Department of Human Resource Management

Level-II

Course title: Deliver and Sustain Customer Service

Prepared by: Mr. Fami A. (MSc)

Nominal duration: 130 Hour

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 Unit One
Customer Needs Identification
 This learning guide is developed to provide you the necessary information regarding the
following content coverage and topics:
 Customer needs identification interpersonal skills
 Customer needs and expectation Assessment
 Effective communication skills
 Limitations in addressing customer needs
 Specifically, upon completion of this learning guide, you will be able to:
 Use appropriate interpersonal skills
 Assess customer needs and expectations
 Determine priorities for urgency needs
 Use effective communication
 Identify limitations in addressing customer needs and seek assistance from
designated individuals.
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1.1. Interpersonal skills to identify customer needs
 Good customer service is all about creating a relationship with customers and
providing them with a friendly and helpful atmosphere.
• There are many different avenues and strategies you can follow to provide good
customer service.
• At the end of the day, you‘re simply trying to give your customers a great experience that
will leave a lasting impression.
Interpersonal skills are skills that pertain to the relations between people.
 They are vital to your success as a customer service provider.
 They govern how you interact with people within your organization as well as your
external customers.
 There are a number of skills that are considered interpersonal.
 In this lesson, we are going to focus on the following key interpersonal skills.
1. Assertiveness skills
• Assertiveness skills in sharing your thoughts and feelings in a way that is clear and
direct while showing consideration for your customers‘ viewpoints and recognizing
the validity of their thoughts. 3
2. Communication skills
 One of the most important interpersonal skills in customer service is
communication.
• When you are working in customer service you will need to be able to communicate
clearly and effectively with verbally, and in writing.
 Some jobs also require skills in effective public speaking.
 Using appropriate body language
 Providing an opportunity for the customer to confirm their request
 Questioning to clarify and confirm customer needs
 Seeking feedback from the customer to confirm understanding of needs
 Summarizing and paraphrasing to check understanding of customer message
3. Empathy skills
 Part of being a good manager, employee, or colleague is the ability to understand
and show empathy to others.
o If a customer or colleague calls with a complaint, for example, you will need to
listen thoughtfully to the person‘s concerns and express compassion for their issue.
o Empathy is an important skill that will help you get along with everyone in the
workplace.
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4. Leadership skills
• Even if you are not a manager, it is important to have some leadership experience and
ability.
• Leadership requires being able to motivate and encourage others and help a team
achieve success.
5. Problem solving skills
 Problem solving skills to identify and solve problems when establishing and
maintaining customer relationships.
6. Listening skill
 Listening is a skill that goes hand in hand with good communication.
 Listening actively to what the customer is communicating.
 While you need to be able to express your own ideas, you also need to thoughtfully
listen to the ideas of others.
 This will help your clients, employers, colleagues, and employees feel respected and
valued.

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7. Negotiation skills
 Negotiation is an important skill for many positions.
 Depending on the specific job, it might involve creating formal agreements (or
contracts) between customers or helping colleagues solve a problem and determine a
solution.
 To be a good negotiator, you must be able to listen to your customers, use creative
problem solving, and arrive at an outcome that satisfies everyone.
1.2. Customer needs and expectation Assessment
 Customer is an individual, group of individuals or an organization who receive or
may receive goods, services, products or ideas from another individual or a company
in return of value which can be money or anything of equivalent value.
o Customer forms the backbone of business.
o Usually more is the number of customers, more is the business thriving and vice
versa.
o Business needs customers to buy their products or services.
o A customer may not be buying your product right away but may buy it in future but
still remains part of your target customer group.
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1.2.2 Types of customers
 Customers can be of various types depending upon their ability to buy products or
services.

Potential Loyal

Intermediate New

Customers
External Discount

Internal Former

Figure 1: Types of Customers 7

Below are the 8 different types of customers:
1. Potential Customer
 Potential customer is kind of person who is very likely to buy the product or service
offered by the business.
e.g. a customer looking for an apartment in a particular area becomes a potential
customer for the local realtors who would have a flat which will suit the requirements of
the customer.
 The customer might end up buying the apartment.
 Potential customers can present an opportunity for the business to sellers and after
qualification can convert into a quote stage and eventually result in an order or a sale.
2. Loyal Customers
 Those who are loyal to one business and repeat the purchases irrespective of minor
changes in parameters like price, quantity etc.
e.g. a customer who buys the same airline's ticket irrespective of price.

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3. New Customer
 The new customers are customers who have used the product or service for the first
time from a particular organization.
 Such customers can be switching from a competitor brand or may be new entrant into
the market.
e.g. a person buying car for the first time after a salary raise.
 From the perspective of the organization, a new organization would acquire new
customers from the market either by launching a new product category altogether or
launching a competitive product offering in the market.
4. Discount Customer
 Discount customers are those who only buy or use the offering because it was on
discount or offered a cashback.
 These people are more likely to switch brands easily if prices reduce unlike loyal
customers.
e.g. A customer who takes a different flight based in the discounts offered though the
preferred airline brand was different based on past travels.
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5. Former Customers
 Former customers are those who were once buyer of one business and became
buyers of a new business because of some reason.
 These people would still be potential customers as they have already tried the
product or service once.
e.g. A person who used to buy a specific beverage switched to a more healthier option
offered by a competitor.
6. Internal Customer
 One who is connected to your organization and is internal to your organization.
 These for example your are shareholders, employees & other stakeholders.
7. External Customer
 An external buyer is a buyer of your services and products but external to your
organization.
 An example of your external consumer could be people buying your products in the
marketplace.

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8. Intermediate Customer
 Intermediate customers are those who purchases the goods for re-sale.
o e.g. retailers. The customers are part of a longer supply or value chain.
1.2.2. Customer needs Identification
 Customer Needs Identification is the process of determining what and how a customer
wants a product to perform.
 Customer Needs are non-technical, and they reflect the customers' perception of the
product, not the actual design specifications, although frequently they are closely
related.
 Identifying customer needs is mission-critical for businesses looking to create a
product that truly speaks to their customers‘ problems.
 Not to mention, the easiest way to position your brand smartly in the market is to
unite your internal teams behind the specific needs of your customers.
 Do you feel the number of repeat buyers is low? To turn that around and grow your
business, you need to learn what your customers value most.

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  In other words, discover what makes the loyal customers loyal.
 Customer-centric companies are 60% more profitable than companies that don‘t
focus on customers.
 While your business provides a solution to a need or problem, think about a typical
customer‘s needs from an emotional perspective.
 Grow your business by better understanding the audience.
 The following are four ways to identify customer needs
1. Identify what the customers want
 66% of customers expect companies to understand their needs and expectations.
 The best way to identify their needs is to take an organized approach.
 Some refer to this as a customer needs analysis, which provides you with valuable
insights about your target audience.
 Common methods for discovering what customers want include focus groups, social
listening, and keyword research.

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2. Distribute feedback throughout your organization
o Once you‘ve collected data, build insights about your customers and share findings
about them with your teams.
o Use those insights to identify opportunities for improving your products or services
and/or improving the way you describe them on your website that make the
conversion path as easy as possible.
o Conducting this type of research effort and sharing results regularly with your team
will lead to more proactive, strategic, and data-oriented marketing efforts, hopefully
replacing more reactive ones.
3. Create product/service features based on customer feedback
 Suggestions and feedback from customers can make your products and services even
better than they already are, creating loyal customers who refer their friends to your
brand.
4. Collect further customer feedback on changes you’ve made based
 Want to turn customers into advocates for your brand? After you‘ve made
improvements based on customer feedback, it‘s time to return to the first step to
collect further feedback on the changes you just rolled out.
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  The customer knows best there could be more areas for improvement or a feature that
didn‘t quite hit the mark.
 Continue meeting their needs so they feel valued.
1.2.3 Types of Customer needs
 Customer needs are the named and unnamed needs your customer has when they
come in contact with your business, your competitors, or when they search for the
solutions you provide.
 These needs may include the following aspects
 Advice or general information
 Accuracy of information
 Complaints
 Fairness/politeness
 Further information
 Values
 Appropriate services and Specific information

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1.3. Prioritizing Customer Needs
 When a customer reaches out to your company with a question or problem, they
expect immediate attention and prompt responses.
 In an ideal world, you‘d be able to respond to each of them immediately. However,
it‘s not possible to meet customer expectations every single time.
 Prioritizing your customer needs will not only help you to deliver a seamless
customer experience but also improve your customer service metrics.
 A prioritization system is the best way to create an efficient workflow for your
customer support team.
 It also eliminates the need to scan through each request separately to determine
which one needs your attention.
1.3.1 Best Practices for Prioritizing Customer Requests
o How your organization determines priority will always be unique to the size, type,
and philosophy of your business.
o In this section, we‘ll go over the basics of how to prioritize customer requests, just to
get you started off on the right foot.
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1. First come, first serve.
o When in doubt, it‘s always easiest to answer inquiries in the order that they come in.
o This doesn‘t mean that you have to answer the low-priority question about sales
before the high-priority troubleshooting request.
o But once incoming calls have been sorted by urgency, the safest and most equitable
way to tackle the list is by doing so in the order received.
2. Allow customers to determine the level of urgency.
 While customers might not always have the same set of criteria for calculating
urgency that your organization does, letting your users manually mark their level of
immediacy is one great way to establish trust between the consumer and your
company.
 On your contact form, mark a dropdown section where your users can mark their
request on a scale from least concern‖ to needs immediate attention.

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3. Create categories for types of requests.
 A sales question from a casual shopper will probably be safe waiting for 6-18 hours,
whereas a troubleshooting question from a corporate subscriber should be attended
to as quickly as possible.
 Allow users to categorize the nature of their request, marking them as sales, general
requests, troubleshooting, returns, product failure, etc.
4. Create categories for types of customers.
o Some businesses may choose to prioritize customer requests based on whether they
are returning customers, frequent buyers, or more.
o Urgency should always come before the grade of the submitting customer, however
you might find that the urgency of the request in fact correlates with the level of the
user.
o Typically, big-ticket requests are issued by larger companies subscribed to your
product, and the issues experienced may have a large-scale affect.

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5. Respond quickly, no matter what.
o It‘s an awful feeling, sending your request into the ether with no confirmation of
whether or not it was received.
o Even if the low-priority message that just fell into your representative‘s inbox has 100
other inquiries in front of it, it is in the best interest of both your organization and the
customer to send a prompt confirmation notice that their request was in fact received,
and will be addressed in due time.
6. Streamline your reassign process.
 If all requests go to customer support first and are then manually transferred to
peripheral professionals, there‘s bound to be hiccups along the way which cost time
and effort.
 You can smooth out the support operations by automating reassignment using tags or
sending specifically marked requests to appropriate support personnel immediately.
 For example, requests marked technical issues might be forwarded directly to IT.

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7. Create service level agreements (SLA’s).
o When employing urgency as your primary determinant for priority, there is a danger that low-
priority requests will back up indefinitely and clog the pipes.
o This can be addressed by setting first reply time deadlines, which once expired will
move up the priority list: for example, a low priority ticket might have 3 days to be
addressed before it becomes a medium-priority request.
1.4. Using effective communication
 Effective communication refers to the process through which a business shares
valuable information with its customers.
 Such interactions take place over popular communication channels such as email,
phone, live chat, social media, online forums, customer portals, and many others.
 Businesses communicate with customers, mainly for two reasons- to assist them with
their requests or complaints and to market their new or complementary products.

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 The effective communications that businesses should communicate with
customers must include
 Giving customers full attention
 Handling sensitive and confidential issues
 Maintaining eye contact (for face-to-face interactions), except where eye contact
may be culturally inappropriate
 Speaking clearly and concisely
 Using active listening techniques
 Using appropriate language and tone of voice
 Using clearly written information/communication
 Using non-verbal communication e.g. Body language, personal presentation (for
face-to-face interactions)
 Using open and/or closed questions.

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1.5. Limitations of Customer Need Identification
 Customer service challenges don‘t go away. But if you don‘t handle them correctly,
they could cost you your existing and potential customers.

 Not providing outstanding customer service generates negative word-of-mouth

advertising. No business can afford that.

 Turn service challenges into relationship-building opportunities and improve

customer satisfaction.

 Prepare your team to handle these challenges in advance.

 Below are 12 common and biggest customer service challenges businesses face
daily as well as solution ideas on how to turn them into relationship-building
opportunities:
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1. Not having an answer to the customer’s questions
o Handling this challenge is more about what you shouldn‘t do than what you should do.
o The key is to avoid being unclear in your response.
o If you do not have the answer, acknowledge the question‘s difficulty, ask them for time to
find a solution, then guarantee you‘ll contact them.
2. Transferring calls to another department
 There will be times when the best way to help a customer is to transfer the customer to
another person.
o When that happens, you first need to let customers know you‘re transferring them to someone
that will help.
o But avoid the mistake of doing a blind transfer.
o Meaning you transfer the customer to another customer service rep without verifying they are
available to take their call.
o How do you think they will feel if someone is expecting a live person but gets a voicemail?

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3. Failing to understand what customers want
 Customers can have a hard time explaining what they want.
o They may not know the technical jargon to tell you exactly what the problem is.
o If possible, ask the customer to take you step by step through their issue.
o You might find it helpful to take notes while they explain.
o Consider sharing the problem with another customer support agent.
o A second opinion could help you solve the issue quickly.
4. Dealing with angry customers
o Even the best companies get calls from angry customers.
o The key is first to calm them down to find out how you can help them.
o One approach is to use the HEARD technique for helping customers hear, empathize and
apologize.

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5. Exceeding customers’ expectations
 The trick to beating this challenge is setting reasonable customer expectations and meeting
and exceeding them.
 Exceeding the expectations of customers can generate repeat business.
 The key to doing that is to take a customer-centric approach.
 Then, generate data that tells you exactly what customers want.
 Use print, electronic, and social media to produce that kind of data.
6. Serving multiple customers
o Customers are okay with being put on hold if it helps resolve their issues.
o Telling customers that you‘re going to put them on hold to solve their problems buys you
time to talk with the other customer.
o Above all, avoid telling the first customer you‘re talking with a second customer.
o And don‘t leave customers on hold for a long time.

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7. An outage or other crisis occurs
 Is there anything worse than having a power failure or a crisis? Severe emergencies, like
security breaches, can be deadly.
 How do you handle them? First, put a crisis communication plan in place.
 That tells employees precisely what they have to do during a crisis.
 Then, when customers call, you need to apologize to customers for what they‘re going through.
 Also, provide constant updates say once every 30 minutes to help reassure nervous customers.
Once everything‘s over, you can publish a post-mortem.
8. Customers want a discount you can’t give
o Discounting can get customers to buy from you.
o But it also devalues your brand‘s perception in the customer‘s eyes.
 So, use this strategy sparingly.
o No customer likes to hear no from a customer service agent.
o Explain to them why you can‘t give them the discount.

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9. Customers want a feature you won’t or can’t add
 The biggest challenge when speaking to customers is saying no. But sometimes you must.
 Here‘s a way to do it gracefully: keep your tone positive, be personal, forget templated
responses, offer a workaround if one exists.
 Sometimes you can find a workaround that provides the functionality your customers want in
your product. In other words, do what you can to help the customer.
10. Flooded with service tickets
o This challenge is common during the holiday season especially if you don‘t have an employee
working 24/7 or a reputable outsourcing provider like Unicom to provide round-the-clock
responses.
o Many customers expect an answer within six hours. When backed-up like this, focus on
responding instead of resolving.
o You can also have customer service agents write a personal email telling customers, we‘re
backlogged, but we‘ll be taking care of you soon.
o Also, give customers a hard deadline by which you‘ll help them.

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11. You need to fire a customer
 Some people are better suited for your product or service than others.
 But letting a customer go is never easy. So, if you need to do it, do it with grace and
respect.
 Use this four-step approach:
 Be positive and appreciative
 Re-frame the situation as your fault
 Make the customer whole
 Apologize and offer an alternative
12. Reply/resolution times are slow
o Customers want answers now. Or better yet, five minutes ago.
o To start, review the ticket handling process you have in place.
o If you have tickets bouncing around from one department to another, find out why and
eliminate the problem. Strengthen your communication channels.

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END OF CHAPTER ONE
THANK YOU!!

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