Describe about a Research in Consumer Behavior for Customer Service Problems?
In order to achieve the high level of success in the business, the organizations have to understand the requirements of the customers to provide the superior services to them. All the business organizations are trying to understand the behavior of the customers for providing them best services. All types of business organizations are facing huge competitions in the present market as there are many companies with the same types of products or services (Sashi 2012). The competition is running over the rate of customer satisfaction and the companies are trying to get the desired level of success by providing the best customer services among the competitors. The problem is that all the business organizations are not able to provide the services in the extent they are expecting. The reason behind this problem is the failure of understanding the customers’ requirements. Different reasons of facing problem in providing the customer services will be discussed in this report (Paul and Rana 2012).
One of the major reasons of facing problem in providing the superior level of customer service is the lack of concentrating in the collective information from the customers. According to Hawkins (2012), it is impossible to predict what the customers are actually thinking, but it should be assumed by observing the behaviors of the customers. The effective perception about the consumer behavior can be developed by gathering the relevant information from the customers. In this area, the collection of relevant collective information from the customers is very important. The gap regarding the information is very serious problem in the area of customer service. The corporate promotional strategies and normal public relations are not so effective today for collecting the necessary collective information from the customers. The providers are able to watch the customers who are in the store and able to collect the information from them (Chen, Chen and Huang 2012). The problem is that the maximum customers of a business organization are in the outside area of the stores. In this scenario, the providers thought that they are collecting the necessary information from the customers are able to understand their perceptions about the organization. In this way, maximum customers are not considered for the collective information. Another problem is that most of the time, the buyers are bothered about collecting the information only about the product and services. According to Belk et al. (2012), an efficient service provider should gather information about all perspectives of their business and services from the customers. In this area, information about different types of policies followed by the business organization, performance standards and the safety standards should be gathered to understand the customer requirements.
Another important area of the customer service problem is the designing of the products or the strategy used for providing the services to the customers. The scenario of the present market has been changed and the new technologies have been arrived for different sections of the business operations. Therefore, most of the business organizations are focusing on the use of new technologies and innovative ideas for designing the products or providing services to the customers (Sheth 2011). In this area, often the business organizations do not focus on the customers’ specifications. According to Mooij and Hofstede (2011), before applying any designs, the business organizations should focus on the facts preferred by the customers. In this area, different types of choices may come from the customers end and the business organizations may confused about the choice of the new design. It has been found that the choice of the designs varies over the gender and age of the customers. Therefore, it is not an easy task to develop customer specific designs for the customers. Buyers are unable to follow the user specific designs for all new products or services. In order to competing in the increased market competition, the business organizations are trying to adopt innovative ideas for the designs (Mazaheri, Richard and Laroche 2011). In this area, the business organizations should adopt the specifications of the major customers or in complex situations they can also adopt strategy of designing design types of same products for different types of customers. Customer specific designs should be followed for not only the designs of the new products or services. The business organizations should consider the customers’ specifications while designing the organizational or business strategy. In this area, the lack of customer specific designing can be seen in most of the organizations. As the main motive of each and every business is to provide the best customer services, they should focus in the customer specifications while developing the marketing and business strategies (Lu 2011).
Sometimes, it can be found that the business organizations fail to meet their desired level of success due the gaps between their intention and the customers’ requirements. In these types of cases, the customers are unable to understand that the organizations are trying to fulfill their requirements. It happens because of the wrong strategies followed by the business organizations. There is a huge gap between the theories and the practical applications of the customer services. It is very difficult to understand what the customers will like mostly (Haucap and Heimeshoff 2011). The frontline employees of a business organization are responsible for gathering the appropriate details about their perceptions regarding the services provided by the organization. It has been found that the customers feel disturbed for providing feedbacks about the services provided by the business organizations or a the new services they are trying to deliver, where these are gathered for fulfilling their requirements (Solomon et al. 2014). It happens due to the wrong strategies chosen for the communication. The actual intention of the business organization should be efficiently communicated to the customers. The intention of fulfilling the customers’ requirements is not enough, the business organizations have to understand the requirements of the customers first and then should select a proper strategy which can be able to meet their intention (Oliver 2014). In this area, the business organizations should develop a strong relationship with their customers. Sometimes this gap is developed due to the inefficient training of the frontline employees. In order to achieve the desired level of success, the business organizations should provide effective training to the frontline employees about how to develop strong relationship with the customers and understand the way of communicating the actual intention of the organizations through their services (Kardes, Cronley and Cline 2014).
Another big issue of the customer service is the differences between the intention of the organization and the actual products or services delivered by them. It happens due to the ineffectiveness on developing the perceived product or services by the business organizations. It has been found that many business organizations has the intention of providing one type of service but the services does not meet the requirements of their intention. It happens due to the miscommunication among the employees of the organizations (Lantos 2015). In order to omit this gap, the business organization should develop a global strategy transparent to all the employees of the business organizations. All the employees should deliver the same information about the services or products. In order to do this, the business organizations have to provide proper training to all the employees. They should communicate the global objectives of the business and the effective way of fulfilling the objectives by delivering the services which are able to meet the actual intention of the organization. In order to provide the services as per the intention of the organization, they should understand the customers’ satisfaction rate from their services (Cermak, File and Prince 2011). It can be happen that an organization thinks that they are providing the services which are able to fulfill all their intentions but the customers are not happy with the services. These types of incidents are the causes of customer retention and failure of making profit from some specific products or services. This problem should be avoided by the business organization by launching demo product or services for the customers. In this way, they can be able to launch the full range of products by understanding the demand of the customers or after making the necessary changes for fulfilling the customer requirements. Some of the business organizations are using the demo testing strategy for omitting the gap between the intention and the reality of the services, but maximum are not using which is a major problem in the area of customer services provided by the organizations (Brodie et al. 2011).
Cost is the most important fact of providing services to the customers. The customers are interested to get the superior quality products but they are also looking for the fewer pieces of the products. Most of the business organizations are fighting over the prices of the products or services in this intense market competition (Liu, Guo and Lee 2011). It has been found that some of the business organizations have failed to give the better quality of the products for reducing the prices of the products. In order to provide fewer prices of the products, the business organizations are trying to reduce the production costs of the products. This is the reason of failure to meet the standards of the service quality (Wright 2014).
The attitudes of the employees are the most important part for providing the services to the customers. The frontline customers of the business organizations are responsible for resolving all the problems of the customers and the queries raised by them. The attitude of the front line employees should be very gentle and the communication skill of these employees should be very good (Lee 2013). Wrong attitudes of the employees are the major cause of the customer retention. The customers should get the effective level support while purchasing from the stores of the business organizations. In case of failure of finding any product in a store, the frontline employees of the stores have the responsibilities of providing effective level of support for finding the products. Every business organizations have their own policies for providing damage services or warranty (Guruswamy 2013). The employees who are associated with these tasks of the organizations have to be very sensible to the customers. The policies should be maintained by them but they also consider the situation of the customers. For an example, if one customer comes for exchanging a product after ne two days to the store, the employees should not behave rough with the customer or straight refusing to provide the exchange facility. Rather than straight refusing, the employees should try to understand about the problem of the customer. If proper causes found they should provide the required facilities. Sometimes, these can be causes of little loss in the business but these are good for developing the brand image which can be the cause of great profit in the business of the organizations (Nitzan and Libai 2011).
Training is needed in every stage of work for an employee. It helps to improve employee performance by enhancing the required skills related to the employment designation. In the case of customer service, training is an essential part for enhancing the potential of relation within organization and their customers. Customer service section helps customers to deal with their queries, satisfaction as well as dissatisfaction of the company (Hawkins 2012). The organization would reveal significant brand name as well as customer base with proper customer service. Customer service helps employees and the organization to know the requirements of the customers and according to this; they can modify their service and products. In this context, training helps employees to be aware of the demands and behavior of their potent customers. On the other hand appropriate skills for handling different types of customer’s helps employees to reduce customer lose. However, some organizations, for cutting costs, skip the training period of employees, some other organizations; do not focus more on providing adequate training to their employees (Mazaheri, Richard and Laroche 2011). As a result, inefficient training would result in poor customer service, thereby affecting negatively to the business. The consequences can include different events. Poor customer service by the inefficient employees can cause most forgiving of customers. Nowadays, customers are becoming more negotiable and more judgmental, having a number of compatible options, they are more prone to switch company based on the customer service provided by the company. Poor customer service by inefficient customers would also indicate loss of future customers with loss of reputation of the company (Oliver 2014).
Organizations utilize appropriate customer services for satisfying their customers, with good customer service, the company can attract more precious customers. Customers observe if there is any gap within the commitment offered by the customer care service of an organization and the actual customer service provided by them. This gap identification can affect the organization negatively by enhancing customer’s dissatisfaction and attraction towards other similar alternatives in the market. One of the potent reasons behind these kinds of gaps is inadequate or inefficient communication within the sales persons and the customers (Wright 2014). Guruswamy (2013) reported that, for lack of training, sales persons sometimes become unable to resolve customer’s issues with product purchase or other services. When customers go with their queries to the customer service centre of the organization, for lack of commitment to their work or dissatisfaction to work or inefficient training the sales persons are unable to make their issues clear, as a result, they become dissatisfied with the company. It can affect the productivity of the company as a whole (Sheth 2011). As the company is not meeting the commitment provided by their employees to the customers, it would promote the loss of customers and thereby reducing sales and productivity. Some company uses word of mouth communication as a tool of advertisements and promotions of their products or services, but when they deliver products, these do not match their committed features, resulting in customer dissatisfaction (Paul and Rana 2012).
After completing this report, it can be concluded that the best customer services can be provided by understanding the actual requirements of the customers and the perceptions of them. In this area, there are some potential gaps between the intentions of the business organizations and the requirements of the customers. Sometimes, it also has been found that the business organizations are intending to fulfill the requirements of the customers, but the strategies are wrong or they are unable to communicate this intention to their customers. The attitudes of the workers are very important for satisfying the customers. In this area, the frontline employees should have effective level of training from the management of the business organizations. The business organizations should keep the commitment made before providing the services to the customers. Important issues regarding the customer service providing by the business organizations have been discussed in this report and it can be concluded that the business organizations will be able to provide the best customer services by avoiding the discussed issues.
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