Free Custom «Communicating with Others» Essay Paper

Introduction

Customer service or customer relations involve interacting and servicing of prospective customers before and after the sales are made. It can be said to be planned activities formulated to improve the degree of customer satisfaction - that is, the sense that a product or service has fulfilled the purchaser's desires (Efraim, 2002).

This section of any business is truly vital and in that the success of any business lies heavily on the perfection or excellence of their customer service. It costs a lot more to acquire a fresh consumer than it does to gratify and maintain an existing customer. The key to successful customer satisfaction and retention is to deliver customer care services that anticipate and even exceed the prospective customer's expectations.

Discussion

I had the privilege of interviewing an owner of a car dealership, and he told me there are three keys issues he faced in the customer service sector. One is in the service department: people usually misunderstand the services offered. Customer service agents must be patient with customers and try always to make it easy for customers to understand them. Doing this will save a lot of time, effort and money. To achieve this, there are questions that the agent must consider. Firstly, is he giving instructions that are too long or complicated to be understood?

It is important to be concise. The best thing is to have a both a verbal and a written set of instructions ready for customers that are brief and to the point. Instructions that directly address the goods or services and why it would benefit the customers to purchase them. Secondly, does the agent understand the client's main concern? Thirdly, the agent must communicate in a way with which the customer can identify (Casey, 2009).

The second key issue that dealership owner faced in the customer service sector is the issue of language. The agent should be speaking in a language that is clear to the customer. The agent must be sensitive to the ethnicity of his/her customers and try to use a language that understandable by the majority of the clientele. If there are one or two customers that are of an ethnicity that is different from the rest, the agent should be ready to take them aside and address them in a language they can understand. All this means the ideal customer service agent should be multilingual. 

The third issue that faced at the dealership in customer service was the issue of finances or credit. People would get upset because they did not qualify to get credit for a car. However, even as applies to other businesses, the customers must qualify to get credit in order to reduce chances of losing money.

Conclusion

According to an online blog about customer service, here are some factors that can ensure a company's success in customer service. The first is that the agents must value the customers and show them that they are valued or treasured in speaking kind words to them and showing concern. The second is that the business must be prepared to put in money into their customer service department for better service delivery.

The third is that the company must keep its brand promises. It must sell commodity of quality that does all that it promises to do. Another important factor to note is to respond quickly to any problems or issues with the products that arise (Maltoni, 2008). If all these points are improved, experience has shown that positive change, in the response of the customers, will come to that business.