8000-255 Meeting Customer Needs

8000-255 Meeting Customer Needs is a unit within ILM Level 2 module that aims at improving the ability of the leaders to meet the needs and expectations of the customers. Organisations are put up to handle market demands which arise as a result of customer needs. Leaders must understand the critical role that they play in ensuring that these needs are met to ensure that the organisation is productive in achieving its roles and responsibilities to its customers.

Within this unit, the learners are provided with critical information that helps to prepare them in playing the duties and responsibilities of leaders within the organisation at different levels, including top management, department leaders, line managers and team leaders within the organisation.In these responsibilities, they should be able to understand the different types of customers to the organisation and the duties that the organisation has towards them hence facilitating success within the organisation.

This is information that is covered within 8000-255 Meeting Customer Needs. The main purpose of the unit is to help in building an understanding of the diverse customer needs and the best approaches that can be used to achieve these needs. The unit required the practising and potential leaders to go through 6 learning hours and will get 2 credit values by successfully completing the unit.

Who Should go through this Unit?

The unit is versatile as it provides information that is highly relevant and useful to different practising professionals. Leaders are the main targets of the units. It provides information that leaders can acquire and analyse to generate effective practices within the organisation that are aimed at achieving the goals and objectives outlined within the company’s policies. Top managers are responsible for ensuring that the organisation performs within the market, and this can only be achieved by providing relevant strategies and measures within the organisation to meet the needs of customers on that level.

Department and line managers deal with employees who are stakeholders within the organisation and are also responsible for fulfilling the needs of the external customers. Lastly, the team leaders are important in managing their teams and ensuring that the teams are able to deliver to the customers. These unit helps to improve the understanding of the team leaders on their duties and responsibilities and prepare them for delivering services that are required in these diverse ranks and positions.

As such, 8000-255 Meeting Customer Needs is a critical unit that any leader within the organisation must go through to ensure that there is an understanding of the duties and responsibilities of each leader in facilitating success for the organisation within the competitive markets for customers as well as labour that is required within the organisation.

Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of this unit, the learners should be able to:

• Understand the principles of good customer care

• Relate the company’s customer care policy to the practices that have been established within the organisation.

• Explain the benefits that the organisation is enjoying from implementing customer service standards

• Identify the main barriers to the provision of good customer care within the organisational context

• Outline customer care practices that are applicable in specific cases

• Identify the differences between internal and external customers

• Identify the needs and expectations of different customers

• Show an understanding of the importance of meeting customer needs and expectations

• Outline specific approaches that the leader can use to deal with complaints from customers in their areas of responsibility

• Show knowledge of handling difficult customer behaviours that could compromise the performance of the organisation or team

• Understand the concept of customer feedback and its importance.

• Develop different methods of collecting feedback from customers

• Interpret and analyse customer feedback into meaningful information that can help improve the organisation's performance.

Key Learning Areas

The unit is pegged on three main areas, which are good customer care services, internal and external customers and customer feedback. The areas cover different aspects, which are described below:

Customer Care Services Organisations

Leaders must ensure that they provide customer care services which include services that support the main organisational processes. Leaders have a responsibility to develop strategies through which the customers within the organisation are handled.

They devise means that guide the interaction between the employees of the organisation and the customers hence facilitating customer satisfaction. 8000-255 Meeting Customer Needs is a unit designed to guide the leaders in the process of developing these strategies. The unit covers critical areas of service provision that, if effectively implemented, can help to ensure that the organisation achieves the desired customer satisfaction.

External and Internal Customers

This area of learning helps to cover a critical area of identifying the customers of the organisation. Leaders must differentiate between the external customers and internal customers of the organisation to ensure that they can determine the needs and expectations of each group of customers.

Within this unit, the learners are guided into understanding these differences and determining the principles that are used in identifying the differences between these levels of customers. Additionally, they are guided in serving these needs to ensure that the organisation has satisfied customers.

Customer Feedback

Customer feedback is one of the principles of customer care that helps to improve the activities within the organisation. 8000-255 Meeting Customer Needs provides the learners with information and guidelines on how to develop effective strategies for collecting and interpreting customer feedback. The customer feedback could include different sets of information that may comprise of complaints from the customers.

The unit also guides the learners, who are practising or potential leaders, in developing effective complaint-resolution techniques that can be used within the organisation to achieve desired outcomes and performances. Lastly, the unit helps to provide an understanding of different methods of data collection and interpretation. Learners are introduced to methods of data collection and interpretation, such as bar charts that could help to improve the usefulness of the feedback and improve the ability to improve the performance of the organisation based on the feedback.

Wrap Up

8000-255 Meeting Customer Needs Is a critical unit for any leader within the organisation. Learners are provided with training on using critical customer information to achieve desired performances. Upon completion of the unit, the learners are assessed using written assessments, simulation and supervised practice to ensure that they have theoretical and practical mastery of concepts and principles.