Managing the Customer Experience

This document discusses the value and importance of understanding customer needs in the service sector. It explores factors that drive customer engagement and provides a customer experience map for a selected service sector organization. It also examines how digital technology is employed in managing customer experience and illustrates customer service strategies in a specific service sector context.

Managing the Customer
Experience

Table of Contents.
INTRODUCTION................................................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION....................................................................................................................................8
REFERENCES...................................................................................................................................10

INTRODUCTION
Managing customer experience helps to strengthen brand preferences through differential
experiences of the customers. These helps to improve the loyalty of brand within the mind of
customers through memorable as well as valueable interactions of the business with the customers.
Thus, the customer experience management can be explained as the series of process which the
organisation uses is order to organise, overseas as well as track the interactions of customer with the
business throughout the life cycle of the customer. Therefore in this report, it has been discussed
about the needs and expectations of market segments for a service industry, followed by the
customer experience mapping to create business opportunities and optimisation of customer touch
points, followed by the investigation of the digital technologies impacts in customer relationship
management. And lastly, it has been discussed about the effective customer experience management
within a service sector in order to maximise the customer engagement. Moreover, the complete
report is based on the case study of Barrafina Restaurant (convent Garden)
P1 Explain the value and importance of understanding the needs, wants and preferences of
target customer groups for a service sector industry
The value and importance of understanding the needs, wants as well as the preferences of the
targeted group is very much essential in service sector industry as the owner of the business must
know that not everybody is its potential customer. Due to this, even is the business owner tends
to invest so much on promotion of service through advertising or through digital marketing is not
at all valuable until it is targeting the targeted customer base. Therefore, the business owner must
analyse its primary and secondary targeted market in order to take out the maximum profit from
its services (De Keyser and et.al, 2015).
Product description
It is very essential for the business owner to tailor the service according to the needs of the
customers. Thus, once understanding the target market the business owner may know what all
the features required by the customers of target market, and therefore it can shape and design the
product or service according to the needs of the customers. For instance, if an business is
offering an service, then it must know the number of hours required for present it as well as what
could be the outcome after that.
Managing expectations
If one knows the is expected by its clients, then it could design the services according to its client
expectations. Therefore, managing the expectations could results in two fold effects. The first
will be the situation where the customer will be discouraged by service provider by describing
that unrealistic expectation could not be fulfilled. While at the second situation the customer will

be left into satisfied pool, where the customers are most likely to come back for getting more
service.
Identifying the target market
It is easier to know and understand who will be the target customers and whom to be advertise.
Addition to this, the service provider must know what are the newspapers or magazines its
targeted customers read, what all social media they use in order to entertain themselves. Thus,
based on such findings the service provider may tailor its message of service, in order to place a
memorable impact on the targeted customer within the crowded space. And as the service
provider knows that, the crowded audience does not tends to listen, until and unless the message
means something to them.
P2 Explore the different factors that drive and influence customer engagement of different
target customer groups within a service sector organisation
Purchasing a service is always an crucial situation for a consumer. As it tends to analyse the
service based on the various patterns. There fore, it is very much clear that the influencing
factors will tends to change the buying pattern of the consumer of the service. The basic four
factor that may drive and influence the customer engagement is described as
Customer behaviour cultural factor
For determining the customer behaviour culture play an very important role. As culture is
assumed to be a very complex belief of behaviour of human, which includes role that society,
plays in human’s lifestyle. Therefore, this factor is assumed to be the most crucial in influencing
the customer behaviour. Culture is further divided into sub culture as well as social classes of the
human society (Goodman, 2019).
Customer behaviour social factor
The social factors which influence the behaviour of the consumer, could be further divide into
following as reference group, family as well as role and status. It is common that the consumer
will get influenced by the social factor reference group, and therefore it will impact on choosing
the product or brands. It might include opinion leader. Consumer of service may too get
influenced by the motivations or personalities of family or members of the family living together,
either might due to blood relation. Sometimes, the role and status of the individual in the society,
tends influence the customer behaviour.
Customer behaviour personal factor
Personal factors includes several sub factors which could influence the customer behaviour such
as age and life cycle stage, occupation, financial or economic situation, life style and self concept
& personality. The buying decision of service is generally influence the consumer behaviour
towards the service, the type of occupation possessed by the customer, is most of the time
influence the consumer behaviour. Financial status, which depends on the amount the individual
earns is sometimes the factor of personal customer behaviour. And many more, similar factors
influenced the consumers buying decisions.
Customer behaviour psychological factor

Motivation, perception, learning and experience as well as the attitudes and beliefs are the
several psychological factors that influence the consumer behaviour. Sometimes the customer
may get motivated by its friend or family to choose the preference based on the their liking.
Sometimes the consumer behaviour may get influenced by it past experience, such as it has
previously used the service provided by the same brand as well as based on whether it got
satisfied or not from the brand (Peppers and Rogers, 2016).
P3 Create a customer experience map for a selected service sector organisation
A customer experience map can be defined as the graphical or visual representation of the overall
process of the consumer goes through while doing business with the organisation. Therefore,
while considering the customer experience map for a restaurant, it could be explained as a visual
representation from the time when the customer explores for the restaurant to the time of very
end when the customer exits the restaurant.
The customer experience map for a restaurant.
As if there is no standard map of experience for the customer but a generalized form could be
developed as
STEP 1 Set clear goal for the map and describe your personas
This step considers what will be the goal for this map and what to achieved through it, moreover
data sets or insights that has to be consider for this map, additionally it also considers the pool of
the customers that has to be target.
STEP 2 Set customer journey phase
From the business of restaurant the customer journey phase could be divided into following
stages i.e. becoming aware of the restaurant, research, arriving by own, ordering food, waiting
for the food, having food and in the end leaving the restaurant. Moreover, sometimes dropping a
feedback as well as returning to the restaurant are also included (Homburg, Jozić and Kuehnl,
2017).
STEP 3 Defining goals of customer for each phase
The customer’s goal at each phase of journey would be
Customer journey phase Customer goals
Becoming aware Explore new place in order to have food.
Research Analysing what people about the restaurant
Arriving Locating the restaurant quickly.
Ordering Going through the menu, and finding the best
cousin that suits the best.
Waiting Waiting for the food till it arrives
Eating Enjoying food and finding out whether it was
value for money or not.
Leaving Make payments
Feedback Sharing the experience with family and
friends
Return Deciding to visit once again is the customer
got satisfied with the services.

STEP 4 Listing and defining every touch point
The point of contact between the customer and restaurant could be defined as touch point.
STEP 5 Adding processes as well as channels to the map
It includes all the processes as well as channels through which the customer interacts with the
restaurant.
STEP 6 Identifying problems and their solutions
This step analyses the various channels, process as well as the touch points in order to
identifying various road blocks and problems associated with the restaurant business.
STEP 7 Reconstructing and evolving
This step finds out the best possible solutions. Thus, this could be the time considered as the
rebuilding the customer experience map by making the general changes.
P4 Discuss how the customer touch-points throughout the customer experience create
business opportunities for a selected service sector organisation
the customer touch point are the point where the customer interact with the business from the
start to the end. In order to improve the interaction of customer with service provider, it is
essential to know where this interaction has taken place. Thus, without knowing this it is
impossible to measure the improvement with the changes in the interactions (Lemon and
Verhoef, 2016).
For the service sector industry i.e. specifically in restaurant business it is important to focus on
the efforts in order to improve the user and customer experience. Moreover, touch point can be
served as the basis for customer journey mapping in order to fully understand the typical user as
well as how the customer interacts with the food, ambience or environment overtime.
There is various business opportunity that has been created for the restaurant with the
understanding of customer touch points. As customer touch point is the where the customer
interact with the brand, food and environment. Thus, developing an understanding of each touch
point will eventually helps in designing of better customer experiences for the restaurant.
P5 Examine how digital technology is employed in managing the customer experience
within the service sector, providing specific examples of customer relationship management
(CRM) systems
Customer service is very much essential service sector industry. Thus, for the business of
restaurant, the customer service can be enhanced by the enhancing the quality of service.
Although due to recession in economy, but then too there are more alternatives available to the
customers. Moreover, in order to remain competitive in the market it is essential for the business
to know new technology, and this technology will help the business in finding the customer
needs, and tailor the processes of the business according to the needs of the customers.
The digital technology is employed in the management of customer experience within the
business of restaurant by enabling the restaurant with the websites, emails, communications as
well as software’s (Jain, Aagja and Bagdare, 2017).
The customer relationship management (CRM) is the tool used by the business organisation in
order to find out the better way to service the customers i.e. with the quality food as well as with
the environment of restaurant. Many companies suggested that business uses technologies in

order to raise their quality of customer service by focusing on the following such as data
management and analytics, insight driven marketing, marketing automations, self service
optimization as well as work force effectiveness. Thus, there are various conditions due to which
it is essential to improve the service sector industry.
P6 Illustrate customer service strategies in a specific service sector context
The customer service strategy for a restaurant could be explained as
Creating clear staff expectations
The restaurant must follow the culture of customer first; therefore the management must clearly
explain its staff how to take hold of the customer. For this the restaurant must have set guidelines
as well policies to train their staff. Making sure that restaurant customer service is an active
process and the business must take time in order to re-evaluate customer service policies by
updating and clarifying when and whenever required (De Keyser, 2015).
Personalizing the guest experience
In order to make the customer dining experience fun as well as memorable, a personalized touch
is used. For instance, call the customers by the first name or greeting them on arrival or train the
staff with the concept of service with a smile tends to enhance the relation between customer and
the service provider.
Streamlining the wait times
None of the customer at the restaurant likes to wait for too long. So in order to overcome such
issues the restaurant must take use of the technology in which they might use kitchen display
system which could reduce the long waits. Moreover, order tracking facilitate the customer to
know how much it has to wait for finally receiving the order in its hands
Responding to the concerns
Customer complaints are very common in restaurant. Thus, it is very essential to respond to the
customers on the various concerns arose in the restaurant. To respond to the concerns focus on
the customers, clarifying the problems, apologizing for the mistakes, resolving the issues as well
as reporting the incident (Wilson and et.al, 2016).
Doing table touches
This could be the final step in improving the customer service, it is the act of table touches. Here
in this step the manager tends to visit the table of the guests in order to know about their
experience with the food as well as with the service of the restaurant. If there could be some
issue with the service the customer could directly report the management and thus, the
management could take sophisticated actions in order to solve the issue and making the customer
review valuable to their service.
P7 Demonstrate how customer service strategies create and develop the customer
experience in a way that meets the needs of the customer and required business standards
There are seven steps developing of a customer service strategy
Creation of customer service vision
Here in the first step of customer service strategy, the employee needed to understand the
restaurant’s vision as well as its goals. It must know and understand it responsibilities in order to

achieve the vision.
Accessing the customer needs
This step means to analyses what the customer needs and this could be achieved by talking to the
customer and knowing what service they prefer. This need assessment of customer could be done
by soliciting feedback through focus group, satisfactory surveys and more, in order to execute
the customer needs.
Hireling the right employees
Hiring the employee with the customer in the mind is the another strong strategy for customer
service. Screening the employees to make sure that inherit the skills to help in supporting a
strong customer service environment.
Setting goal for customer service
This means the employees must know what is the organisational target as well as how to reach
the organisations corporate objectives (Hwang and Seo, 2016).
Training on service skills
Training is very much essential, as regular trainings to the employee of the restaurant is given to
make sure how they will respond to the customer or guests. Thus, hiring the right employee will
eventually help in serving the customers well.
Holding people accountable
In order to achieve the goal of customer satisfaction, it is very much essential for the employee to
have proper understanding of how the services could affect the overall performance of the
restaurant.
Rewarding and recognizing good services
Rewarding and recognizing is the another customer service strategy, that acknowledge and
reward the employee with good customer service. It is the natural tendency of the employee for
the need of preconisation when it has given the desired behaviours of strong customer service
culture.
CONCLUSION
This report can be concluded as, Managing customer experience helps to strengthen brand
preferences through differential experiences of the customers. These helps to improve the loyalty of
brand within the mind of customers through memorable as well as valueable interactions of the
business with the customers. Thus, the customer experience management can be explained as the
series of process which the organisation uses is order to organise, overseas as well as track the
interactions of customer with the business throughout the life cycle of the customer. Therefore in
this report, it has been discussed about the needs and expectations of market segments for a service
industry, followed by the customer experience mapping to create business opportunities and
optimisation of customer touch points, followed by the investigation of the digital technologies
impacts in customer relationship management. And lastly, it has been discussed about the effective
customer experience management within a service sector in order to maximise the customer

engagement (Barker and Patterson, 2019 ).

REFERENCES
Books and journals
De Keyser and et.al, 2015. A framework for understanding and managing the customer experience.
Marketing Science Institute working paper series, 15(121), pp.1-48.
Goodman, J., 2019. Strategic customer service: Managing the customer experience to increase
positive word of mouth, build loyalty, and maximize profits. Amacom.
Peppers, D. and Rogers, M., 2016. Managing customer experience and relationships: A strategic
framework. John Wiley & Sons.
Homburg, C., Jozić, D. and Kuehnl, C., 2017. Customer experience management: toward
implementing an evolving marketing concept. Journal of the Academy of Marketing
Science, 45(3), pp.377-401.
Lemon, K.N. and Verhoef, P.C., 2016. Understanding customer experience throughout the customer
journey. Journal of marketing, 80(6), pp.69-96.
Jain, R., Aagja, J. and Bagdare, S., 2017. Customer experience–a review and research agenda.
Journal of Service Theory and Practice, 27(3), pp.642-662.
De Keyser, A., 2015. Understanding and managing the customer experience (Doctoral dissertation,
Ghent University).
Wilson and et.al, 2016. Services marketing: Integrating customer focus across the firm.
Hwang, J. and Seo, S., 2016. A critical review of research on customer experience management:
Theoretical, methodological and cultural perspectives. International Journal of
Contemporary Hospitality Management, 28(10), pp.2218-2246.
Barker, D. and Patterson, N., 2019. Exploring and Managing the Impact of Cyber Security on
Customer Experience in Cloud Hosted Software Services.