Building a Customer Service Strategy: Your Ongoing Case

Let’s go back to the ongoing case you selected. This will be either your current employer, a specific organization you want to work in, or one of the two hypothetical organizations described in Chapter 1: Independent Auto Sales and Service (IAS) or Network Nutrition Distributors (NND). Now consider the following questions as you develop a customer service strategy:

Strategy Planning Questions

1.

How could you improve the overall quality of telephone use in your organization? Assuming you have authority to do so, what would you do? Describe specific training you could develop. What suggestions would you have for greeting callers? What are some key phrases you would encourage all employees to use? What taboos—words and phrases you would forbid—might be useful?

2.

How could you develop guidelines for handling unhappy customers? Draft such a “cheat sheet” for employee reference. Make it long enough to cover most concerns but not so long that it is too complicated.

3.

What kinds of routine calls do your company handle most often? Describe these and offer brief guidelines (or checklists) for handling these in ways that provide excellent service.

Note