Introduction
The company aims to ensure that customers expect and get speedy and reliable services. Therefore, it embraces teamwork as part of its organizational culture. AET maintains a large number of trucks and ensures they are all in good condition. It operates in an agile way, such that it is comfortable responding to low demand tasks and service large transportation needs at a moment’s notice. Moreover, the company has an elaborate network that ensures there is sufficient capacity at its main service provision centers to allow rapid delivery to Victoria, New South Wales, ACT, South Australia, Queensland, and Western Australia.
A detailed response to the process to be followed when creating a customer service strategy
The process will begin with the identification of needs, followed by mapping out the needs in relation to the available resources and present objectives of AET. Thereafter, there will be a briefing meeting for all employees to commence the strategy creation process.
There will be training to educate employees on the importance of high standard services to ensure that the company succeeds in meeting its customer service objectives because the employees will be in direct contact with the clients. An additional step will be to provide adequate communication regarding the core principles and values of customer service at AET. It will include charts, signage, and meetings. The third step will be to ensure that only employees with strong customer focus serve in customer contact positions. When employees know what to do and how to do it, the next step is to give them the necessary technologies, such as capable customer relationship management, and to empower the frontline staff to make a number of decisions that can drastically reduce customer inquiry response times.
Customer Service Strategy
Aim
AET seeks to maintain a customer satisfaction rate of 90 percent of all transactions (Cook 2011).
Internal customer requirements
The staff at AET provide and receive services. Therefore, the company will meet the needs of its workers at all company levels before embarking on satisfying the needs of its external customers. Here, the company strategy will be to ensure that all departments consult with workers when they are delivering services to external clients (Hill, Roche & Allen 2007). Resultantly, there will be enough communication on the needs of the employees, especially on training, personal development, and equipment support, which are all requirements for adequate service provision to external customers. The company will establish staff networks and internal customer service agreements to ensure that every employee receives support at the group and personal levels in the formal and informal business structures. The company will also come up with a cross-team service improvement group to coordinate activities and improvement efforts for different employees (Cook 2004).
External customer requirements
Regarding the external clients, the strategy is to come up with a customer experience framework. Engagement with customers at all times will undergo evaluation based on AET’s promise to customers. The company promises to offer superior expertise, maintain a high-performance culture, provide customers with value for money, stick to the defined customer expectations and commitments, and provide uncompromised safety of goods in transit. The customer policy will compel employees to maintain clean environments in both the company and its vehicles to ensure that both internal and external customers have a safe operating environment to sustain good relations. Moreover, the company will set up simple but rapid feedback channels so that relevant departments can act on issues raised by all the customers. Additionally, employees will remain connected to the company’s communication channels when they are on duty so that they can respond to customers wherever they are.
Customer service standards and procedures
Currently, the company does not track complaints. The new strategy will have all feedback followed and filed so that there will be weekly and monthly reports that will allow the company to monitor its customer service progress. With the new initiative, the objective will be to reduce complaints by 5 percent in the first year of monitoring and by a similar percentage in the second year. Therefore, AET will provide additional feedback channels, mainly using Internet networks to allow the customers and company representatives to interact without response delays.
AET will recognize that customers’ responses are critical to the development of its customer service strategy. Therefore, in addition to formal feedback, employees will be encouraged to pick customer feedback informally from conversations and observations. The feedback will include the way customers make their orders and confirm deliveries (Wisner & Stanley 2008).
The process of handling complaints and grievances
Employees will accept all allegations from customers and promise to respond within two days of reporting. The company will act on each complaint individually but file the information for future interpretation of trends. Repeat complaints and grievances will qualify a customer for a charge-back award.
Required resources
The company will require smartphone applications. It will have to develop social network profiles to connect to customers. It will also need a customer relationship program that handles both offline and online interactions. The company will invest in additional maintenance services to ensure company assets are in good condition, especially assets used to offer customer service. It will invest in partnerships with cleaning and supply companies to ensure service delivery is not jeopardized. The company will come up with customer loyalty schemes and have integrated communication systems that automatically capture employee and customer information to help in the present and future service delivery (Goodman 2009).
Roll out and implementation process
In the short-term, the AET will put guidelines for best practices and come up with an employee reward scheme. The online feedback channels and the monitoring of customer complaints will commence upon the enactment of the strategy. Other suggestions that do not require significant capital investment will also be implemented in the short-term. Meanwhile, the firm will commence negotiations with its service providers to develop joint service charters and acquire a robust customer relationship program. These plans will materialize in the medium to the long-term. The current initiatives will rely on existing resources. It will then gradually migrate to new technologies when employees receive adequate training on the use of new technologies.
Long-term and short-term plans for monitoring achievement of aims
AET will seek accreditation that promotes customer service quality. All business units will have semi-annual customer satisfaction surveys. Employees and external customers will have special occasions where they will meet managers in open interaction. This will aid customer feedback analysis and increased employee or customer and company relations that will be done by software in real-time to generate monthly reports.
Evaluation of the effectiveness of plans
Most customers first interact with the front office and call center employees before dealing with the drivers and movers. Therefore, empowerment of employee abilities will have a positive effect on overall service delivery. The use of surveys will provide formal incentives for employees to remain committed to work.
Conclusion
The customer strategic plan will allow AET to offer specialized services to meet the needs of particular customers requiring more than typical transport services to the desired destination. Its employees will be the main brand ambassadors contributing to customer satisfaction through their work ethic.
Reference List
Cook, S 2004, Measuring customer service effectiveness, Gowers Publishing Limited, Hants.
Cook, S 2011, Customer care excellence: How to create an effective customer focus, 6th edn, Kogan Page, London.
Goodman, JA 2009, Strategic customer service, Amacom, New York.
Hill, N, Roche, G & Allen, R 2007, Customer satisfaction: The customer experience through the customer’s eyes, Cogent Publishing Ltd, London.
Wisner, J & Stanley, L 2008, Process management: Creating value along the supply chain, Thomson South-Western, Mason.