Sales and service companies rely on new customers and repeat business to expand the profits of their businesses. This can be achieved through better customer service.
Customer will return when they are satisfied with the initial transaction which includes
the level of service, price, and follow-up, such as refunds and guarantees.


As products become more technologically evolved, customers look to sales and service people to be more knowledgeable in the products they sell. Because of this, good customer service continues to be an essential aspect of a successful business.


These are the pitfalls that should be avoid:

#1 Incompetence
If sales and service staff do not have adequate training and expertise, they may give out antiquated or incorrect information. As most customers are rely on sales and service staff to know the products(specifications and performance), it is imporant for them provide accurate informations such as to answer enquries or to demonstrate the product.

With reference to the customer's pyramid, we feel that it is very important to service the platium and gold's customer well. As people usually refer as the "VIPs" who are very profitable to the organization. Organization should be able identify this profitable group as they are the regular people who patronize the store.

As such, these people shold be treated like a king in the organization, and organization should assign peole with relevant skil to serve this group of imporant customers.

As for those silver and lead in the customer's pyramid, they should not be neglect as they also bring profit to the business. They can spread positve word of mouth

#2 Disorganization

Disorganiaztion refers to messiness in business . When customer service personnel can’t find anything, don’t know anything, customer will see this as a poor reflection on the business. Customers like to feel that sales and service employees are in control of the situation. Providing organized customer service makes customers want to come back and also result in postitive word of mouth, bringing extra profit for the business.

With reference to customer's pyramid to retain all these customers, it is imporant to have proper shelving, being able to showcase your merchandise and advertisement with proper visual merchandising.

Staff would have to be trained to be familiarized with the store’s layout too, such that they would be able to understand where are the various merchandise located, so when the times that a customer asks for the location of a merchandise, the staff can find it easily, and get back to the customer if the stocks are available with much ease and faster as well. Sophisticated inventory recording system would also far increase the efficiency of the store, such as directory services provided for the customers, and a recording system used by the staff to properly organize their stocks by SKU.

#3 Unprofessional manner
Language, dress, and basic manners can be important to many of your customers. Customer service personnel need to be trained in how to handle customers in a professional manner, one that makes the customer’s interaction with your company a positive experience.

The way to overcome such problem would be to standardize the dressing for the staff, as well as having them to go through customer service trainings to improve, and of course, maximize the customer service. Although the staff greets differently and have their own personalized service for the customer, the organization can rest assured that with proper training and standard operation procedure to follow, the staff would be able to provide optimum level of customer service.

#4 Lack of a standard policy

The company policy toward your customers should be clearly spelled out and consistently followed. Customers do not like it when one salesperson tells them one thing and another salesperson tells them something completely different. Any discounts, return policies, and guarantees should be spelled out in writing to customers as well as reinforced by your customer service employees at the time of a sale. It is not fair that customers are treated differently for the same situation encountered.

All staff would have to follow and adhere to their standard operations procedure strictly, in order to provide maximum customer service, as well as to know each other’s duties well, to prevent confusion internally. The policies should be incorporated into the staff’s mission statement or objectives, so that the staff would be constantly reminded of their duties for the various department of a retail store

Technology would also play a part in helping to prevent such problems, such as recording the purchase of every customer by receipt or merchandise number, so that when the customer seeks to return a faulty product and they did not have any evidence of purchase, the staff would be able to use these sophisticated systems to trace back to the customer’s purchase using their name or date of purchase. It would also help if they made their purchase with credit or debit card, so that the records could be traced must faster and easier.

#5 Delays and unreliability

Company should deliver products and service on time. E.g. furniture will be send to customer's house in 3 days should be deliver on time. In any case in which company fails to deliver the product on time, they should inform the customers and compensate or find other ways to make up for customers. Assure that it would not happen in future will increases the chances the customer will return for the product and service again.

No matter what category of customers belongs to (platium, gold, silver and lead) it is always better to reliable in customer's eyes, which is a good way to build reputation.

Jin Jing , Justin