8600-306 Understanding Customer Service Standards and Requirements

Unit Overview

8600-306 Understanding Customer Service Standards and Requirements is a unit within the ILM Level 3 module that focuses on imping the understanding of the standards in serving the needs of the customers. Leaders must be in a position to effectively handle the customers and provide quality services to the market. This involves understanding the legal frameworks that have been established in the organisation’s environment to ensure that they are able to comply with the set standards of handling consumers and the protection of consumer rights. This unit further improves the understanding of the element of market proposition, which is the idea of the value that the company offers to the consumers within the market. The market is highly competitive, and organisations must ensure they exceed the customer service standards and requirements.

As such, this unit covers a bigger ideology as compared to the issue of the legal rights of the customers and consumers. The main purpose and aim of this unit are to improve the understanding of the learner, who is practising or potential leaders within the organisation, with the understanding of the customer service standards and requirements that are set by the law as well as the ethical values that the organisation needs to meet within their area of operation. The unit is taught in 7 hours of guided learning and contributes 2 credit values towards the completion of the ILM Level 3 module.

Suitability of the Unit

Understanding the customers is a critical aspect that contributes to ensuring the organisation operates effectively. This aspect involves being able to understand the customer service standards and requirements that have been established within the market. And area of practice to ensure the organisation can meet these standards and comply both to the legal frameworks and ethical values that are set to guide such activities.

Therefore, 8600-306 Understanding Customer Service Standards and Requirements is a critical unit that provides the learners with the opportunity to build the capability to understand customer service standards and requirements. The unit is therefore suited to the organisational leaders who are responsible for setting out the policies and practices that involve serving the customers within the market. The unit is designed to meet the learning needs of the first-line managers within the organisation. These are leaders with the responsibility of overseeing specific projects that involve sales or providing services within the market.

These leaders are suited to the unit as they are provided with the information, both theoretical and practical, to boost their skills in providing compliant service to the legal frameworks and ethical requirements. However, this unit is not limited to the first-line managers. There are middle managers and executive managers who are tasked with the duty to setting out the policies and frameworks to be followed in handling the customers. These leaders need to pursue the unit to ensure that they have an understanding on the frameworks tan principles that guide the development of such policies and standards within the organisation to ensure they comply with the customer service standards and requirements.

Learning Outcomes

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

• Understand the basic legal rights of customers

• Understand the organisation’s roles and obligations to the customers

• Describe the role of the manager in achieving the set standards and requirements for customer service

• Show an understanding of the significance of customer service standards

• Explain the different customer’s service standards and procedures that contribute to achieving the customer needs

• Explain the role of the organisation in monitoring customer service against the set standards and requirements

• Show understanding of the process of evaluating and monitoring customer service against the set standards

• Understand the role of feedback on customer satisfaction in improving performance in customer service

Key Learning Areas

8600-306 Understanding Customer Service Standards and Requirements is a unit that focuses on improving the awareness of the leaders on the customer service elements that influence the ability to comply with the standards and requirements set out within the organisation. The unit, therefore, focuses on understanding the impact of legal frameworks on the performance of the organisation and its ability to comply with the legal framework. The unit covers areas such as:

Legal Frameworks

This area focuses on building an understanding of the role of managers in fulfilling the legal and ethical requirements that guide customer service standards. This area focuses on helping the leaders to understand the legal rights of customers, including contractual laws, trade descriptions and other standards that should be followed within the organisation. It involves identifying the customer requirements and expectations as well as conducting standards and benchmarks.

Customer Service Standards

This area of learning focuses on understanding the implications and principles of customer service standards. It helps to differentiate between external customers and external customers as well as focusing on external customers. It helps to identify the potential customers and establishing customer care standards and approaches that are appreciated within their areas of responsibility and organisation. The area also helps to master the role of effective relationships with the different types of customers in achieving the organisational roles and objectives.

Monitoring Customer Service Performance

This area focuses on improving the ability of the leaners to understand customer needs and the techniques that evaluate the performance of the organisation against these standards. This step involves being able to effectively collect feedback from the customers and facilitate the implication of improving the standards of the organisation in achieving the organisation’s performance and its relation to fulfilling the customer care standards. These step further boosts the ability to develop a quality system that achieves the steps of monitoring the customer service practices and approaches within the organisation and in their areas of performance.

Evaluation

This unit is evaluated using a written assessment and the supervised practice or simulated exercises that is administered by the assessor. These approaches of evaluating the learner help to determine the accomplishment of learning goals and objectives through both practical and theoretical practice.