8000-271 Working with Customers Legally

8000-271 Working with Customers Legally is a unit within the ILM level 2 course that aims at improving the ability of the team leaders to interact with the customers. Leaders within an organisation or a team should ensure that they are able to exhibit knowledge of the ethical and legal frameworks at play when setting up approaches to interact with the customers. This unit aims at improving the understanding of both the legal and ethical frameworks that are applied when delivering services to the customers.

The unit contributes to not only ensuring that the organisation is legal in its interaction with customers but also to guarantee quality services to the customers. The organisation is also tasked with meeting specific standards that are stipulated both by the law and the organisation’s policy, and the unit plays a critical role in improving the awareness of the team leaders to these critical obligations that the team should play in serving its customers.

The main purpose of the unit is to improve the awareness of the practising or potential team leaders to the legal handling of customers as well as standards that they should meet in providing specific services to the customers. The unit is covered in 5 guided learning hours and accounts for 1 credit value in the overall completion of the ILM Level 2 Module. This makes the unit critic lain not on boosting the knowledge and skills of the learners but also facilitating completion of the module.

Suitability of the Course

8000-271 Working with Customers Legally is a course that is designed to increase the awareness of the legal and ethical standards of handling customers. As such, the unit is highly applicable to the leaders within the organisation who are tasked with the responsibility of handling the practices and activities that are designed to interact directly with the customers. The unit provides basic knowledge that is applicable to the team leaders and supervisors within the organisation who are tasked with completing different projects and interacting directly with customers in their specific areas of responsibility.

It increases their awareness of the legal standards that they should follow in setting up strategies as well as managing the interactions effectively. However, the top management within the organisation can also utilise the content and theories presented within the unit in developing overall organisational policies and strategies, making the unit applicable to them as well.

The employees and team members can acquire information learned within the unit to improve their awareness of their roles and responsibilities in promoting compliance with legal obligations surrounding customer handling, customer service and preparation for future roles that they could be assigned as leaders in teams or the organisation in general.

Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of the unit, the learner should be able to;

• Understand the concept of consumer rights and its purpose within the market

• Identify specific rights of a customer in a contractual agreement with the supplier

• Understand the roles and responsibilities that an organisation has in collecting and storing customer data

• Show knowledge of the different principles guiding data protection, such as confidentiality and privacy of the data

• Develop an effective procedure for handling data that focuses on confidentiality, integrity and privacy of the data

• Show understanding of the significance of ensuring products/ services comply with the standards and specifications that are set out by the organisation policy and legal framework

• Show understanding of an effective procedure of dealing with complaints from the customers

• Understand the prices of analysing problems, including identifying the causes of the problem and reporting the problem to a higher authority.

Key Learning Subjects

Team elders must show an understanding of different principles that are associated with interacting with the customers. These principles are set out in the legal frameworks guiding the organisation within the UK legislation as well as ethical standards that are valued by the organisation. Some of the main key learning acres within the unit include:

Consumer Rights

In this subject, the learner is guided to understanding consumer rights as outlined within the UK legislation. The law covers different aspects, including consumer-related practices. It provides specific consumer rights that should be met by organisations as a means of protecting the customers from exploitation by organisations that are unethical.

The law further provides warranties and codes of practice that are implemented in organisational policy. This area of learning focuses on increasing the understanding of the learners towards these policies hence ensuring that they are compliant to the law.

Handling of Customer Data

This area of learning focuses on the critical frameworks that guide the collection and storage of customer data as well as the provision of information to the customers. The learners are provided with information and training on the data protection laws that include ensuring that principles of confidentiality and privacy are maintained within the organisation.

The syllabus of the unit further requires the learners to understand the significance of ensuring that the confidentiality principles are implemented in improving the loyalty of the customers, on top of ensuring that the interaction with the customers is legal. In this area, the earners are introduced to the legal standards that guide the provision of information to the customers. This involves the provision of specific standards of products/ services that should be aligned with the organisational policy and based on the legal frameworks.

Complaints Procedure

Organisations must establish effective standards and procedures for handling different forms of complaints or problems from customers. This area of learning helps the learners to understand the principles that should be implemented in the process of handling complaints and problems with customers.

The area of learning further creates obligations of different organisational leaders hence limiting the authority of different stakeholders in handling the issue. As such, the practising or potential team leaders are taught the process of referring the cases to higher authority when it is above their area of responsibility.

Wrap Up

At the end of the unit, the learners are put through an assessment to ensure that the learning outcomes are achieved. A written assessment is used to determine the mastery of the theoretical concepts that are presented within the course. During the supervised practice, the theoretical mastery of information is examined by the assessor to ensure that the learner is able to apply the learned concept in professional practice.