Customer Service
Customer Service is a crucial aspect of any business entity since it provides the business with customers, through retention of the already available customers and the acquisition of new customers. The already available customers need to feel valued and satisfied. The management has to ensure customer retention and satisfaction is highly maintained.
Customer Service needs
Well motivated staff that politely welcomes customers- This creates a comfortable atmosphere for customers to shop.
Improved skills and efficiency- Frontline staff has training publications that are provided by the management every month in order to keep the staff on its toes, and ensure students’ needs are well catered for and the staff is gathered to view skill-building and motivational videos.
Price
Products have price tags to enable customers to easily compare prices
Communication
Good communication channels
The management has created an efficient communication strategy that allows customers to provide feedback on services and products offered by the bookstore.
Also, print newsletters are published with information on new products and their
prices, as well as, highly focused books that provide information on ways in which services can be improved.
Problems facing the bookstore
Poor service in terms of customer attendance.
The high numbers of students that frequent the bookstore leaves the management with minimal staff to attend effectively to customers and offer advice on the various products. This challenge is well understood by the student population and has not adversely affected the image of the business.
Need for staff training on product information.
Improvements to Service
The bookstore should integrate e-commerce in its services in order to cater to the high-student population effectively.
Objectives of the new customer service strategies
Provide information on the various books and products and also provide students with prices of the products thereby saving on staffing cost and ensuring services are more efficient.
This will, also, boost sales and improve on customer service delivery.
The management can also include full-scale printing services, and integrate web presses (Pederson 1999).
The new online services will go a long way in reducing the number of employees needed to attend to customers because student scan access the bookstore’s products and online and get information on the various products and their prices.
Budget
Purchasing of new computers that will be used by some of the staff.
Take advantage of the already available university website, and include its services on the website.
Difficult customer and complaints action plan
Warm welcome and politeness.
Courtesy.
The new bookstore link will have various tabs depending on customer needs.
On the page, there will be a section where customers will be asked if they are satisfied with the services, and if not, they will be asked to provide suitable strategies that can be implemented in order to ensure they are fully satisfied.
Promoting new customer service strategies
Listen to customers.
Customer service being the cornerstone of a solid, thriving business, online surveys will be crucial towards maintaining customer satisfaction and maintaining customer loyalty.
Strategy adoption
Customer-friendly policies, effective training programs, and consistently deliver customer service level that is way above customer anticipation and value.
Thoughtful customer care and customer satisfaction.
Evaluation and report
These strategies will result to growth in profits, reduced turnover, and stronger customer relationships. Customer satisfaction in the future can be attributed to successful realization of these conclusions. The management needs to understand the relationship between customer satisfaction and productivity in order to identify substantially the expected continued growth in services. Efficient record keeping procedures should be identified and implemented in order to provide an effective basis of comparing customer satisfaction at various periods in time.
Reference
Pederson, J P 1999, International Directory of Company Histories, Volume 28. Eds. Derdak T & Pederson J P. St. James Press, the University of California.
