Management of Quality Customer Service

This report provides a detailed analysis of customer service by reviewing the current status of customer service management given in the case study of Innovative Widget. The purpose of the report is to review the existing customer service of Innovative Widget aligned with the product it produces and develop a suitable service plan to help Innovative Widget address its current customer service issues and enhance the quality of customer service.

Running head: MANAGEMENT OF QUALITY CUSTOMER SERVICE
Management of Quality Customer Service
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note

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Table of Content
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Task A: Knowledge Based Question.........................................................................................3
Task B: Customer Service Plan..................................................................................................6
References................................................................................................................................13

2MANAGEMENT OF QUALITY CUSTOMER SERVICE
Introduction
This report provides a detailed analysis of customer service by reviewing the current
status of customer service management given in the case study of Innovative Widget.
Khodakarami, and Chan (2014) mentioned that customer service is a significant aspect of
business, which needs to be tailored and arranged as per the needs of customers because the
level of customer service often determines success of the business. The purpose of the report
is to review the existing customer service of Innovative Widget aligned with the product it
produces and develop a suitable service plan to help Innovative Widget address its current
customer service issues and enhance the quality of customer service.
Task A: Knowledge Based Question
1. Complaints can happen every day and when a customer complains, assuming that it is for a
good reason, which means they made a purpose that did not meet their expectation- product
or service. Trkman et al. (2015) mentioned that one common characteristic in customers is
that customers usually want to know someone is listening and they expect that some is
intended to take care of the issues to their satisfaction. The following example shows how
five different approaches –“stay calm, listen well, acknowledge the problem, understand the
facts and offer solution” altogether can be used to deal with customer complaint.
There can be situation, for example, in which the customer may come up with issue
like, “I purchased a widget of 10mm, but colour is not depth and itz size is not proper as
mentioned……bad choice of the brand…. No response from the service team, I want my
money back right away …so disappointing!!! ..@inwidget”
Now the customer service executive of Innovative Widget needs to remain calm and
listen to customer carefully. The customer service executive can respond this in a following
manner:

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a). We are extremely sorry for the inconvenience caused to you; however, we assure a speedy
solution to your problem. Thanks for reaching us.
b) You want a more intense colour? This is a good idea and we could add quit easily. The
size of your widget is not proper, we thank you as you noticed that; can you please send your
product to our mailing address, we take 24 hours to fix it and deliver back to you.
2. Set a company-wide customer service policy: Undoubtedly any business stands on a few
core principles – such as compensation, availability, satisfaction and happiness but
Taherparvar, Esmaeilpour and Dostar (2014) mentioned that these policies are never the sole
responsibility of care providers dealing with directly with the customers. The organization
needs to make sure that each member of the organization maintains the policy of excellent
customer service and the care for the customers must shin through.
Make yourself available: It is not possible to learn when the customer is going to contact the
service team and especially in the manufacturing sector, people usually make purchases of
high cost (Cook 2017). Thus, providing an email address or single phone line contact is not
sufficient. So, the business needs open up many channels of interaction as possible which
may range from a call centre to monitoring social media engagement.
3. In the first day of my job in a new company, I would focus on relationship building and
presenting as well as selling ideas because it is very important for any employee to build
relationship with the co-workers because internal bonding often helps to resolve the
workplace issues. On the other side, relationship building approach also helps to develop an
effective relationship with the customers. In addition, presenting new ideas to the
management often creates the scope for innovation.
4. Aga, Noorderhaven and Vallejo (2016) mentioned that finding great talent is difficult but
what is more challenging is keeping the talent engaged for better team performance. Unless

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an organization continually reinvest in enhancing employee with successful on boarding and
ongoing training, which would help employees to reach their full potential. However,
Keavney (2016) provided the fact that only 30% of employees in United State and only 30%
of employees outside US feel engaged with their organizations. Within this three years, these
figures have not improved in any way. Although, statistics show that it is worth an
organization’s effort as well as resource to develop employees to retain them and there is still
a gap. Thus, there should be clear and definite strategy of developing team members. For
example, Tuckman’s team building theory talks about four different aspects forming,
storming, norming and performing and here each aspect is equally important and they
equally contribute to team building initiatives (Seck and Helto 2014).
5. Performance management is a significant technique to monitor employee performance and
identify scope for improvement. In performance management technique, the managers and
employees work together to monitor plan and review an employee’s work objectives as well
as overall contribution to the company. In addition to this, 360 degree feedback method is
often known as “multi-rater feedback” that usually comes from colleague, peers and
managers in the organization shelf assessment (Khodakarami and Chan 2014). This feedback
method is transparent and useful because the feedback comes from different department and
medium; thereby, several aspects can be analysed. It becomes easy for management to find
out the flaws and suggest solutions.
6. Managers play a great role in guiding employees to deal with the customer complaints.
Firstly, the managers should pay attention to the communication skills of employees who are
supposed to deal with customer complaints (Eichorn 2018). This is because customers come
from different cultural and language background and sometimes it becomes difficult to
understand and communicate with those unfamiliar cultural people. Therefore, the managers

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should plan for a communication skills learning training. In addition to this, managers also
need to make employees understand about the values of each customer.
7. The workplace usually develops an official or corporate format of communication in which
verbal and non-verbal, both are important. Verbal communication usually remains as the use
of auditory language to share and exchange information with other people. Employees when
working in a workplace tends to communicate through words with a moderate tone or pitch
of voice (Conrad 2014). On the other side, the non-verbal communication is usually occurs
through sign language, gesture, facial expression, body movement and anything takes place
without speaking.
8. The following are the list of KPIs for customer service improvement
1. Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)
2. Net Promoter Score (NPS)- This KPI measures how likely the customers are supposed to
refer the business or brand to someone else.
3. First Response time
4. Customer retention rate
5. Employee Engagement level
Task B: Customer Service Plan
Functions of proposed customer service plan
Mission: To continually develop service to satisfy and exceed customer satisfaction
and contribute to success of Innovative Widget through the provision of timely, consistently
high quality and professional support at every customer contact underpinning company’s
strategic plan.

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Vision: Innovative Widget could be the single point of widget related advice and
support as well as be recognized as outstanding service provided by customer support
executive and staff members.
Product standards including:
Dimension: Coloured stainless widgets in a range of size 7mm, 8mm, 9mm, 10mm and
11mm
Tolerance: 24X7 customers are dealing with the customers and they must remain in touch
with the customers to resolve their queries.
Pricing: Reasonable and open to negotiation
Materials: High quality steel materials
Delivery: On time delivery policy
Policy and Procedures:
i). The policy for collecting customer information is: no customer will be forced to provide
their information and information received based on customer’s will be kept confidential by
following “Privacy Amendment Act 2000”.
ii) Customer complaints are serious concern; thereby, the customer service plan aims to
enhance the quality of service. The aim of the policy to provide customers the maximum
support.
iii) The personal information of each customer will be kept hidden and used for managerial
purpose only.
2.

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a) Fulfilment of quality customer service and legal compliance will be judged and analysed
by the quality standards set by Innovative Widget. Each service provided by the customer
service team will be compared to with quality standard policy. The management of the
organization needs to ensure that each customer representative complies with industry and
principles of legal framework. The plan includes an evaluation and feedback method which
would help to review the performance of customer service team. Each variable in the method
such as level of legal compliance and quality will be aligned and compared with the
performance recorded.
b) Each customer is important and spending time on customer complaint is kind of business
to the organization. As customer retention is important, cost specification and quality
parameters will be aligned with customer expectation.
c) The proposed customer service model will focus on increasing the level of customer
satisfaction and minimizing customer conflict. The new model will focus on an atmosphere
of service which is necessary to the majority of business across the world. The model will
include the approach of receiving customer feedback, retaining angry and unsatisfied
customers and persistently update policies and service to satisfy customer needs.
d). The customer service charter will include the following:
Commitment: The customer service team will recognize the level of customer service which
is integral to their needs. The team is committed to providing with the service required to
meet the obligation in a professional manner.
Customer service: Innovation and Management department provides a consistent approach to
customer support team with the focus of service an individual can expect.
Customer service principle: To become highly responsive, accountable, consultive, strive for
continuous improvement and communication.

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3.
Reliability
Do we deliver what our customer
expects?
Are deliveries accurate?
Are products and service precise?
What are the specifications and
tolerances?
When is product deadlines and
deliveries?
Is there a guarantee?
There are many scenarios where
the customer service team or the
organization as a whole is failed to
provide what customers expect.
However, in most of the cases,
Innovative Widget’s sales team
and customer representatives put
the maximum effort in meeting
customer expectation.
As customer expectations always
remain high, it is sometimes
difficult for brand to provide
accurate deliveries.
Product and service provided by
Innovative Widget are mostly
appropriate but flaws remain in
some cases.
To deliver any product, at least 3
days are taken
Guarantee is usually provided to
some specific products.
Assurance Staff members are trained with

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Do staff members inspire trust and
confidence in customers?
Are staff members knowledgeable
about products and services? Is it
expected that staff will be
knowledgeable?
Are staff members respectful and
courteous to the customer?
special teaching programs
including the communication skills.
During training and development
session, each staff member is
provided with proper education
about the products and services.
Thus, the staff members have
knowledge about the products and
services. Especially, the members
in the customer service team are
knowledgable.
The organization develops its own
workplace culture; thereby, each
staff member is expected to
comply with norms set by the
organization itself. So, all staff
members are taught the value of
each customer.
Tangibles
Are facilities visited clean and tidy?
Do you expect them to be?
Facilities are required to be clean
and tidy to build an effective
workplace for betterment of
employees and when the
employees work under a healthy

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Is customer paperwork clear and
useful? Should our letters,
brochures and website look a
particular way?
How would you rate staff
appearance?
Is the company building appealing?
Should it be?
workplace, they are supposed to
pay attention to customer service.
Customer paper work is required to
be clean and useful as this process
helps to keep customer
information.
When the business reaches the
maturity stage, it is highly
essential to make it appealing.
Empathy
Do you think the company cares
when customers make telephone
enquires?
Does the company share
customers concern when
customers are making complaints?
Are customers given the correct
When a business receives
frequent customer calls, the
organization should understand
that its service have some issues
and it should pay attention to the
service.

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amount of attention?
Responsiveness
Response times for customer
phoning through with enquires?
Do you mind dealing with different
people who handle your enquires
or should it be the same person
each time ?
What should the complaints
procedure look like to our
customers?
For responding to customer call
or queries, usually 24 hours are
taken.
When handling with the customers,
it is expected that customers can
come from different cultural
backgrounds; so it is expected that
employees communicate with
people with different cultural
background.
Comments

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References
Aga, D.A., Noorderhaven, N. and Vallejo, B., 2016. Transformational leadership and project
success: The mediating role of team-building. International Journal of Project
Management, 34(5), pp.806-818.
Conrad, D., 2014. Workplace communication problems: Inquiries by employees and
applicable solutions. Journal of business studies quarterly, 5(4), p.105.
Cook, S., 2017. Measuring customer service effectiveness. Routledge.
Eichorn, F.L., 2018. Internal customer relationship management (IntCRM) a framework for
achieving customer relationship management from the inside out. Management, 2, p.1.
Keavney, A., 2016. Team building strategies. Training & Development, 43(2), p.26.
Khodakarami, F. and Chan, Y.E., 2014. Exploring the role of customer relationship
management (CRM) systems in customer knowledge creation. Information &
Management, 51(1), pp.27-42.
Khodakarami, F. and Chan, Y.E., 2014. Exploring the role of customer relationship
management (CRM) systems in customer knowledge creation. Information &
Management, 51(1), pp.27-42.
Seck, M.M. and Helton, L., 2014. Faculty development of a joint MSW program utilizing
Tuckman's model of stages of group development. Social Work with Groups, 37(2), pp.158-
168.
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industry. Journal of knowledge management, 18(3), pp.591-610.

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Trkman, P., Mertens, W., Viaene, S. and Gemmel, P., 2015. From business process
management to customer process management. Business process management journal, 21(2),
pp.250-266.