Customer Service
Customer service
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© NSW DET 2008
Topic 1 - Customer service
2
© NSW DET 2008
Introduction
It may seem strange that you are studying an area that you already know so much about—customer service. Whether we realise it or not, we always judge organisations that we come in contact with and so we already have quite a good understanding of a customer’s perspective. In this module we will put this understanding into a structured model, so it can contribute to developing organisational goals related to customer service. We will be working on one of the ‘magic ingredients’ that make organisations successful—a quality customer service system—and learning how it can be managed. We will use a case study, Cricketland, to look at how to develop skills in managing quality customer service. When you are a customer you may be buying something for yourself, or on behalf of an organisation. Either way, you have your own expectations about the service you’ll receive. An important way to contribute to organisational success is to see others in the organisation as internal customers—find out exactly what they need and try to give it to them. By using this approach the needs of the organisation’s external customers can be delivered much better. If individual expectations of customer service were always clear for organisations, it would be easy to just give people exactly what they want (if it was economically possible). Unfortunately organisations often don’t know what we—the customers—need, and we soon become dissatisfied when we don’t get it. Consequently you—the customer—may spend much time changing organisations in search of the ‘holy grail’ of service. This is inefficient for both organisations and customers. To improve the situation, organisations need to ask us what we need and how we need it, and we must play our part by telling them. The complicating factor in all of this is that we are all different in our needs and we place different emphases on different
1
© NSW DET 2008
Topic 1 - Customer service
2
© NSW DET 2008
Introduction
It may seem strange that you are studying an area that you already know so much about—customer service. Whether we realise it or not, we always judge organisations that we come in contact with and so we already have quite a good understanding of a customer’s perspective. In this module we will put this understanding into a structured model, so it can contribute to developing organisational goals related to customer service. We will be working on one of the ‘magic ingredients’ that make organisations successful—a quality customer service system—and learning how it can be managed. We will use a case study, Cricketland, to look at how to develop skills in managing quality customer service. When you are a customer you may be buying something for yourself, or on behalf of an organisation. Either way, you have your own expectations about the service you’ll receive. An important way to contribute to organisational success is to see others in the organisation as internal customers—find out exactly what they need and try to give it to them. By using this approach the needs of the organisation’s external customers can be delivered much better. If individual expectations of customer service were always clear for organisations, it would be easy to just give people exactly what they want (if it was economically possible). Unfortunately organisations often don’t know what we—the customers—need, and we soon become dissatisfied when we don’t get it. Consequently you—the customer—may spend much time changing organisations in search of the ‘holy grail’ of service. This is inefficient for both organisations and customers. To improve the situation, organisations need to ask us what we need and how we need it, and we must play our part by telling them. The complicating factor in all of this is that we are all different in our needs and we place different emphases on different