Unit 2007V1 Providing Customer Service

Unit Overview

Unit 2007V1 Providing customer service is a unit within the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) that is a level 2 course that covers the ability to understand customer needs and provide sustainable customer service. The organisation has the responsibility of meeting the needs of their customers. This involves understanding the expectations of the customers and tailoring the service provision process to suit these needs. The leaders within the organisation must be able to ensure that they align the productivity of the team to the customer's standards and expectations. They should ensure that they facilitate effective and smooth handling of the customers to promote satisfaction.

Project teams are tasked with the duty of devising approaches and measures that meet the demand of customers and the market. It is essential that these project teams provide quality services to the customers that match the expected standards. The leaders within the organisation and the teams, therefore, need to understand the basic principles and approaches that they can use to serve the needs of the customers through effective and sustainable service delivery to customers.

Unit 2007V1 Providing customer service is a unit that focuses on building the ability of the stakeholders within the workplace to provide relevant and quality customer service. The unit provides training on approaches to measuring and maintaining quality which is critical in the provision of customer service. It also enables the learners to understand the roles of different stakeholders in line customer service provision hence ensuring the organisation sets clear approaches and plans to meet the needs and expectations of its customers, which are critical lain boosting organisational performance. The unit is taught in 15 hours of guided learning and contributes 5 credit values towards the completion of the CMI Level 2 module.

Suitability of the Unit

Unit 2007V1, providing customer service, is a unit that is highly suitable to all stakeholders within the organisation. Promoting customer satisfaction is the basic goal of each organisation. It involves ensuring that the organisation meets the expectations set on it by the customers and facilitates quality customer service which serves the market needs. The unit is effective in building an understanding of the stakeholder approaches that can be used to evaluate the market to understand the needs and ensure that the services offered to the customers are aligned with these needs and expectations.

The unit is also critical in evaluating different types of customers and the obligations of the organisation to each hence boosting performance in relation to providing the customers with relevant services. This unit is designed for the organisation's team leaders and junior managers. They should understand the obligations to internal and external customers hence ensuring that their teams are able to sustainably meet the demands of each group of stakeholders.

The unit is, however, also applicable to other stakeholders within the workplace. The top management and middle management are involved in setting the strategic and tactical decisions which should be aligned to meeting the needs and expectations of different types of customers. The employees and team members are also suited to the unit as it helps them to play their roles in meeting the obligations of the teams to the internal and external customers as well as build capacities for future leadership roles.

Learning Outcomes

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

• Understand the obligation of the team to its internal and external customers

• Identify the role of the team in fulfilling its ethical and legal obligation to the customers that have been identified

• Understand the role of the team leader in ensuring the team is able to provide quality services to the customers

• Identify the procedures and approaches that have been developed within the organisation to handle customer service complaints and issues 

• Show understanding of the role of the team leader and their authority in handling the customer service issues and approaches of reporting complex issues that are beyond their level of authority to senior management

• Identify the methods that the team leaders can communicate with the customers to resolve customer service issues.

Key Learning Areas

Unit 2007V1 Providing customer service is a unit that focuses on improving the ability of the team leaders to influence the satisfaction of customers. It ensures the leaders are able to manage the delivery of services to both internal and external customers. Some of the areas of learning covered include:

Internal and External Customers

This area of learning helps the learner to understand the different types of customers in the organisation. It helps them to differentiate between internal and external customers and understand the obligation of the team to each group of customers.

This ensures that the internal customers, who facilitate the operations within the organisation, are effectively served to optimise performance while at the same time meeting the needs of external customers and promoting customer satisfaction. The area of learning also helps to underside the contribution of the leaders towards meeting the obligations of the team to the different types of customers. This ensures that they are able to coordinate their teams to provide quality services.

Customer Service Issues

This area of learning helps the learners to understand approaches to diagnosing and handling customer service issues. The team leaders are guided to understand those issues that are within their levels of authority and those that need to be reported to more senior authority to ensure that they are handled.

In handling those that are within their levels of authority, the learners are guided to understand the organisational policies and ensure that they are legal before implementing them in solving customer issues and complaints. The learners are also guided in building effective communication skills with the customers and senior management hence boozing their ability to effectively manage customer service issues in their areas of responsibility.

Evaluation

On completing the learning process, the learners are required to complete an assessment that determines the mastery of information that has been learned. The formative assessment is conducted using supervised practice and simulated exercises. The formative assessment comprises a written assessment, and it is used to determine the mastery of theoretical concepts that have been learned within the unit.