Customer Service - Problem 2

As the Sales Assistant at Head Office you are required to respond to Sophie's problem in written dialogue. Your response to problem 2 is more complex and requires critical thinking and diplomacy.

You ask the customer to hold and call the warehouse. You find out that the stock was damaged by the recent floods and there is an estimated wait of another week before the stock arrives at Head Office.

When you go back to Sophie MacNamara to pass on your findings she becomes aggressive and says: “This is just not good enough I should have been notified ages ago about this problem. There should have been an alert on your system to call me the minute you knew the stock was damaged so that I could at least get back to my customers with the correct information. I’m going to look like an imbecile when I pass this on plus we could lose a lot of business and we’re counting on these big orders to pay bills, what are you going to do about it?”

Suggested actions to deal with this complaint:

• In response to this, as Sales Assistant (TeamMember3), you should try to calm the customer, show empathy and tell the customer that you have been assured that the stock will be at Head Office within a week and that it will be despatched as a priority by Express Couriers.
  
  
• You acknowledge to Sophie the critical breakdown in communication and that you will pass the matter onto the Sales Manager so that the situation can be addressed immediately to ensure it does not happen again.
  
  
• Also reassure Sophie that the order has been flagged as being priority and that you will call her the minute the goods arrive into your store to keep her informed.

After reading the suggested actions above to help you deal with this complaint -

1. Write down what you would say to Janet. Your response should be in the form of written dialogue. Label your response ‘Customer Relationships – Problem 2 – task 1.
   
   
2. Complete a customer complaint form (internal). Label your response ‘Customer Relationships – Problem 2 – task 2.
   
   
3. Prepare an email to pass on the message of this complaint to Sales Manager. Label your response ‘Customer Relationships – Problem 2 – task 3.
   
   
4. Brainstorm ideas within your team to remedy this obvious breakdown in communication. Use these ideas to prepare an email message to be sent to the Staff Distribution to notify staff of the changes that will be implemented to help towards fixing the barrier that has recently occurred. Label your response ‘Customer Relationships – Problem 2 – task 4.
   
   
5. Finally as a gesture of goodwill you should script a telephone call dialogue which notifies Janet from Newcastle of the outcome of their complaint. Label your response ‘Customer Relationships – Problem 2 – task 5.

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