Department of Human Resource Management
Level-II
Course title: Deliver and Sustain Customer Service
Prepared by: Mr. Fami A. (MSc)
Nominal duration: 130 Hour
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
This guide will also assist you to attain the learning outcomes stated in the cover page. 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
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.
2. Communication skills
One of the most important interpersonal skills in customer service is communication.
When are you 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
o 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.
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.
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.
Customer forms the backbone of business.
Customer forms the backbone of business.
Usually more is the number of customers, more is the business thriving and vice versa.
Business needs customers to buy their products or services.
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.
1.2.2 Types of customers
Customers can be of various types depending upon their ability to buy products or services.
Figure 1 Types of Customers
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.
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.
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 are your 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.
8. Intermediate Customer
Intermediate customers are those who purchases the goods for re-sale 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.
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.
2. Distribute feedback throughout your organization
Once you‘ve collected data, build insights about your customers and share findings about them with your
teams.
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.
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.
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
Specific information
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
How your organization determines priority will always be unique to the size, type, and
philosophy of your business.
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.
1. First come, first serve.
When in doubt, it‘s always easiest to answer inquiries in the order that they come in.
This doesn‘t mean that you have to answer the low-priority question about sales before the
high-priority troubleshooting request.
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.
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.
Some businesses may choose to prioritize customer requests based on whether they are
returning customers, frequent buyers, or more.
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.
Typically, big-ticket requests are issued by larger companies subscribed to your
product, and the issues experienced may have a large-scale affect.
5. Respond quickly, no matter what.
It‘s an awful feeling, sending your request into the ether with no confirmation of whether or not it was
received.
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.
7. Create service level agreements (SLA’s).
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.
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.
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-toface
interactions)
Using open and/or closed questions.
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:
1. Not having an answer to the customer’s questions
Handling this challenge is more about what you shouldn‘t do than what you should do.
The key is to avoid being unclear in your response.
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.
When that happens, you first need to let customers know you‘re transferring them to someone
that will help.
But avoid the mistake of doing a blind transfer.
Meaning you transfer the customer to another customer service rep without verifying they are
available to take their call.
How do you think they will feel if someone is expecting a live person but gets a voicemail?
3. Failing to understand what customers want
Customers can have a hard time explaining what they want.
They may not know the technical jargon to tell you exactly what the problem is.
If possible, ask the customer to take you step by step through their issue.
You might find it helpful to take notes while they explain.
Consider sharing the problem with another customer support agent. A second opinion could
help you solve the issue quickly.
4. Dealing with angry customers
Even the best companies get calls from angry customers.
The key is first to calm them down to find out how you can help them.
One approach is to use the HEARD technique for helping customers Hear. Empathize.
Apologize.
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
Customers are okay with being put on hold if it helps resolve their issues.
Telling customers that you‘re going to put them on hold to solve their problems buys
you time to talk with the other customer.
Above all, avoid telling the first customer you‘re talking with a second customer. And
don‘t leave customers on hold for a long time.
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
Discounting can get customers to buy from you. But it also devalues your brand‘s perception in
the customer‘s eyes. So, use this strategy sparingly.
No customer likes to hear no from a customer service agent. Explain to them why you can‘t
give them the discount.
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
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.
Many customers expect an answer within six hours. When backed-up like this, focus on
responding instead of resolving.
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.
Also, give customers a hard deadline by which you‘ll help them.
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:
o Be positive and appreciative
o Re-frame the situation as your fault
o Make the customer whole
o Apologize and offer an alternative
12. Reply/resolution times are slow
Customers want answers now. Or better yet, five minutes ago.
To start, review the ticket handling process you have in place.
If you have tickets bouncing around from one department to another, find out why and eliminate the problem.
Strengthen your communication channels.
END OF CHAPTER ONE
THANK YOU!!
