Introduction

Good customer service can be considered as a big differentiator between firms. While competing products are often similar and can anyway be easily duplicated, good customer service is a holistic system, requiring a sustained organization-wide effort, driven by the top and permeating all aspects of the organization culture. The resulting customer-centric organization becomes a formidable competitor whose model cannot be easily copied. In this course, we look at what it takes to build a customer-centric organization.

Course Objectives of Customer Management

• Develop a holistic customer care approach by taking into consideration seven different aspects of the definition of customer service

• Create objectives and programs to maximize internal customer satisfaction

• Evaluate the design, implementation, and analysis of customer satisfaction surveys

• Use customer complaints as the springboard for service improvement

• Write Service Level Agreements (SLAs) to ensure clarity and conformance

• Assess the service aspect of the organization or department through well-chosen Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Course Outlines of Customer Management

Day 1: Defining and appreciating the customer

• Definition of customer

• Definition of customer service

• The internal and external customer

Importance of the internal customer

• The need for motivated employees

• The need for qualified employees

• Silo mentality

• Destroying the silos

Day 2: Customer service as a strategic imperative

• From ‘suspect’ to ‘partner’

• Going up the ladder

• The 'KANO' model

  • ‘Basic’ attributes

  • ‘Performance’ attributes

  • ‘Delight’ attributes

• The customer-centric organization

• Customer service as a strategic imperative

• The 7 practices of a customer-centric organization

Day 3: Customer satisfaction surveys and other vital tools

• Understanding your customers

• Importance of segmentation

• Principles of customer segmentation

• Focus groups

• Customer satisfaction surveys

  • Key terms

  • Major survey methods

  • Questionnaire examples

  • Customer survey guidelines

  • Types of satisfaction surveys

  • Basics of sampling

  • Attributes to measure

  • Customer satisfaction index

• 'RATER' in-depth

• Service quality (servqual) gaps model

Day 4: Customer complaints and service recovery

• Facts and their implications

• Symptom versus cause

• Root cause analysis

• Failures do happen

• The recovery paradox

• The strategic initiative

• Tactical activities

• The ‘WOW!’ factor

Service Level Agreements (SLAs)

• SLA definition

• Characteristics of effective SLAs

• Key elements of an SLA

• Steps in SLA development

• Quality versus cost

• SLA metrics

Day 5: KPIs for customer service

• Monitoring performance through key performance indicators

• The 4 perspectives of the balanced scorecard

• Impact of the customer perspective

• Characteristics of good KPIs

• Building customer service KPIs