Page 81 - DMGT522_SERVICES MANAGEMENT

Services Management

Notes Training of Internal Customers

This is one of the most important tools for a service organisation to beat heterogeneity or
variability. The variability occurs, as mentioned before, due to the difference in the background
of the internal customers, their varying moods, experiences, involvement, orientation and skills.
Training would be the equaliser and all the internal customers – employees, channel partners,
associate partners and third party administrator – would project uniformity in the service delivery
to the customers. This projection is more important because what the customers perceive is the
service quality.
Outbound call centres need to create the impression that the call originator is within the country
and not from a far away land called India. So the key skill for a telemarketer and customer
associate is clear, accent less speaking ability (from the customer’s point of view!). Training is
the only tool to make all employees of the call centre has the same oral communication skills.
A retail bank has different types of businesses for different types of customers and their varying
needs – personal banking (savings, current accounts and their respective deposits and
withdrawals), small business, agricultural banking, international business, institutional business
etc. A customer might have to go to several desks in one day – deposits, demand drafts, enquiry
for foreign exchange, personal loans, etc. But the variability factor is responsible for his different
encounters. Different employees will leave him with different experiences: he would be satisfied
with the customer service in one, dissatisfied with another and delighted with the third. It could
also be that the same employee was quite competent in the personal banking section but was
floundering in the international section. Only training would iron out the kinks in skill and
orientation differentiation.
Very few managers have the privilege of starting an organisation from scratch. That would give
them the freedom to mould the organisation fully to their vision without the distraction of the
dissenters. Most have to rest content with managing the legacy of their predecessors. And this
includes the quantity and quality of the internal customers. Thus, as mentioned before, for the
manager who comes in late, training of the internal customers becomes a decisive tool to
overcome non-standardization.

Different types of training are as follows:

Orientation-cum-Induction
Refresher
Re-skilling
Motivational, leadership, group dynamics

Recruitment and Selection of Internal Customers

A manager could choose to have better quality personnel through quality recruitment and
selection. This would ensure that the internal customers are from the same background, levels
of skills and orientation, and would thus deliver homogenous services. The decision-maker
would get a chance to get the right persons for the right jobs.

Training of External Customers

Another way to reduce variability is to train the customers to go through the transaction process.
Service is a transaction between the service provider and the customer. It is not enough if only
one of the players (read provider) in the transaction game is at a high level of competence. To
complete the transaction process, the customers should also be knowledgeable about the service

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