communication. By successfully getting your message across, you convey your thoughts and ideas effectively. When not successful, the thoughts and ideas that you actually send do not necessarily reflect what you think, causing a communications breakdown and creating roadblocks that stand in the way of your goals – both personally and professionally.
M3: What do you need to do?
3, if you complete P4 at a high standard you will have helped in completing M3.
4. You now need to write 600 words station how monitoring and evaluation customer service can improve it.
a. You need to look at the situation from three perspectives; the customer, the organisation and the employee.
b. You may want to mention:
Improvements to quality of service; reliability; improvements to the organisation, keep staff, attract new customers, increase turnover, compliance with legal obligations; improvements for employee.
Businesses monitor and evaluate their customers’ service, employees and their organisation. This is for a simple reason, if they don't know what their customers or their staff/employees think about their organisation, then they can not remedy problems or introduce improvements. This is because they will not know what is needed. This may be fine if the organisation is the only supplier of a product or service, but this rarely the case in these days.
Monitoring customer service is a method used to obtain customer feedback varies between organisations, often depending upon their size and how much money there is available. There are several various ways to monitor customer service one of them is informal customer feedback. When you finish a meal and a waiter asks you if everything was fine, this is a cheap, easy and informal way of getting customer feedback.
Other methods include watching customer as they enter and leave and chatting to them, checking that they haven't been waiting too long and ensuring that receptionists pass important comments on to a manager.
Staff feedback is a good way to monitor the employees. It is valuable for two reasons. First, many staff deal directly with external customers. They can therefore pass on comments made by customers- both positive and negative. Sales representatives for example, are usually expected to chat to customers regularly and pass feedback to their manager.
Second, staff is internal customers, so their views are also important. If many staff is unhappy and leaving to work elsewhere it is sensible to find out why this is happening. For that reason, most organisations should regularly asses staff views by issuing questionnaires or group that represents their views to attend an exit interview.
Monitoring customer service can improve an organisation. Mystery customers are an excellent method to improve the organisation. Some retailers employ mystery customers to visit their own stores to asses’ staff. They may also check competitor’s stores to compare their service levels. This is an important aspect in monitoring, if you know what your competitor’s service levels are, then you can expand your services better and to a higher standard than your competitor’s. They will be interested in factors such as the following:
- speed of service
- the way in which the service was delivered
- attitude of the staff
- Was the staff helpful?
- the quality of the finished result
- behaviour of the staff
If a business is receiving marvellous feedback from its customers, then it could be reasonably expected to be thriving. If it is not, then something is obviously wrong. To evaluate customer service it is therefore important to look at the businesses key information, which will either conform or deny about what is going on in the organisation.
It is obviously pointless obtaining and evaluating customer service if no action is taken to remedy any problems. The evaluation process should identify any areas where improvements are required e.g. the sales department, customer service etc.
Businesses have to differentiate between general failings that are affecting many consumers and problems which are more specific. As an example, in 2004 Sainsbury's was struggling with an IT problem that affected distribution of supplies of products. So many of its shelves we just empty, the customers were complaining and the level of sales fell down. The company took immediate action, to resolve the problem and the improvements it made helped to bring the sales levels up again. And the sale levels did rise up again to its normal standard.
This presents a different problem to the company than a complaint made about a member of staff who has been rude or negligent; this type of complaint needs to be investigated carefully to find out what actually occurred before any action is taken in case the complaint is unfounded. If there is a serious problem the person concerned may need to be retrained and/or disciplined.
