Customer Service and Customer Relationship Management
Questions here focus on service quality, complaint handling and how customer data becomes repeat business. You need the service-quality dimensions, a usable complaint-handling sequence, and the difference between CRM as a strategy and CRM as software.
Service quality
- Reliability: doing it right the first time - the most important dimension.
- Assurance: knowledge and courtesy that create trust.
- Tangibles: cleanliness, grooming, signage, store appearance.
- Empathy: individual attention and understanding.
- Responsiveness: willingness to help and speed of service.
Complaint handling
Listen without interrupting, apologise sincerely, solve with options within your authority, thank the customer and follow up. Escalate when the policy limit is crossed. Record every complaint in the register. The service-recovery paradox: a failure handled well can produce stronger loyalty than no failure at all.
CRM
- Collect name, phone, purchase history, preferences and consent.
- Segment by RFM - recency, frequency, monetary value - and target offers accordingly.
- Use loyalty tiers, points, birthday offers, win-back messages and feedback loops.
- Customer lifetime value shows why retention is cheaper than acquisition.
- Never share customer data without consent.
Worked example
A customer is charged for three items instead of two. Correct sequence: check the bill against the scan log, admit the error, refund the difference immediately within your limit, apologise, note it in the register, inform the supervisor, and call the customer if they are a loyalty member. Wrong responses: arguing, asking them to return tomorrow, or blaming the POS.
Traps that cost marks
- Treating 'the customer is always right' as absolute; policy and safety override it.
- Measuring CRM success by the number of records rather than retention and repeat purchase.
- Promising a resolution you cannot deliver.
- Not recording the complaint, so the same failure repeats.