Think of a client/customer you are dealing with in your workplace at the moment. Without mentioning the customer’s or company’s name, describe their expectations of you and your organisation. Are these needs typical of most customers you deal with? Are they reasonable? In what ways can organisations ensure that the service delivered matches with the customer's expectations?
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Module 4 : Week 2
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9 comments:
Hello
Currently I am dealing with a large group booking on behalf of a client.
This can be quite testing as there are alot of people handling the details and the flights and requirements change frequently.
We have struggled in the past with this companies group bookings, due to no organisation at there end and compounded confusion at our end.
This time around we are keeping a living excel spreadsheet to monitor and track changes and cost. This client can be more tricky than most so we need to ensure we get this right.
A way of ensuring the the service levels matches the customers requirements are through service level agreements between the two parties.
Cheers
I guess a expectation of all customers is that provide a good level of service. Whether this is speed, accuracy, or knowledge just to name a few. Others may agree or disagree but anything above this is a bonus. Should we only be satisfied with good? I guess that is up for discussion.
I think that customers are all after the same thing. To have their expections met. I guess it is then up to us to work out what those are. What are their needs, wants and delighters? What will make them continue to use us as a supplier?
Some of the measures that we have in place are KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). These are reported on monthly and sent back to our client. These range from turn around times, bookings made and changes.
Remember practise and enjoy!
Hey Team,
Great to see you all last week. No need for me to mention my client, I'm sure all of you can probably quess who it is (actually, I think me and Nick may be talking about the same company...fancy that mate!!)
My client is very demanding as they operate in a different market to the one we do in NZ (there you go...a big give away).
The expectations of this client are very high and need to be managed so much more than any of my other clients. I would go as far to say, my sole job with this company is purely managing the main contact, whilst the consultants do a great job looking after the day to day bookings and general running of the account.
There is an SLA in place (and we all make sure it is stuck too), but the main contact at the company is constantly pushing boundaries. The the best thing that works for us is communication and making sure this is kept up. The main contact at the company and I have set times each week where we discuss the account and this is paramount in making sure the relationship is a good one.
In a round about way, I feel we do actually deliver what the client wants and needs but because we do this so well they feel there is always something more we can do.
Cheers Mark
Hi everyone, good to catch up last week (I can hardly believe we’re doing Module 4 already .. how times flies !)
Customers expectations can be in general terms quite common, but to a travel coordinator, traveler, accounts payable, or travel procurements/contracts manager
they may have their own expectations of what good/great service should feel/look like.
As an example for one customer we have, they have their expectations around turn around times and delivery of reporting/invoicing information to their finance team for invoices to be paid.
To ensure that not only the expectations where realistic and could be met (and hopefully sometimes exceeded) we worked through a process working alongside the customer to define with them what an agreed acceptable turn around time for domestic and international booking would be for general and urgent travel. For urgent travel this had different expectations and different criteria (i.e. was deemed to be for travel within 24 hours domestically and 48 hours internationally and would be requested via phone not email/fax to ensure priority was identified due to the timelines involved).
In regard to their invoicing, we mutually agreed when the latest day of the month was they would receive invoices from us that would be included within their payment run for that month.
Once these were established both parties knew what was reasonable to expect, and thinking not just of this one customer but in general these can be reasonably typical expectations that we work towards achieving.
We have a number of ways to see if we are delivering to their expectations
• through agreed and signed-off service level agreements which documents these for both parties
• a Quality Assurance process for each ‘issue resolution query’ which is recorded per company, and
• customer satisfaction surveys which are best tailored to each company to measure the expectations agreed for their company.
Until next week ..
We have some very aggressive competitors. To me, customer service is absolutely critical to our success as we cannot compete on price so we must ensure our product is considerably better than anyone else's. To me, customer service wins and retains clients.
Our clients want (in fact demand!) accuracy, efficiency, a good price, consistency, options, courtesy, a good rapport with their key contacts at APX and quick and effective issue resolution.
We monitor and review via observation and feedback, noting all (good, bad or ugly!) on our quality assurance log. It helps us to identify trends and weaknesses and we address them accordingly.
We are never complacent about our performance and invite and encourage feedback - only with this can we possibly excel.
til next time!
Great feedback everyone! Not too many modules to go now - it is all downhill from here.
Glad you are all enjoying the modules and we are taking all your feedback into account to ensure that the program continues to challenge you.
Hi all
Customer service in our industry is extremely important. To me this is one of the most important parts of our roles. We must always strive to ensure we are offering the best customer service to our clients as if we don’t our competitor down the road will.
I have set up a vision for my team for 2008 and team goals inline with this. The first part of my team vision reads like this;
“To work together as a team to provide the highest level of customer service and professionalism to our clients”.
That is how important this is to me, it is number one on my list and I always ensure we talk about customer service in our team meetings each week.
I look after my own client base also and have one of the larger accounts in the AKL office. I believe this customers expectations are very reasonable. They expect attention to detail, speedy replies, accurate information and good knowledge and understanding. It actually makes it easy to go above and beyond their expectations regularly.
Hi Everyone
From a financial perspective we do have some demanding clients. They all have high expectations which is understandable for billing information - correct rates, cost centres, and in a format which they can upload into their systems.
As Brent has mentioned we always work with client - thru examples and meeting with client on what their billing expectations are and whether we can meet them or even adjustment them to something which works for both sides. then its up to us to ensure our staff understand what the client wants so we can meet their expectations
Customer service is absolutely critical in our industry especially as what we are offering is a service, we don’t own the airlines or hotels, so to be able to continue to charge for our services our Customer Service is paramount to the success our of company.
When I think about a particular client their expectations are in a basic form is we will do what we committed to do. In that we will meet our turn around times, we will be accurate and offer knowledgeable options. These needs are typical of most of our clients and very reasonable. In no industry is it a good idea to over promise when you can’t deliver.
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