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This report is based on the following requirement - - Task
- Quality, complaints and service recovery strategies
- No matter how well designed your service is, there are always failure points, and this means there is an opportunity for consumers to experience dissatisfaction and a sense of injustice which can lead to complaint behaviour. Assessment Three asks you to write a report that addresses the nature of the consumers’ complaints and make strategy recommendations to help reduce the likelihood of service failure and to manage services failures when they occur.
- Assessment Three requires you to consider the case study and imagine that you are the customer services training officer for American Express.
- Imagine it is your job to analyse the way your staff interact with customers and prepare training programs to help ensure that staff have good process for handling customer complaints. Training staff is only one part of your role- as a customer service officer your first thoughts are always about the consumers’ experiences; you are always “trying to walk in their shoes” and empathise with their experiences. Before you develop your recommendations you like to research the nature of the problem- the main issues you have seen over the years are consumers’ sense of dissatisfaction from perceived poor quality service and injustice, but you know that like all social trends, these concepts change. So you are constantly reading about consumers’ experiences in the market place. You love checking out websites that host stories about consumer complaints and then thinking about how those stories connect to theories about dissatisfaction and justice. To your dismay, on one of your web searches, you find the following story:
- “Customer Service Is Here to Kiss Your XXX, Not Fix Your Problem
- American Express:
- Been a card holder for 8 years. Made a decimal point mistake when making a payment from my iPhone. Thousands of dollar payment instead of hundreds. Naturally the payment gets returned. I discovered the error before AmEx even knew about it. I notified my bank and I notified AmEx. Both were VERY understanding and told me not to worry. AmEx went so far as to say that they would cover an overdraft charges I was hit with and that since this was my first blemish with them that it wouldn't negatively impact me in anyway.
- Fast forward to a few days later, I get a call from the wife saying that she can't use the card...I check the account, no suspension notices or anything. I call AmEx up and I'm put through to their returned payments department. I end up on the phone with a very unsympathetic rep who basically accuses me of trying to defraud them so that I can make illegal purchases. When I inform that I had contacted AmEx a few days before to notify THEM of the mistake I had made he told me if that was the case then I should have stopped the payment. I explained to him that the customer service rep I spoke with never suggested that because everything would work its way through the system and that my account wouldn't be negatively effected. His response..."that's what customer service does. They tell you what you want to hear."
- WTF? Well, I ask him if they can lift the hold because it's on another card and shouldn't effect my whole account. No. Is there anything I can do?
- "Do you have the funds available for that payment?" I don't. "Then no. Your account is suspended until everything clears or we get a stop payment from your bank."
- The guy was completely unsympathetic and unwilling to work with me. I realize it was my fault, but mistakes do happen. I'm ready to tear up my AmEx, but I decide to try one more thing. I call the bank, issue a stop payment, and then call AmEx one more time. I get another return payments rep. However this time...she is willing to listen. It was like night and day.
- I explain the situation to her. She is immediately understanding. She looks at my account, puts me on hold, then comes back on and says that her supervisor has authorized my card to be reactivated. I'm shocked and happy. I speak with her supervisor, thank him and sing her praises. He looks over the call record and gets the name of the rep whom I spoke with before. He tells me that he's going to "speak" with him. Either way...it's a shame that a company's reputation can be made or broken with a single person. In this case it was a happy ending. I hope the first customer service rep I spoke with...finds coal in his stocking and reindeer scat on his roof, car, and all over his yard”
- Source: http://gizmodo.com/your-worst-customer-service-horror-stories-1486478923
- After reading the story you go into action mode- this kind of service failure should never happen- even with the happy outcome, this story has shown you that your service operators need a revised training course.
- Your first step is to evaluate the situation; you search for and find some current theory (one journal article for each topic) and market practices (i.e. industry service codes) on:
- service recovery;
- complaint behaviour (motivations of consumers);
- service quality and the nature of satisfaction (delight) and dissatisfaction (rage) and;
- justice ( procedural, interactional and outcome).
- After synthesising the theory and practices, you then examine the current service practices of American Express itself as if you were an outsider by visiting their home website (please go to- http://about.americanexpress.com/ays/?inav=about_at_your_service )
- Once you have fully exhausted your research you then use all this information ideas as the foundations for a practical strategy that can help the company reduce the impact of this situation.
- To make it easier for others to understand your process for developing your recommendations you have decided to document your approach in a report. You have chosen to use the Effective Service Recovery System (see: Wirtz et al 2013 figure 13.7 p 402) as a template, to help ensure you have included all the necessary steps in service recovery process.
- You plan to write recommendations that will close the feedback loop and ensure that your customer service operators “do the job right the first time”.
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