Customer Relationship Building Module

Module 1: An Overview of Customer Relationship Building

• The module covers the definition of a customer, customer relationship, and customer satisfaction.

Topic 1: Defining the Customer

• A customer is someone who purchases a good or service, either for themselves or for someone else.
• A customer can make one or more purchases.
• Businesses should know their customer to meet and anticipate their needs.
• Market research is important to understand the needs and expectations of the customer base.

Customer vs Consumer vs Client

• A customer is the purchaser of a good or service.
• A consumer is the user of a good or service.
• A client is used in business-to-business transactions or in service organizations that provide services like legal, healthcare, or consulting.

What is an Internal Customer?

• An external customer is someone who pays for a service and can choose to switch providers if they're unhappy.
• An internal customer is someone within an organization who provides or receives services from others.
• Examples of internal customers include employees, franchisees, or business partners.

Topic 2: The Customer Relationship

• A customer relationship is the ongoing relationship between a customer and an organization over time.
• Customer relationships are built through customer engagement via marketing, sales, technical help, customer service, and after-sales service.
• Customer satisfaction is key to a successful organization, as it leads to loyalty and repeat business.

Why is Building a Customer Relationship Important?

• Positive customer relationships make good business sense.
• Loyal customers are more likely to buy from an organization and recommend it to others.
• The profitability of building customer relationships is high, as existing customers are more likely to buy again and refer others.

Topic 3: Satisfying Customer Expectations

• Good customer service is essential to meet and exceed customer expectations.
• The benefits of good customer service include increased customer loyalty, positive word-of-mouth, and increased sales.
• The five key components of satisfying customers are:
  • Service (bad service = poor customer satisfaction, good service = excellent customer satisfaction)
  • Reliability (providing the promised service consistently, accurately, and timely)
  • Assurance (how well the knowledge, skills, and credibility of employees inspire trust and confidence)
  • Tangibles (the appearance of physical elements of your service)
  • Empathy (showing care and individual attention to customers)
  • Responsiveness (providing a rapid and helpful service to customers)

What is a Gap Analysis?

• A gap analysis is a process that compares actual performance data to potential performance data.
• It highlights the gaps between customer expectations and perceptions of a product or service.
• The SERVQUAL model identifies seven types of service gaps that organizations can use to measure, manage, and reduce.

How are Customer Expectations Changing?

• Customer expectations are increasing in all areas under the RATER dimensions.
• Reliability, assurance, tangibles, empathy, and responsiveness are becoming more important in the 21st century.
• Customers expect accuracy, guarantee, and seamless communication across all channels.

Topic 4: Delighting the Customer

• The Kano Model suggests three service performance levels: basic, standard, and unanticipated.
• Dissatisfiers are the basic requirements or must-haves of a service or product.
• Satisfiers are the standard expectations that are often articulated.
• Delighters are unexpected, unanticipated, and surprising offerings that delight customers.

What Factors Can Dissatisfy Customers When Missing?

• Factors that are expected by customers and can dissatisfy a customer if they are missing include:

  • Reliability
  • Integrity
  • Communication
  • Functionality
  • Competence### Customer Expectations and Delight

• Customers expect responsiveness, care, availability, and courtesy from service providers.

• Responsiveness is crucial in delivering quality service and satisfying customers.

• Care involves being looked after with sympathy, concern, and patience, making customers feel emotionally comfortable.

• Availability of service, staff, and products is essential in meeting customer expectations.

• Courtesy involves treating customers politely and respectfully, answering their questions, and being unobtrusive when necessary.

Factors that Delight Customers

• Friendliness involves being warm, approachable, and having a positive attitude, making customers feel welcome.
• Commitment involves demonstrating diligence, thoroughness, and pride in helping customers, going above and beyond expectations.
• Attentiveness/Helpfulness involves being thorough, diligent, and proud in helping customers, exceeding expectations.

The Customer Journey

• The customer journey is the route customers take from deciding to buy to buying and beyond.
• It involves five stages: awareness, research, purchase, renewal, and claims.
• The customer journey is experienced and perceived by the customer before, during, and after interacting with an organization.
• Understanding the customer journey helps organizations improve customer experience.

Customer Journey Mapping

• A customer journey map plots out the customer journey and describes the customer's experience.
• It maps out significant customer interactions, feelings, motivations, needs, and behaviors.
• Understanding the customer journey helps organizations improve customer experience and identify areas for improvement.

Benefits of Mapping the Customer Journey

• Builds a customer-centric culture, seeing the product or service through the customer's eyes.
• Removes silo mentality, bringing cross-functional teams together to improve service and customer experience.
• Improves internal communication, delivering a seamless service.
• Identifies areas for improvement, recognizing problems with the service offering.
• Delights customers, identifying new areas for innovation and improvement.

Customer Personas

• A customer persona is a model based on market research and real data, indicating who the customer is, what they are trying to accomplish, and how they think and buy.
• Customer personas help organizations make decisions about services and products, understand customer needs, and develop empathy.
• Personas can be used to inform business strategies, particularly in sales, marketing, and customer experience.

Hierarchy of Needs

• The hierarchy of needs consists of five levels: self-actualization, esteem, love and belonging, safety, and physiological needs.
• Needs are motivating, and once one need is met, the person moves on to satisfy the next need.
• There are two types of needs: being needs (B-needs) and deficit needs (D-needs).

Emotional Engagement

• Mapping emotional engagement is essential, as it shows the full emotional engagement of a customer going through a journey.
• Emotional engagement influences customer attitude and decision to support an organization.
• Customers may be aware or unaware of the emotions driving their behavior.

Customer-Centric Culture

• A customer-centric culture is one where the customer is at the center, heart, and purpose of the organization.
• The culture is shaped by incentives, shared values, and beliefs, and is a carrier of meaning.
• A customer-centric organization balances the hard and soft aspects of the organization, focusing on talent, engagement, and dedication.

Benefits of a Customer-Centric Culture

• Leaders understand the importance of customer experience and continually improving it.
• Employees promote what is best for the customer and are empowered to meet customer needs.
• Customers recognize and appreciate the effort to meet and exceed their needs, becoming loyal advocates.

Customer-Centric Organization Mission Statement

• A customer-centric organization's mission statement describes what the company needs to accomplish to achieve its vision.
• The mission statement provides focus and motivation for the business goals.
• The organization's purpose is aspirational, reflecting people's idealistic reasons and motivations for working for the organization.### Customer-Centric Mission Statement
• A customer-centric mission statement supports the requirements of the customer and is underpinned by the organization's values and culture.
• Sharing values in an organization can be embedded through facilitated workshops, feedback, and integrating values into performance management systems, recruitment, recognition, and learning activities.

Developing a Customer-Centric Strategy

• A customer-centric strategy is a high-level plan to achieve a long-term goal, identifying the customer, their needs, and expectations.
• The strategy should be based on reality, considering the organizational context, external context, and using current data and customer feedback.

Strategic Positioning

• Strategic positioning is how the organization competes and serves customers in the marketplace, aiming to maintain a competitive advantage.
• There are three paradigms: meeting a small number of needs for a select few, meeting a wide range of needs for a select few, and meeting a wide range of needs for a large number in a select marketplace.

Customer-Centric Strategy

• A customer-centric strategy understands and defines the customer, identifies the strategic position, improves the customer experience, and provides guidelines for focused decisions.
• It includes financial, internal, and learning measures, considers risks and opportunities, and is integral to the organization's ability to execute the strategic plan.

SWOT Analysis

• A SWOT analysis highlights areas to consider for the future, including strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
• It helps answer questions such as building on strengths, mitigating weaknesses, taking advantage of opportunities, and controlling threats.

Balanced Scorecard Approach

• The balanced scorecard approach aligns the organizational vision and strategy, improves internal and external communications, and monitors organizational structure against strategic objectives.
• It uses integrated performance measures in finance, customer, internal processes, and innovation and learning to give a 'balanced' view of organizational performance.

Writing Customer-Centric Objectives

• Aims are general statements of what the organization is striving to achieve, closely related to the vision and mission.
• Objectives are explicit statements with measurable outcomes, used to compare actual performance against specified targets.
• SMART objectives are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.

Module 1: An Overview of Customer Relationship Building

• The module covers the definition of a customer, customer relationship, and customer satisfaction.

Topic 1: Defining the Customer

• A customer is someone who purchases a good or service, either for themselves or for someone else.
• A customer can make one or more purchases.
• Businesses should know their customer to meet and anticipate their needs.
• Market research is important to understand the needs and expectations of the customer base.

Customer vs Consumer vs Client

• A customer is the purchaser of a good or service.
• A consumer is the user of a good or service.
• A client is used in business-to-business transactions or in service organizations that provide services like legal, healthcare, or consulting.

What is an Internal Customer?

• An external customer is someone who pays for a service and can choose to switch providers if they're unhappy.
• An internal customer is someone within an organization who provides or receives services from others.
• Examples of internal customers include employees, franchisees, or business partners.

Topic 2: The Customer Relationship

• A customer relationship is the ongoing relationship between a customer and an organization over time.
• Customer relationships are built through customer engagement via marketing, sales, technical help, customer service, and after-sales service.
• Customer satisfaction is key to a successful organization, as it leads to loyalty and repeat business.

Why is Building a Customer Relationship Important?

• Positive customer relationships make good business sense.
• Loyal customers are more likely to buy from an organization and recommend it to others.
• The profitability of building customer relationships is high, as existing customers are more likely to buy again and refer others.

Topic 3: Satisfying Customer Expectations

• Good customer service is essential to meet and exceed customer expectations.
• The benefits of good customer service include increased customer loyalty, positive word-of-mouth, and increased sales.
• The five key components of satisfying customers are:
  • Service (bad service = poor customer satisfaction, good service = excellent customer satisfaction)
  • Reliability (providing the promised service consistently, accurately, and timely)
  • Assurance (how well the knowledge, skills, and credibility of employees inspire trust and confidence)
  • Tangibles (the appearance of physical elements of your service)
  • Empathy (showing care and individual attention to customers)
  • Responsiveness (providing a rapid and helpful service to customers)

What is a Gap Analysis?

• A gap analysis is a process that compares actual performance data to potential performance data.
• It highlights the gaps between customer expectations and perceptions of a product or service.
• The SERVQUAL model identifies seven types of service gaps that organizations can use to measure, manage, and reduce.

How are Customer Expectations Changing?

• Customer expectations are increasing in all areas under the RATER dimensions.
• Reliability, assurance, tangibles, empathy, and responsiveness are becoming more important in the 21st century.
• Customers expect accuracy, guarantee, and seamless communication across all channels.

Topic 4: Delighting the Customer

• The Kano Model suggests three service performance levels: basic, standard, and unanticipated.
• Dissatisfiers are the basic requirements or must-haves of a service or product.
• Satisfiers are the standard expectations that are often articulated.
• Delighters are unexpected, unanticipated, and surprising offerings that delight customers.

What Factors Can Dissatisfy Customers When Missing?

• Factors that are expected by customers and can dissatisfy a customer if they are missing include:

  • Reliability
  • Integrity
  • Communication
  • Functionality
  • Competence### Customer Expectations and Delight

• Customers expect responsiveness, care, availability, and courtesy from service providers.

• Responsiveness is crucial in delivering quality service and satisfying customers.

• Care involves being looked after with sympathy, concern, and patience, making customers feel emotionally comfortable.

• Availability of service, staff, and products is essential in meeting customer expectations.

• Courtesy involves treating customers politely and respectfully, answering their questions, and being unobtrusive when necessary.

Factors that Delight Customers

• Friendliness involves being warm, approachable, and having a positive attitude, making customers feel welcome.
• Commitment involves demonstrating diligence, thoroughness, and pride in helping customers, going above and beyond expectations.
• Attentiveness/Helpfulness involves being thorough, diligent, and proud in helping customers, exceeding expectations.

The Customer Journey

• The customer journey is the route customers take from deciding to buy to buying and beyond.
• It involves five stages: awareness, research, purchase, renewal, and claims.
• The customer journey is experienced and perceived by the customer before, during, and after interacting with an organization.
• Understanding the customer journey helps organizations improve customer experience.

Customer Journey Mapping

• A customer journey map plots out the customer journey and describes the customer's experience.
• It maps out significant customer interactions, feelings, motivations, needs, and behaviors.
• Understanding the customer journey helps organizations improve customer experience and identify areas for improvement.

Benefits of Mapping the Customer Journey

• Builds a customer-centric culture, seeing the product or service through the customer's eyes.
• Removes silo mentality, bringing cross-functional teams together to improve service and customer experience.
• Improves internal communication, delivering a seamless service.
• Identifies areas for improvement, recognizing problems with the service offering.
• Delights customers, identifying new areas for innovation and improvement.

Customer Personas

• A customer persona is a model based on market research and real data, indicating who the customer is, what they are trying to accomplish, and how they think and buy.
• Customer personas help organizations make decisions about services and products, understand customer needs, and develop empathy.
• Personas can be used to inform business strategies, particularly in sales, marketing, and customer experience.

Hierarchy of Needs

• The hierarchy of needs consists of five levels: self-actualization, esteem, love and belonging, safety, and physiological needs.
• Needs are motivating, and once one need is met, the person moves on to satisfy the next need.
• There are two types of needs: being needs (B-needs) and deficit needs (D-needs).

Emotional Engagement

• Mapping emotional engagement is essential, as it shows the full emotional engagement of a customer going through a journey.
• Emotional engagement influences customer attitude and decision to support an organization.
• Customers may be aware or unaware of the emotions driving their behavior.

Customer-Centric Culture

• A customer-centric culture is one where the customer is at the center, heart, and purpose of the organization.
• The culture is shaped by incentives, shared values, and beliefs, and is a carrier of meaning.
• A customer-centric organization balances the hard and soft aspects of the organization, focusing on talent, engagement, and dedication.

Benefits of a Customer-Centric Culture

• Leaders understand the importance of customer experience and continually improving it.
• Employees promote what is best for the customer and are empowered to meet customer needs.
• Customers recognize and appreciate the effort to meet and exceed their needs, becoming loyal advocates.

Customer-Centric Organization Mission Statement

• A customer-centric organization's mission statement describes what the company needs to accomplish to achieve its vision.
• The mission statement provides focus and motivation for the business goals.
• The organization's purpose is aspirational, reflecting people's idealistic reasons and motivations for working for the organization.### Customer-Centric Mission Statement
• A customer-centric mission statement supports the requirements of the customer and is underpinned by the organization's values and culture.
• Sharing values in an organization can be embedded through facilitated workshops, feedback, and integrating values into performance management systems, recruitment, recognition, and learning activities.

Developing a Customer-Centric Strategy

• A customer-centric strategy is a high-level plan to achieve a long-term goal, identifying the customer, their needs, and expectations.
• The strategy should be based on reality, considering the organizational context, external context, and using current data and customer feedback.

Strategic Positioning

• Strategic positioning is how the organization competes and serves customers in the marketplace, aiming to maintain a competitive advantage.
• There are three paradigms: meeting a small number of needs for a select few, meeting a wide range of needs for a select few, and meeting a wide range of needs for a large number in a select marketplace.

Customer-Centric Strategy

• A customer-centric strategy understands and defines the customer, identifies the strategic position, improves the customer experience, and provides guidelines for focused decisions.
• It includes financial, internal, and learning measures, considers risks and opportunities, and is integral to the organization's ability to execute the strategic plan.

SWOT Analysis

• A SWOT analysis highlights areas to consider for the future, including strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
• It helps answer questions such as building on strengths, mitigating weaknesses, taking advantage of opportunities, and controlling threats.

Balanced Scorecard Approach

• The balanced scorecard approach aligns the organizational vision and strategy, improves internal and external communications, and monitors organizational structure against strategic objectives.
• It uses integrated performance measures in finance, customer, internal processes, and innovation and learning to give a 'balanced' view of organizational performance.

Writing Customer-Centric Objectives

• Aims are general statements of what the organization is striving to achieve, closely related to the vision and mission.
• Objectives are explicit statements with measurable outcomes, used to compare actual performance against specified targets.
• SMART objectives are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.

Module 1: An Overview of Customer Relationship Building

• The module covers the definition of a customer, customer relationship, and customer satisfaction.

Topic 1: Defining the Customer

• A customer is someone who purchases a good or service, either for themselves or for someone else.
• A customer can make one or more purchases.
• Businesses should know their customer to meet and anticipate their needs.
• Market research is important to understand the needs and expectations of the customer base.

Customer vs Consumer vs Client

• A customer is the purchaser of a good or service.
• A consumer is the user of a good or service.
• A client is used in business-to-business transactions or in service organizations that provide services like legal, healthcare, or consulting.

What is an Internal Customer?

• An external customer is someone who pays for a service and can choose to switch providers if they're unhappy.
• An internal customer is someone within an organization who provides or receives services from others.
• Examples of internal customers include employees, franchisees, or business partners.

Topic 2: The Customer Relationship

• A customer relationship is the ongoing relationship between a customer and an organization over time.
• Customer relationships are built through customer engagement via marketing, sales, technical help, customer service, and after-sales service.
• Customer satisfaction is key to a successful organization, as it leads to loyalty and repeat business.

Why is Building a Customer Relationship Important?

• Positive customer relationships make good business sense.
• Loyal customers are more likely to buy from an organization and recommend it to others.
• The profitability of building customer relationships is high, as existing customers are more likely to buy again and refer others.

Topic 3: Satisfying Customer Expectations

• Good customer service is essential to meet and exceed customer expectations.
• The benefits of good customer service include increased customer loyalty, positive word-of-mouth, and increased sales.
• The five key components of satisfying customers are:
  • Service (bad service = poor customer satisfaction, good service = excellent customer satisfaction)
  • Reliability (providing the promised service consistently, accurately, and timely)
  • Assurance (how well the knowledge, skills, and credibility of employees inspire trust and confidence)
  • Tangibles (the appearance of physical elements of your service)
  • Empathy (showing care and individual attention to customers)
  • Responsiveness (providing a rapid and helpful service to customers)

What is a Gap Analysis?

• A gap analysis is a process that compares actual performance data to potential performance data.
• It highlights the gaps between customer expectations and perceptions of a product or service.
• The SERVQUAL model identifies seven types of service gaps that organizations can use to measure, manage, and reduce.

How are Customer Expectations Changing?

• Customer expectations are increasing in all areas under the RATER dimensions.
• Reliability, assurance, tangibles, empathy, and responsiveness are becoming more important in the 21st century.
• Customers expect accuracy, guarantee, and seamless communication across all channels.

Topic 4: Delighting the Customer

• The Kano Model suggests three service performance levels: basic, standard, and unanticipated.
• Dissatisfiers are the basic requirements or must-haves of a service or product.
• Satisfiers are the standard expectations that are often articulated.
• Delighters are unexpected, unanticipated, and surprising offerings that delight customers.

What Factors Can Dissatisfy Customers When Missing?

• Factors that are expected by customers and can dissatisfy a customer if they are missing include:

  • Reliability
  • Integrity
  • Communication
  • Functionality
  • Competence### Customer Expectations and Delight

• Customers expect responsiveness, care, availability, and courtesy from service providers.

• Responsiveness is crucial in delivering quality service and satisfying customers.

• Care involves being looked after with sympathy, concern, and patience, making customers feel emotionally comfortable.

• Availability of service, staff, and products is essential in meeting customer expectations.

• Courtesy involves treating customers politely and respectfully, answering their questions, and being unobtrusive when necessary.

Factors that Delight Customers

• Friendliness involves being warm, approachable, and having a positive attitude, making customers feel welcome.
• Commitment involves demonstrating diligence, thoroughness, and pride in helping customers, going above and beyond expectations.
• Attentiveness/Helpfulness involves being thorough, diligent, and proud in helping customers, exceeding expectations.

The Customer Journey

• The customer journey is the route customers take from deciding to buy to buying and beyond.
• It involves five stages: awareness, research, purchase, renewal, and claims.
• The customer journey is experienced and perceived by the customer before, during, and after interacting with an organization.
• Understanding the customer journey helps organizations improve customer experience.

Customer Journey Mapping

• A customer journey map plots out the customer journey and describes the customer's experience.
• It maps out significant customer interactions, feelings, motivations, needs, and behaviors.
• Understanding the customer journey helps organizations improve customer experience and identify areas for improvement.

Benefits of Mapping the Customer Journey

• Builds a customer-centric culture, seeing the product or service through the customer's eyes.
• Removes silo mentality, bringing cross-functional teams together to improve service and customer experience.
• Improves internal communication, delivering a seamless service.
• Identifies areas for improvement, recognizing problems with the service offering.
• Delights customers, identifying new areas for innovation and improvement.

Customer Personas

• A customer persona is a model based on market research and real data, indicating who the customer is, what they are trying to accomplish, and how they think and buy.
• Customer personas help organizations make decisions about services and products, understand customer needs, and develop empathy.
• Personas can be used to inform business strategies, particularly in sales, marketing, and customer experience.

Hierarchy of Needs

• The hierarchy of needs consists of five levels: self-actualization, esteem, love and belonging, safety, and physiological needs.
• Needs are motivating, and once one need is met, the person moves on to satisfy the next need.
• There are two types of needs: being needs (B-needs) and deficit needs (D-needs).

Emotional Engagement

• Mapping emotional engagement is essential, as it shows the full emotional engagement of a customer going through a journey.
• Emotional engagement influences customer attitude and decision to support an organization.
• Customers may be aware or unaware of the emotions driving their behavior.

Customer-Centric Culture

• A customer-centric culture is one where the customer is at the center, heart, and purpose of the organization.
• The culture is shaped by incentives, shared values, and beliefs, and is a carrier of meaning.
• A customer-centric organization balances the hard and soft aspects of the organization, focusing on talent, engagement, and dedication.

Benefits of a Customer-Centric Culture

• Leaders understand the importance of customer experience and continually improving it.
• Employees promote what is best for the customer and are empowered to meet customer needs.
• Customers recognize and appreciate the effort to meet and exceed their needs, becoming loyal advocates.

Customer-Centric Organization Mission Statement

• A customer-centric organization's mission statement describes what the company needs to accomplish to achieve its vision.
• The mission statement provides focus and motivation for the business goals.
• The organization's purpose is aspirational, reflecting people's idealistic reasons and motivations for working for the organization.### Customer-Centric Mission Statement
• A customer-centric mission statement supports the requirements of the customer and is underpinned by the organization's values and culture.
• Sharing values in an organization can be embedded through facilitated workshops, feedback, and integrating values into performance management systems, recruitment, recognition, and learning activities.

Developing a Customer-Centric Strategy

• A customer-centric strategy is a high-level plan to achieve a long-term goal, identifying the customer, their needs, and expectations.
• The strategy should be based on reality, considering the organizational context, external context, and using current data and customer feedback.

Strategic Positioning

• Strategic positioning is how the organization competes and serves customers in the marketplace, aiming to maintain a competitive advantage.
• There are three paradigms: meeting a small number of needs for a select few, meeting a wide range of needs for a select few, and meeting a wide range of needs for a large number in a select marketplace.

Customer-Centric Strategy

• A customer-centric strategy understands and defines the customer, identifies the strategic position, improves the customer experience, and provides guidelines for focused decisions.
• It includes financial, internal, and learning measures, considers risks and opportunities, and is integral to the organization's ability to execute the strategic plan.

SWOT Analysis

• A SWOT analysis highlights areas to consider for the future, including strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
• It helps answer questions such as building on strengths, mitigating weaknesses, taking advantage of opportunities, and controlling threats.

Balanced Scorecard Approach

• The balanced scorecard approach aligns the organizational vision and strategy, improves internal and external communications, and monitors organizational structure against strategic objectives.
• It uses integrated performance measures in finance, customer, internal processes, and innovation and learning to give a 'balanced' view of organizational performance.

Writing Customer-Centric Objectives

• Aims are general statements of what the organization is striving to achieve, closely related to the vision and mission.
• Objectives are explicit statements with measurable outcomes, used to compare actual performance against specified targets.
• SMART objectives are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.

Defining the Customer

• A customer is someone who purchases a good or service for themselves or others.
• They can make one or more purchases.
• Loyal customers are more likely to purchase from certain brands or stores, while others shop around.
• A successful business knows its customers to meet their needs and anticipate their expectations.
• Market research is essential to understand the customer base and their needs.

Customer vs Consumer vs Client

• A customer is the purchaser of a good or service.
• A consumer is the user of a good or service (not always the customer).
• Marketing often targets consumers, not customers.
• Businesses should target both customers and consumers for successful marketing.
• Clients are used in business-to-business (B2B) transactions and service organizations (e.g., legal, healthcare, consulting).

Internal Customer

• An external customer pays for a service and can switch providers if unhappy.
• An internal customer is within an organization, receives services from colleagues, and has no choice in changing providers.
• Examples of internal customers include individuals receiving services from colleagues and franchisees/business partners distributing goods/services to external customers.
• Dissatisfied internal customers can affect external customers, leading to negative outcomes.

The Customer Relationship

• A customer relationship is built over time through marketing, sales, technical help, customer service, and after-sales service.
• The goal is to create loyal customers who repeat business and bring in new customers.
• A successful organization prioritizes building loyal customers over one-time sales.
• Customer loyalty comes from individuals who feel a strong relationship with the organization.
• First impressions are crucial in building customer relationships.

Benefits of Good Customer Service

• Good customer service increases customer loyalty and repeat business.
• Loyal customers are more likely to refer others and spend more money.
• Poor customer service leads to lost sales, reduced customer loyalty, and negative word-of-mouth.

The Six Loyalty Stages

1. Suspect: someone who might buy your product or service.
2. Prospect: someone who needs your product/service and can afford it.
3. First-Time Customer: someone who has made one purchase.
4. Repeat Customer: someone who has made multiple purchases.
5. Client: someone who buys from you regularly.
6. Advocate: someone who buys from you regularly and recommends you to others.

Satisfying Customer Expectations

• Good customer service meets and exceeds customer expectations.
• Poor customer service negatively impacts profit margins.
• The RATER model (Reliability, Assurance, Tangibles, Empathy, Responsiveness) assesses service quality from the customer's perspective.
• Gap analysis identifies the difference between customer expectations and perceptions of a product/service.

Changing Customer Expectations

• Customer expectations are increasing in all RATER dimensions.
• Customers expect consistency, accuracy, and rapid responses.
• They also expect seamless communication across all channels.
• Businesses must continually improve service delivery standards to meet changing customer expectations.### Delighting Customers
• Delighting customers results from delivering service factors brilliantly, leading to customer satisfaction.

Factors that Delight Customers

• Friendliness: warm, approachable, positive attitude, and making the customer feel welcome.
• Commitment: demonstrating pride and satisfaction in helping the customer, going above and beyond the expected standard of delivery.
• Attentiveness/Helpfulness: demonstrating a commitment to work, being diligent and thorough, and helping the customer beyond expected standards.

Importance of Investing in Delight Factors

• Organizations must invest in these factors to delight customers.