Customer Service Training Manual

Customer Service Training Manual The Ultimate Beauty Center has had a relatively successful existence and share of the market in South Bend, Indiana for 12 or so years. It has its own tastefully-designed building with modern equipment and machinery, which have attracted an increasing number of customers from adjacent towns and states. From a simple slimming shop, it grew into a center with three other departments, supplementing slimming services: hair, nails and facial care. It was previously owned by a mother-and-daughter team who observed conservative business practices.

The Center has an overall personal complement of 60, serving an average of 30 customers and walk-ins daily. Because of its growing volume of clients, the owners decided to open a Customer Services (CS) department, directly under the owner., to handle public queries and information, promotional campaign, media and public relations, and internal MIS arm. This experimental CS department has been operating for almost two years with a full-time staff of 10 as frontline staff. In the last few months, the CS department has encountered problems.

Out of over-eagerness to sell one of its costlier but newer slimming products, it exaggerated certain claims and a regular customer complained that the product failed to deliver promised benefits. At the hair department, a hair stylist accidentally wounded and burned a portion of a customer's scalp and temple while giving her a treatment. Instead of palliating, the CS staff went into a physical battle with the injured customer for slapped the stylist. At the facial department, another customer complained against a consultant who disfigured her nose.

And at the nail department, news came out that one of its regular clients was found positive for HIV-AIDS by the local health bureau. All the blunders occurring almost successively, the owner called in her younger daughter working in New York as a manager and offered to relinquish the full ownership of the Center to her. The mother has, for years, contemplated on retiring early, while the daughter with whom she has teamed up got married and settled down in Europe with her husband to open their own business there.

At present, the Center faces a number of lawsuits for damages by all aggrieved customers and the local health bureau threatening to close the Center for health reasons. Purpose of the Project The purpose is to compose, implement and evaluate a Customer Service Department manual that contains the comprehensive and rationalized qualifications, responsibilities and functions of an effective CS force that will extend support to the entire organization. It also includes damage control measures in case of failure or other eventualities, such as those that the Center is currently undergoing.

Setting South Bend has a population of less than 110,000 or less than 50,000 families. The Center is located well within visible distance from the spacious Wal-Mart and Myers areas. Customers are mostly women, from young adolescents to retirees. The Center is jointly owned by the mother-daughter team and offers slimming, hair, nail and facial care services with a regular staff of 60. The team has, in the previous years, tried to manage the business on its own methods until it came upon the idea of a CS from business associates.

History and Background The widowed owner was herself a successful beautician from her youth. Through marriage, she pursued the career until she was widowed when her younger daughter (who studied, worked and lived separately from them in New York) was graduating from high school. By then, the widow already had a following in this community and her parlor sent her two girls through college.

The older daughter developed the same flair for beauty, while the younger one was more adventurous and independent and decided to be on her own in the Big Apple. The business expanded to cover 4 areas of service when the mother-daughter team thought they needed an in-house public relations arm, the CS. They decided to put up such a department on an experimental basis for 2 years. In those 2 years, the problems occurred, driving the owners to consult with their legal counsel and the daughter in New York.

The initial CS staff was chosen from those recommended by friends. It had no department head at the start and functioned directly under the President. Those who composed it were just trained informally in the office, but most of them were just out of college and with different degrees. No one was a trained public relations professional. The mother-daughter team thought that they could update the Department in two years' time.

The CS merely gave out information to those who sought it, promoted products as best they could, gave out printed information to the press, and served as the internal source of information. The Slimming Department promoted a breakthrough slimming sofa through the CS. The latter made wild claims of swift gains in weight reduction and an over-eager customer believed these claims made by the over-eager CS staff. The Hair Department had a good number of years of reputation behind it as the second oldest department in the Center.

Its stylists were experienced and customarily cautious and courteous, until this particular stylist's case. This was her last customer because she handled more than half of the day's volume, being the most pursued. She was extraordinarily tired and tense that particular day when she poured more than the needed amount of chemical and, in a daze, accidentally injured the customer's scalp and temple. The Facial Department also boasted of satisfied customers for the last 7 years since its start of operation.

It increased its number of on-call surgeons as the requirements rose. One consultant managed to take one of the positions through a spurious certification and also made some money with his initial customers. Until his concealed lack of legitimate know-how revealed itself when he could not make a precise cut through a particular customer's nose. But the most difficult problem of the Center was in the Nail Department. A favorite and popular customer for the last two months was published as HIV-AIDS positive.

She was reportedly a girl friend of a man who died of the illness but she did not reveal this in her pleasantries with the Center beauticians and other customers. In one of those visits, the boiler system of the Nail department, which normally sterilized all paraphernalia after each customer use, broke down and could not be repaired or replaced until before closing hours. Pandemonium broke loose when news about the HIV-AIDS customer came out from the local HIV-AIDS prevention NGO.

The NGO wanted the Center not only subjected to an HIV-AIDS test, it also wanted to close it down altogether. Customers.