8607-509 Managing Customer Relations

Unit Overview

8607-509 Managing Customer Relations is a unit within the ILM Level 5 Qualification on leadership and management that builds the knowledge and understanding on handling customers. The organisation and its goals are aligned with the provision of valuable services and products that meet the needs and expectations of the market. The competitive nature of the market requires organisations to build an effective relationship with the customers, which contributes towards meeting its goals and objectives.

This involves being able to effectively communicate with its customers and ensure there is an effective share of information within the workplace setting and with its customers. All stakeholders must play an active role towards identifying the market needs and the expectations of the customers and ensuring that it achieves the desired levels of market share. This involves being able to scan the environment and understand its customers as well as develop effective supply chains that are effective for the building of effective relationships.

8607-509 Managing Customer Relations is a unit within this module that aims at building an understanding of the role that managing customer relations has in building the ability to achieve the organisational goals and objectives. The aim of the unit is therefore, to ensure that practising and potential middle managers understand the active role that they should play in facilitating the success in this customer relations process. The unit is taught in 10 hours of guided learning and contributes 3 credit values towards the completion of the ILM Level 5 qualification in leadership and management.

Suitability of the Unit

All stakeholders within the organisation must be in a position to ensure they facilitate customer satisfaction. As such, they should understand principles that are used to develop effective customer relations hence ensuring they understand the needs and expectations of the customer and facilitate the accomplishment of these need and expectations in their areas of responsibility. Leaders have a bigger obligation to develop customer relations within the workplace that seeks to ensure all customers, both internal and external, are actively involved in making key decisions and are informed of different approaches or strategies that are implemented within the workplace.

As such, 8607-509 Managing Customer Relations is a unit that is important within the workplace setting as it helps to improve the awareness and understanding of the importance of customer relations as well as establish effective approaches that can be used to achieve these customer relations.The unit is designed to meet the learning needs of middle managers. This is manager overseeing lines, departments or regions within an organisation. They play an active role in developing and implementing strategies in their areas of responsibility which aim at meeting customer needs on behalf of the organisation.

Therefore, the unit on managing customer relations is important to them as it helps them to effectively and successfully expedite their mandate. The unit is, however not limited to these stakeholders. Other stakeholders, including top-level managers, junior managers and employees in general, can pursue the unit to ensure that they improve their ability to contribute to organisational practices by improving relationships with the customers. The external consultants are also suited to this unit as they make important contributions towards the development of strategies and approaches within the organisation.

Learning Outcomes

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

• Conduct an environmental scan of the business environment, which helps to understand the roles, responsibilities and obligations of the organisation within its context

• understand the factors that could impact the ability of the organisation to identify new customers and retain the existing customers

• Using the information on the environmental scan, develop plans and strategies to improve the ability of the organisation to find and retain customers

• Manage implementation of the strategies that have been developed to improve the ability of the organisation to find and retain customers

• Conduct an appraisal of the customer supply chain used within the organisation, determining its strengths, weaknesses and threats

• Use the results from t eh appraisal to develop and recommend strategies to improve the supply chain hence facilitating ability to meet the customer requirements.

Key Learning Areas

Environmental Scanning

This area of learning helps the learners to delve into desirable skills and behaviours that are associated with being able to effectively evaluate the market and understand the nature of customers that they need to serve. In this area, learners are introduced to high-involvement and low-involvement purchases, which help to understand the behaviours of the customers. Additionally, learners are introduced to various tools of environmental scanning, such as PESTLE, which they can use to evaluate the factors that affect it provision of services to the market as well as understand the needs of the market. These factors inform the ability of the learner to evaluate the changing customer requirements and hence implement strategies aimed at improving performance of the organisation towards meeting these customer requirements. Lastly, learners are introduced to approaches of benchmarking and implementation of the best practices from t eh context of the industry, which improve overall performance in customer relations.

Customer Supply Chain

This is an area of learning that helps the management to understand the different principles of the supply chain that could impact its provision of services to the customer. In this area of learning, the learner is introduced to the basic principles of the customer supply chain. They are taught supply chain modelling and supply chain management which are critical in understanding customer relations.

Learners are also guided on the management of sourcing procurement, conversion, distribution, cash-flow and logistics, which are significant elements which provide products and services to the market. In this area, learners are guided to conduct an analysis of the existing supply chain to understand its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, as well as conduct an internal audit to determine the efficiency of the approach being implemented. Learners are also guided on principles of benchmarking that can be used to evaluate the supply chain and ensure that it meets the market standards hence improving the alignment of the organisation to eh current standards.

Evaluation

On completion of 8607-509 Managing Customer Relations, the leaner are put through the evaluation process. They are required to complete an assessment which determines their mastery of theoretical and practical information. Written assessments, supervised practice and simulated exercises are all used for both summative and formative assessment to determine the accomplishment of the learning goals and objectives.