Assignment – Chapter 7

Group members – jaspreet , Arshdeep , lovepreet , ramdiya , harmandeep , bhavyia

- Answer the following questions.
1. What are some common causes of service breakdowns?
Answer: inadequate formulation of goals
A lack of goal setting on the part of the company is one of the key factors that
contribute to a breakdown in customer service. Each employee in your
organisation must understand exactly what it means to provide first-rate customer
service. It's important to identify and set specific goals for your customer service
strategy as a result.
LACK OF TRAINING AND TOOLS
Sometimes, employees aren’t provided with the right training or tools to
effectively complete their jobs. If employees don’t know all the product features,
for example, they can’t answer complex customer questions about the product –
which leads to a customer service breakdown. The business needs to arm its
customer-facing employees with product knowledge and customer services
processes.
The tools an employee has access to are also an important part of the job. For
example, providing frontline staff with a solution for logging customer complaints
may reduce the level of service breakdowns. If employees can use a project
management system to note complaints, provide corrective action and inform
management, issues can be resolved faster and more efficiently.
LOW EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT
Often, customer service breakdowns happen because of poor employee
engagement. When your staff doesn’t have any incentive to improve their level of
service, they may not want to put in the effort. In some cases, management treats
frontline staff poorly, but expect the staff to treat their customers like royalty. This
isn’t an effective way to reduce customer service issues.
Instead, organizations should treat their employees the way they want them to treat
their customers. Offer rewards for good behavior and incentives for doing the job
well. Empower your employees to feel valued so they will be motivated to
succeed. Most importantly, show them the respect you want them to show your
customers.
NOT HAVING A PROACTIVE PLAN
A solid customer recovery plan can help your organization to fix customer service
issues. However, if there is no process in place for employees to follow when they
deal with a customer service complaint, it will result in a systematic breakdown.
When the employee doesn’t know what to do next, the customer may take this as a
sign that your business is not equipped to deal with problems. It shows a lack of
professionalism.
Provide employees with plans to follow through for different scenarios. For
example, if they are dealing with a product-related complaint, they will need to
inform the product manager right away. If they are dealing with a delivery-related
issue, they need to speak with the warehouse. Good planning can help to ease the
problems that arise because of customer service breakdowns.
ENSURE SERVICE RECOVERY FOR UNSATISFIED CUSTOMERS
In addition to dealing with the root causes of customer service breakdowns in
business, it’s important to focus on service recovery tactics. How will your
organization bring an unsatisfied customer to a place where they are interested in
dealing with your business again?
Start by apologizing to the customer for their poor experience. Take ownership of
the issue and accept responsibility where it’s due. Then, acknowledge the
customer’s feelings. It’s important to show the customer that you value their
opinion. Create a plan to fix the issue and make amends. Most importantly, ensure
every employee goes through this process consistently so that the customer knows
what to expect.

2. How do service breakdowns impact customer satisfaction and loyalty?

Answer: Fulfilling the needs of their daily life. This condition causes the level of
demand for delivery services at the logistics company to also increase. The number
of logistics company providers require each company to provide reliable logistics
performance for its customers so that there is a good long-term relationship
between the customer and the logistics company provider (Giao et al., 2020). This
good relationship will lead to the creation of satisfaction, corporate image, and
customer loyalty (Giao et al., 2020; Nguyen et al., 2020; Khoa, 2020; Ali et al.,
2015; Cheng et al., 2019; Allam & Noor, 2020).
But the fact of the matter is that due to the increasing complexity of service
delivery and the increasing number of logistics company customers, there is a great
chance of a service failure. Service failure results in customer dissatisfaction, bad
image in the eyes of the customers and decreased customer loyalty (Gelb rich et
al., 2016). For this reason, logistics company providers need an appropriate
strategy to anticipate this. Logistics company providers must be proactive in
suppressing any possibility of service failure and strive to be able to carry out an
effective recovery to improve service failures that occur to create customer
satisfaction, customer good image, and build customer loyalty. Customers who get
good service recovery will be satisfied with the services provided by the logistics
company provider. This satisfaction can lead to repeat purchasing in the future
(Giao et al., 2020). Customer satisfaction with service recovery after service failure
can affect customer image and build customer loyalty.
Literature review shows that service recovery is an appropriate strategy in building
customer satisfaction, image, and customer loyalty (Wu et al., 2020; Singh &
Restfully, 2016; Mostafa, 2017). Handling service failure through proper service
recovery can help in consumers ignoring their disappointment due to the failure.
Service recovery can be viewed because of thoughts, plans and processes to make
up for customer disappointment due to service failures so that customers remain
loyal to the logistics company provider (Giao et al., 2020; Jung & Sock, 2017;
Babine et al., 2021; Ibrahim et al., 2018; Borah et al., 2020). For this reason, this
study aims to examine the role of service recovery in building customer
satisfaction, image, and customer loyalty to the logistics company provider.
Specifically, this study will also examine the impact of service recovery in the
reciprocal relationship that occurs between customer satisfaction and customer
image, as well as the impact of the reciprocal relationship in building customer
loyalty to the logistics company provider.

3. What steps can a service provider take to recover from a service breakdown?
Answer: 1. Apologize to the customer.
The first step to service recovery is offering a sincere and heartfelt apology to the
customer. It must not feel mechanical, and you must ensure that the customer feels
like you mean it.
Show that you appreciate and regret what the customer has gone through in the
situation. Think about what the customer wants to hear from an apology and offer
it to them. What is driving their frustration? How are they feeling now? Take a
moment to step into their shoes.
These phrases can help to show that you want to work with the customer:
• "I completely understand how frustrating that would be."
• "I get it. I would be upset too."
• "I'm going to make this right for you."
Listen closely to the customer's problem and tailor your apology to their unique
circumstances. This is no time for a boilerplate message that obviously feels copy
and pasted.
The customer wants to feel like you are taking their side and listening closely to
what they are saying. They want to feel like they are your top priority and that their
problem is being taken seriously.
2. Take ownership of the problem.
You need to empower your employees to take ownership of the problem and take
steps to correct it. No customer wants to feel passed around to different team
members or feel like your service rep is blaming the situation on someone else.
Allow your employees to take control and use their time and effort to solve
customer problems. Enable them to use the company's resources to help customers
recover from service breakdowns instead of passing the buck to a senior manager.
Structure your support team so reps are empowered to solve problems quickly and
efficiently, without having to ask permission from managers. Ensure the service
they provide is speedy and efficient.
3. Get to the root of the issue.
You've apologized to the customer and taken ownership of the problem. Now is the
time to ask follow-up questions and do some digging to get to the root of the issue
and find out if you can fix the problem.
When working on service recovery, it's important to do as much of the
investigative work as you can, rather than relying on the customer to tell you what
happened or troubleshoot with you. Frustrated customers don't want to answer
additional questions and they don't want to repeat themselves. Instead, read
through past conversations, walk through the customer's experience, and figure out
as much as you can yourself.
Only when you feel like you have the full context of the issue should you return to
the customer to ask any additional questions. Because you've already offered them
an apology and aligned yourself as an advocate, they'll be much more amenable to
working with you on a solution.
4. Solve the problem.
Once you've discovered the cause of the problem, it's time to go about fixing it.
You might have to replace a substandard service or product, which is key to
meeting customer expectations.
Don't let the conversation with the customer end until you've managed to fix the
problem. This requires service reps with excellent problem-solving skills and you
need to make sure you train them in service recovery.
Solving the problem means that the customer is satisfied with the resolution.
Remember to ask follow-up questions to check that the customer feels the problem
has been fixed and don't make assumptions.
5. Offer something extra.
A customer may have been thoroughly inconvenienced by your service lapse and
it's not enough to offer exactly what they should have received in the first place.
You may need to offer something extra, like free shipping or a free month's
subscription, to make up for the customer's sense of injustice.
Come up with creative ways to restore customer happiness with your products and
brand. Remember that your customer has been stressed out and inconvenienced by
the service issue, and you need to go that extra mile to make up for the hassle.
6. Follow up with the customer.
Once you've closed the conversation with the customer, don't forget to follow up
with them to check they are satisfied with the resolution. Show your concern for
the customer by sending a follow-up email or making a follow-up phone call,
which means you can also catch any further issues the customer may be
experiencing.
Make sure you let your coworkers know that the customer was the victim of a
service failure. Any further interactions with the customer should be made with
this in mind so your staff can communicate appropriately without the customer
having to explain their issue over again.

4. How important is communication in the service recovery process?

Answer: Importance of service recovery
Here’s a look at all the ways service recovery is important for businesses:
Reduces negative reputation.
As a business, particularly a customer-facing one, your reputation is incredibly
important. You want to be able to entice new customers with your excellent
customer experience reputation, as well as retain existing ones.
By implementing service recovery strategies, you’re actively taking steps to ensure
your customers are satisfied, even when something goes wrong. For businesses of
any size, word-of-mouth can greatly affect your reputation, but especially for small
or local businesses that rely on recommendations and positive reviews. Service
recovery is vital for reducing a customer’s negative experience.
Increases customer retention.
Service recovery is important for customer retention. As a brand, building a solid
customer relationship is one of the best things you can do. This way, customers
feel as though they have an emotional connection to your business and are more
likely to stay loyal. Even in times when you let them down.
When brands are known for transparency as part of their customer experience,
nearly 9 in 10 people are more likely to give them second chances after bad
experiences. And 85% are more likely to stick with them during crises.
By using service recovery, you are ensuring all customer needs are met, especially
when there’s a fault in your service standards.
Higher lifetime value profitability
Because service recovery increases customer retention, it means that those
customers whose needs have been met have a higher lifetime value. A loyal
customer is more likely to repurchase and support a business if they trust the brand.
In fact, after building a relationship with customers, their spend grows alongside
trust.
Eventually, they spend 57% more with brands they are loyal to. This highlights
why customer lifetime value is so important to a business, because when customers
are well looked after, the business benefits.
Lowers business costs.
By fixing customer complaints as early on as possible, you’re reducing the number
of customers that need help from agents at your contact centre. Offering customer
assistance virtually means fewer calls are handled, therefore, business costs are
reduced.
Also, you can analyse calls and investigate ways you can improve your business
processes. This way, you’re able to prevent those problems from happening in the
first place. Tools such as RingCentral can help with call analytics, as it gives you
real-time insights into calls as well as the option to conduct customer surveys.

5. Can service breakdowns be prevented? If so, how?

Answer: 1. INSPECT AND CLEAN BOILERS REGULARLY
Properly maintained equipment and devices last longer. An annual boiler shutdown
and service means fewer breakdowns and expensive repairs.
2. ASSESS SITE DEMANDS AND NEEDS
Boilers come in different sizes and are designed to meet different needs and
efficiency requirements. A close analysis of your site and water needs by an
experienced and knowledgeable technician will help you choose the right type of
equipment that ensures your residents have an uninterrupted supply of hot water
without overpaying on energy costs.
3. CHOOSE THE RIGHT EQUIPMENT
Quality and durability matter and can vary widely between manufacturers and their
product lines. Choosing a locally manufactured boiler means that there is a greater
supply and availability of parts. When service gets disrupted because of a failed
part, the last thing you want to deal with are the long shipping times for a
replacement part.
4. AVOID CUTTING CORNERS TO SAVE
Unexperienced or under-trained technicians may try to undercut installation costs
by foregoing key parts required to meet code and safety standards. Not only does
this create a heightened risk of fires and carbon monoxide leaks, but it can also
lead to longer downtimes and greater repair costs.
For example, an installation may not include a shutoff valve. In that case, when the
boiler needs repair, what should be a simple service job can require shutting down
the entire system to replace just a single part. A well-trained and experienced
boiler technician will always perform work aimed at reducing future service
disruptions.
5. TAKE ADVANTAGE OF UTILITY REBATES
Utility companies will offer rebates on high-efficiency equipment. Take the time to
research what rebates are available and make sure you’re getting the most out of
your investment. Doing so will help offset the higher costs of choosing a more
durable and longer-lasting boiler system which will have shorter service
downtimes.
6. TRUST A PROFESSIONAL TO CARE FOR YOUR EQUIPMENT
Entrusting the care of your equipment with a reputable and proactive service
provider means you won’t have to worry about the hassle of keeping up with a
maintenance schedule and will always stay up to date on the state of your boiler
system. Signing up for Pro Star’s Preventive Care Scheduling Plan allows you to
rely on the years of expertise of our highly trained and highly knowledgeable
technicians

6. what are some examples of effective service recovery strategies.

Answer - Complaints on social networks
It's no secret that social media has become the perfect platform to promote brands
while sharing opinions with millions of people.
It is so easy to get lost in the sea of grievances because it is shared with so many
others. One moment you're replying to a series of messages, the next you're in the
middle of a popular conversation being inundated with negative replies.
This can be effectively avoided if the brand already has a working customer
service remediation plan in place or implements one of the many examples of
service remediation through an empathetic email. Here's a simple yet effective
crisis management guide that can help in this regard.
Bad opinion about form
One of the best examples of service restoration in a restaurant is implementing a
proactive service restoration when a customer leaves a negative comment on the
form to express dissatisfaction.
This is often the case when you fail to meet customer expectations, e.g. For
example, when there is a dish on the menu that tastes bad, or when it takes a long
time for someone to take their order.
Your brand is proposing this with a digital or manual form on the tables that can be
easily filled out in less than a minute, so that customers don't feel like a burden and
it ensures that any negative reviews from the customer's point of view are taken
into account, Because it's easy to take a defensive stance when a negative review is
perceived from a brand perspective.

7. How can service providers turn a negative experience into a positive

one for customers?

Answer - 1. Be accessible
Make it simple for customers to connect to a human being authorized to
fix the problem. Telephone trees, automated responses, and “contact us”
boxes on your website provide convenient ways to solve minor issues or
frequently asked questions, but there should always be an option to
contact a real person without too much additional inconvenience.
2. Fix it fast
The longer a customer complaint remains unresolved, the more unhappy
that customer becomes.Build a customer service system that responds
quickly to complaints and keeps the customer informed throughout the
repair process.
 Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software is the perfect tool
to track the status of customer complaints from current status to
resolution at a glance. Consider adding a CRM to your business toolkit to
quickly track and resolve customer complaints.
3. Train your employees to really listen to and investigate customer
complaints
Customer service representatives often work with standard "scripts".The
customer asks technical support a question, the agent accesses the
"answer" from the standard script and provides all the information
contained in the script.
scripts work well for standard problems, but when it comes to customer
satisfaction, one size fits all is usually NOT right. Your team should be
trained to listen and understand the customer's perspective, a perspective
that matters.
4. Understand the true nature of the problem
Ask questions. It’s difficult to turn a dissatisfied customer into a satisfied
buyer or customer without fully understanding the nature and scope of
your complaint. Why is the customer unsatisfied? Hear the entire
customer story without interruption. Determine the actions taken by the
customer and the company to resolve the issue. In other words, train your
customer service team to track customers and go beyond the script for
unusual issues.
5. Show true customer support
That’s what you want to deliver. Reps should apologize for the
customer’s inconvenience and get to work solving the problem to the
customer’s satisfaction. Train customer service reps to sympathize with
customers and resolve issues with a single telephone call.

8. How can service providers measure the success of their service

recovery efforts?
Answer - Business Impact Analysis, RPO and RTO
Conduct a Business Impact Analysis (BIA) to identify the most critical systems
and processes and the consequences of their failure. BIA determines which
functions or activities within your organization are considered important and which
are considered non-critical.
Critical functions include any business required by law, meeting financial
obligations, maintaining cash flow, protecting an irreplaceable asset, or playing a
critical role in maintaining market share.
Once you have determined which processes are critical, assign the following
metrics to calculate your organization's loss tolerance and the disaster recovery
target time you have set.
Destination of the recovery point

The first, your Recovery Point Objective (RPO), focuses on your data and your
organization's tolerance for data loss. RPO is determined by the time between
backups and the amount of data that can be lost between backups.The purpose of
the RTO is to calculate how quickly you need to recover. This will then determine
the type of preparation you need to make and the budget you need to allocate to
business continuity.
For example, if you say your RTO is five hours, which means your business can
survive with that much system downtime, you need a high level of preparedness
and a larger budget to ensure your systems are recovered quickly.
On the other hand, if the RTO is two days, you can probably spread the budget and
invest in less advanced solutions
9. What role does customer feedback play in service recovery?
Answer - Set up notifications to automatically notify managers when a customer
leaves a bad review. Notifications should create a new ticket in your CRM
platform and give the right team members access to the information they need to
assess the situation. Anyone communicating with the customer needs to know who
the customer is, why they contacted you, and what they think went wrong when
interacting with the service.

To keep up, it is extremely important to analyze customer feedback at scale.

#2.Follow-up with the customer

After notifying the appropriate team members, make sure you have a plan for
dealing with the unsatisfied customer. There are many ways to filter negative
customer reviews. So work with your management team to figure out what you
want to offer to transform the experience.

customers appreciate discounts and returns the most, but decide what makes sense
depending on the situation. Closing an agreement with a sincere apology may be
necessary, which always means a lot.

The sheer effort you put into tracking and confirming that the customer didn't get
what they needed when interacting with the service shows that your brand cares
about them. This will motivate the customer to try your brand again.

10.How can service providers use technology to improve their service

recovery process?

Answer - Go beyond the triggers and look for causes and patterns

Explosive events like traffic spikes are usually a symptom of a larger

problem, such as poor capacity planning, inadequate performance or
load testing, or rigid architectures that break easily.

Tech-resilient companies pay attention to these incentives and then try

to uncover the patterns behind them. Some of these patterns can be
identified by mapping the number and type of incidents by domain
(exposure). Once a pattern is identified, whether in development,
configuration, change management, or elsewhere, organizations can
follow suit by digging deeper into that area to find what is causing
persistent errors