CPPDSM3019B Communicate With Clients as Part of Agency Operations

Conduct some research around your office by speaking to the principal or senior sales or property management staff. Try to obtain examples of effective client interactions that have occurred in the agency. In contrast, also obtain anecdotal evidence of situations that have not turned out as well as could have been possible.If you are not working in a real estate office please imagine or create a scenario.

Compare at least two situations (one good, one not so good) and offer some suggestions/recommendations on why things worked well or on how they might have been handled differently.  Highlight the following areas:

1. the level of rapport that was established with the client
2. how effective communication skills were or were not employed
3. how the client's needs and expectations were established
4. how the client's initial request was handled
5. how conflict (difficult behaviour) was dealt with, where applicable
6. if agency policies and procedures were important in the final outcomes of the situations.

NSW real estate training college is one of the most prominent training colleges in Australia providing online training in different aspects of real estate. They have to deal with diversified customer queries regarding courses offered. Thus, communication with the client is an important factor to for them to provide effective customer service. Relationship management is being followed effectively with the customers. Follow-ups are being taken with the potential clients regarding their requirements. This enables the college in determining the customer expectation as well as building rapport with them (Jasmand, Blazevic and de Ruyter 2012). Effective communication channels are being implemented to promote communication with the customers. However one issue being identified is the lack of effective management in the communication process. Majority of the queries are being looked after by the front office, but they lack in having adequate knowledge about the entire courses offered by NSW College. Thus, having proper knowledge and involvement of the higher management will help to meet the customer queries more efficiently.

To create customer needs, potential customers are being identified with the help of survey and various online platforms (van Dam and van de Velden 2015). Cold calling are being performed to aware the customers about the benefits of the courses offered by them. It helps to generate needs among the customers (Armstrong et al 2015). In some cases, conflict arises due to difficult behavior of the customers which is difficult to handle. If the conflict arises then higher management are being involved in the customer management process for effective handling.

Question: 1

It is obvious that customers will get irritated if they have to wait for long. In this case also, an individual customer has to wait for 25 minutes which made him furious. I being a front office executive have to take the role of sales person in the initial stage. The first step to be taken by me is to brief the customer about the practical situation and will try to divert the mind of her to any other topic in which she will show interest. It is been known that, talking with anyone with their area of interest promotes positive behavior among them. Thus, it will be an effective tool to calm down the customer (Wallwork 2014). She will have to be engaged by providing some sort of refreshment. These will collectively help to calm down the customer.

Question: 2

Now in this case, my immediate boss is absent and I have been assigned the task to meet the customer. Now as the customer is a landlord and he is asking for property manager for his property, so he should be treated accordingly (Rai 2012). The job of mine will be to first profiling the customer to determine his exact requirements and expectation from the property manager. Now, the customer may have the issue with interacting with me instead of my boss. Thus, I have to make him comfortable and have to convey that he can share his requirement with me which I will transfer to my boss. He should feel that I am here to suggest him with some positive suggestions which will help him in his decision making process. It will help him in initiating a more effective decision making process (Gronroos and Voima 2013). The behavioral approach of mine will be pleasant and the communication process will be initiated in the language in which the customer feels comfortable. Communicating in the mother tongue of the customer will enable him to speak out his mind and will make him feel more comfortable.

Question: 3

Deviating from being in the middle of something is not an ethical principle. Thus, my primary job is to continue the rental enquiry in the counter. However, it is also not ethical to not respond to any other query (Rai 2012). Thus, my first job is to take the permission from the client in the counter to give me a few minutes. Now in the mean time, I will call for the responsible executive for maintenance and will ensure that the job is done as soon as possible. Afterwards I will solve the pending case in the counter and will again call the executive for the status of the job.

If the status is positive, then the customer will be called for his review. Maybe the customer will show his anger over the delay in taking action but still he will have the impression that required follow-ups are being taken (Wallwork 2014). It will create a positive image of the organization before the customer. On the other hand, if the response from the executive is negative about the status of job, then first I have to determine the reason for further delay in the job. If the response is unsatisfactory, then it will be seen that a necessary action is being taken against the defaulter. It will help in motivating the employees to perform their job more effectively and efficiently. Eventually it will help to reduce the grievance of the customers.

Question: 4

In this case, the generated issue is quite serious and if not solved effectively then it will create a dent in the image of the organization among the customers (Osarenkhoe and Komunda 2013). Thus, the first step which should be taken is to determine the factors which led to this mishap or is there any type of communication gap. This action should be divided in two parts. One is internal and another is external. Internal action should be taken to determine the gap which caused thus mishap. External action refers to the measures to be taken to persuade the agitated customer. The customer should communicate about the action taken to rectify the fault or the reason for this mishap. In this situation, being the representative of the organization, I will apologize to the customer and will make sure that it will not occur in future (Clark et al. 2013). Maybe, I have to provide some extra or added benefits to him to make him calm. Answers should be sugarcoated to some extent even if there is some sort of fault from the perspective of the customer.

Reference

Armstrong, G., Kotler, P., Harker, M. and Brennan, R., 2015. Marketing: an introduction. Pearson Education.

Clark, C.M., Murfett, U.M., Rogers, P.S. and Ang, S., 2013. Is empathy effective for customer service? Evidence from call center interactions. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 27(2), pp.123-153.

Grönroos, C. and Voima, P., 2013. Critical service logic: making sense of value creation and co-creation. Journal of the academy of marketing science, 41(2), pp.133-150.

Jasmand, C., Blazevic, V. and de Ruyter, K., 2012. Generating sales while providing service: A study of customer service representatives' ambidextrous behavior. Journal of Marketing, 76(1), pp.20-37.

Osarenkhoe, A. and Komunda, M.B., 2013. Redress for customer dissatisfaction and its impact on customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. Journal of Marketing Development and Competitiveness, 7(2), p.102.

Rai, A.K., 2012. Customer relationship management: Concepts and cases. PHI Learning Pvt. Ltd..

van Dam, J.W. and van de Velden, M., 2015. Online profiling and clustering of Facebook users. Decision Support Systems, 70, pp.60-72.

Wallwork, A., 2014. HELPDESK: DEALING WITH CUSTOMERS. In Telephone and Helpdesk Skills (pp. 73-84). Springer New York.