Customer Service Ethics

Value for money

After sales care

ONeil Nelson, Dip Ed. BEng.

Lecturer C.T.S.
MBCC
1

Quality and Strategy

Operations managers
objective is to build a total
quality management system
that identifies and satisfies
customer needs

Quality and Strategy

The establishment of a full-fledged Technical
Campus
To satisfy students needs by offering Bachelors
degree in the technical areas,
To partner with HEART to provide funding for
Technical College to facilitate NCTVET higher
level training,
To facilitate Engineering practical training on
campus removing the constant trips off campus to
Seaforth Town, CMI and UTECH,
Prior learning Assessments to enable
mature/working students the opportunity to obtain
a bachelors degree without giving up their jobs in
western Jamaica.
3

NEW PROGRAMMES
Managing quality supports differentiation, low cost,
and response strategies
Quality helps firms increase sales and reduce costs
Building a quality organization is a demanding task

Two Ways Quality

Improves Profitability

Improved
Quality

Sales Gains via

Improved response
Flexible pricing
Improved reputation

Increased
Profits
Reduced Costs via
Increased productivity
Lower rework and scrap
costs
Lower warranty costs

The Flow of Activities

Organizational Practices
Leadership, Mission statement, Effective operating procedures, Staff
support, Training
Yields:
What is important and what is to be
accomplished

Quality Principles
Customer focus, Continuous improvement, Benchmarking, Just-intime, Tools of TQM
Yields:
How to do what is important and to be
accomplished

Employee Fulfilment
Empowerment, Organizational commitment
Yields:
Employee attitudes that can accomplish
what is important

Customer Satisfaction
Winning orders, Repeat customers
Yields:
An effective organization with
a competitive advantage
6

Defining Quality
The totality of features and
characteristics of a product or service
that bears on its ability to satisfy
stated or implied needs
American Society for Quality

Different Views
User-based: better performance,
more features
Manufacturing-based: conformance
to standards, making it right the
first time
Product-based: specific and
measurable attributes of the
product
8

Implications of Quality
1.Company reputation
Perception of new products
Employment practices
Supplier relations

2.Product liability
Reduce risk

3.Global implications
Improved ability to compete
9

Key Dimensions of Quality

Performance
Features
Reliability
Conformance

Durability
Serviceability
Aesthetics
Perceived quality
Value

10

Costs of Quality
Prevention costs - reducing the
potential for defects
Appraisal costs - evaluating
products, parts, and services
Internal failure - producing
defective parts or service before
delivery
External costs - defects discovered
after delivery

Icebreaker..

12

After-Sales Support
Recommended References
R. Bergmann, S. Breen, M. Gker, M. Manago, S. Wess:
Developing Industrial Case-Based Reasoning Application
- The INRECA- Methodology. Springer Lecture Notes in
AI 1612, 1999.
M. Lenz, B. Bartsch-Sprl, H.-D. Burkhard, S. Wess
(eds.): Case-Based Reasoning Technology. Springer
Lecture Notes in AI 1400, 1998.

13

14

The Task
Situation: The product is delivered to the customer. The
customer has a problem with the product because e.g. a
failure occurs or he does not understand how operate it
properly.
The customer wants help and advice and the supplier
wants to keep the customer.
A first possibility is to provide a hotline (help desk). Then
a system should support the help desk operator.
In electronic commerce it is intended to provide the
advice automatically, e.g. via the internet.
15

General Aspects of CRM

CRM is concerned with:
Reachability:
There should be help available.
Customer should know how to contact supplier:

Phone,mail, fax, internet.

Suppliers reaction should be fast (if promised to call
back within 20 minutes this should not take a day).

Cost should be adequate or free: An important

strategic decision for the company.
Agents (persons or software agents) contacted
should have sufficient knowledge.
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General Aspects of CRM

Customer problem
Initial contact

Kind of
problem

Supplier company

Problem with
delivery etc

Advice on
handling

Fault
diagnosis

Additional
parts, products

Finding correct agent or expert

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Call Centers
After sales support is often provided by call centers.
Because of the wide variety of the capacities the
support provided by call centers is very different
with respect to the comfort provided to the
customer.
The support can be provided in different ways.
One extreme is that the whole advice process is
performed by a human (and the knowledge is in the
head of the human) and in another extreme it runs
fully automatically.
To come close to the latter is a major target in E-C.
18

Fault Diagnosis
A great part of after sales support is concerned
with fault diagnosis: The product bought by the
customer does not operate as wanted. This may
be due to two reasons:
inadequate handling
a real fault

A call by the customer starts a dialogue which

has to identify the real reason and has to give an
advice (proper handling, repair).
Fault diagnosis can either use straight forward
algorithms (if available) or case based reasoning.
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The Role of Dialogues

The query (complaint, search for help etc.) from
the customer is usually not that clear that a fully
satisfactory answer can be given.
The completion of the information uses the
principles for the dialogues.
Often the situation is much simpler because there
is only a restricted number of queries. Then the
dialogue can be standardized or even omitted
(static or dynamic forms).
Sometimes at least many queries can be handled
this way: So-called frequently asked questions
(FAQs).
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FAQs
An FAQ is considered as a case consisting of a pair
(question, solution document).
The solution document may be
an error document
a handling advice
a description of additional new parts.
Similarities are computed between actual query and the
question part of the FAQ.
The uses of FAQs represent degenerated dialogues.
The choice of the FAQs is crucial for the success:
Updating the case base is important!
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Frequently Asked Questions: Example

FAQ-document
Hardware:
PC & HP DeskJet 870

Software:
Windows 95
Query: My new printer
has problems with
pictures from the graphic
program
Answer: Load and
install the program that
activates the program

Error document
Operating
System:
Sun OS 4.1

Modul:
Address administration

Error:
Failure when the input has
long street names

Solution:
Not enough memory for the
address object, repaired in
addrobjc

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