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| ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOUR| Bank Customer Service Call Center: Handling Customers| | | Introduction: A customer service officer or personnel often face problems handling difficult or irritated customers. Officers or personnel need to know the correct method of handling these people in the best possible way in order to give customers customer service satisfaction and also to retain customers from going elsewhere for the services they need. An example would be banking services, mobile network services, etc. In organizational behaviour, we learn the rational choice decision making process which consists of four general steps: 1.
Identify the problem or opportunity 2. Choose the best decision process 3. Develop alternative solutions 4. Choose the best/optimal alternative For this assignment, we will look into how customer service officers or customer service providers look into all these six steps in improving on their relationships with customers. 1st Step: Identifying the problem When we want to identify a problem, we should first see what the symptoms are relating to the issue. Only then we can look through the causes and after that identify what is the issue at hand.
As mentioned above, customer service officers often face problems when dealing with customers with issues, irritated customers, difficult customers, and sometimes just plain rude customers. The causes of this problem can be quite a handful, because as we know, dealing with human beings is the most difficult thing to do due to different people have different set of personalities, different ways of looking at things, different opinions, and different ways of making judgment and so on. However, it is crucial for customer service people to always do heir best in handling customers so that these customers will stay loyal to the company, and keep their business with the company. If customers go, the company will lose lots of opportunities of business and creating profit which endangers the survival of the company in the market. When a customer makes a complaint, it is usually when they face issues with the company’s products or services. For example, the customer might complain due to errors in billing, for bank services – error in their accounts, for manufactured products complaints might be due to product defects, product failure, etc. All of us are customers. Of course we would want our issues to be resolved if not on the spot, immediately as soon as possible. No one likes dragging a problem on for too long. The way a customer makes a complaint is another item to be scrutinized. Some customers tend to be impatient and rude, maybe they believe by behaving this way their problems will be given top priority. But in truth, customer service departments face a lot of complaints every day. Customers therefore will usually have to wait their turn anyway which sometimes causes the customer to make multiple complaints on and on.
In a nutshell, it can be concluded that customers make complaints and are sometimes difficult due to two reasons: 1. Customers face problems in the service or products that they have purchased; 2. Customers’ issues were not resolved at first contact. It has to be emphasized that although customers make complaints due to two issues, the way they make the complaints is differs to each individual customer which makes it more challenging for customer service officers to deal with. 2nd Step: Choose the best decision process The next step would be to choose the best decision process.
It can be generalized that the best decision at all time in handling customers is by using a common rule of customer service “the customer is always right”, even though they are not right. This means that whatever the issue is at hand, we always handle customers professionally, politely, with empathy, warmth and helpfulness. In other words, the decision process is to always satisfy customers. With that in mind, the next things that need to be done is to train officers to always abide by this rule. 3rd Step: Develop alternative solutions Training people in dealing with people is no easy job.
Because we are humans, we are complex beings with feelings. It is not easy to deal with a customer’s offensive words and also at the same time keep smiling and keeping up a warm or calm atmosphere for talk or discussion. Therefore, in order to help officers deal with customers better, the management and officers can work together as a team to make things run smoother. The solutions suggested are as follows: 1. Make the structure of the organization more defined, the job scope of officers more specific so they can concentrate on what they do best.
For example, in a banking customer service department, one team works on customer complaints regarding billing issues, one team handle finance charges waiver requests, one team handle annual fee waiver requests, and so on. Currently all officers are trained to do everything, which means they can do everything but not necessarily what they do best. Another way to improve the structure is to put more experienced officers to handle serious complaints like fraud complaints, exchange rate issues, and the simpler complaints to fresh employees like billing issues, annual fees and such. . A second solution suggested would be to keep training the customer service officers all the time. In this service industry, refreshing trainings are always good to remind officers of how to communicate to customers, to appreciate customers, and so on. This is because sometimes, as time goes by, some things slip from our minds. As humans, we need to be reminded always in order for us to keep remembering effectively. Besides, learning is an ongoing process. There is always, always room for improvement. 3.
A third solution would be to improve on the information systems so that there will be room for fewer errors which will lead to fewer complaints and also to help officers work more efficiently and effectively. However, this solution will need some investment from the shareholders of the company, will take long time but it can still be done for the better in the long run. 4. The fourth solution suggested is to always do group huddles for officers to share with each other the problems they faced, how they deal ith it, so that experience can be shared. If something of similar nature happens again but to a different officer, he or she will have at least some ideas how to handle the customer. 5. The fifth solution suggested is to motivate the officers into always being super nice to customers by offering rewards and incentives. Maybe for outstanding service, the company can offer a whole day leave, or some cash or present, this will encourage all employees to work hard at satisfying customers’ needs in the best way the can. 6.
The sixth solution is for quality service department to do a research and find out what is the issue that customers complain most about. By knowing what the major issue is, the company can work together and customer service officers will also be aware of major problems, and be prepared with a standard way of how to deal with customers facing this problem. 4th step: Choose the best alternative From our group discussions, we find that the best alternative to handle this problem is not just by taking up one solution and implementing the one solution.
However, we agreed that an integration of all five solutions will help officers to handle irritated customers better. However, of course not all actions can be done at the same time, so maybe the best way to integrate it would be, for example, to do all solutions except implement a new information management system which would take quite some time to design, test and run. Conclusion As a conclusion, the problems with dealing with customers will never cease to exist. This is due to the fact that we are humans, and customers are humans, therefore we are vulnerable to making human errors, on both sides.
Since there is no exact solution to this problem, what we can do is to keep studying on how to improve communication skills, how to enhance services, improve Information Systems for both employees and customers, and such. However, although this problem doesn’t have a single solution, we cannot take it lightly, because customers are the main priority in all customer service related industry. If customers are dissatisfied, they might turn to another company and therefore we will lose business.