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Customer Service ManagementBMGT-395 (3) |
University
of Maryland University College Electronic Distance Education Heidelberg, Germany |
| DE Term 3, 2002-2003; Dates: 27 Jan. - 16 May 2003 | ||
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|
Customer Service ManagementBMGT-395 (3) |
University
of Maryland University College Electronic Distance Education Heidelberg, Germany |
| DE Term 3, 2002-2003; Dates: 27 Jan. - 16 May 2003 | ||
Preview Syllabus |
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| Course
Locator Course Index Course Specific Notes [If you have specific questions about this course, please email me.] |
Understand the customer service industry;
Appreciate and interpret current trends in customer service; and
Acquire the fundamental abilities and strategic vision that will lead to successful implementation of customer service activities and programs.
Prerequisite: BMGT
364 or equivalent.
A study
of customer services accompanying a core product and the service products themselves.
Problems and issues related to the service mix, service-level decisions, the
formulation of service policies, customer service management, the development
of customer service staff, training, and evaluation are analyzed. Discussion
covers customer information, customer surveys and suggestions, the handling
of complaints and adjustments, techniques for dealing with difficult and angry
customers, dissemination of information, credit services, maintenance, technical
service, and the development of new programs.
Students may receive credit for only one of the following courses: BMGT 395, BMGT 398A, MGMT 395, or MGMT 398A.
I strongly recommend that students wishing to take this course have some background in business (including business analysis) or have taken both Introduction to Business and Business Analysis methods courses.
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Customer Relationship Management - yet another buzzword. Strange how managers can leap from one new concept to another, from following one management guru to another, from berating and imploring their workers to follow the star of one savior one week, and a different one several weeks later. But following the customer on her or his journey through the marketplace must provide useful information. Indeed, many will agree that there is no better business focus for long term sustainability and profitability than focus on the customer. So in this course we focus on the customer - managing customer service and, yes, on this "flavor of the month" called Customer Relationship Management. Want to learn more about how best to treat your customers? Then take this course. |
We start with the basics of customer service. You will quickly build on your prior knowledge and impressions of what customer service is and is not. Our qualitative approach to problem solving, establishing a plan, handling difficult situations with customers, motivating workers and leading them shifts gear in the latter part of the course toward collecting information and measuring events and attitudes.
It may be a weakness, but it seems inevitable that we manage what we measure. So one of your texts is heavily into measurement. Be prepared for both qualitative and quantitative metrics. We will of course use many case studies, but we will also be looking at customer surveys and analysis of survey results.
As we are linking via the Internet, you can expect a number of assignments that push you out onto the Internet to compare the views of others with those of your authors. You will also be performing case studies and collecting your own data on customer service activities.
Anton, Jon. Customer Relationship Management: Making Hard Decisions with Soft Numbers, Prentice-Hall (1996). ISBN: 0-13-438474-1
Anton's little book is excellent. But I do hope you have brought your business analysis skills with you. The "fuzzy logic", the general approach, emphasis on collection of data and then its analysis using quantitative methods will give you exceptional tools with which to explore and understand customer service. There are some difficulties however; SPSS - the statistical software which your author recommends that you use - is very expensive, not on the UMUC computer lab basic load of software, and too large (45 MB) in its 30-day free trial version to download from the SPSS web site. So we will use an Excel add-on for regression analysis and I will pass out some templates. Alas, the download file with the USA Electronics example data is not on the PrenHall web site as your author had hoped. Other than these minor inconveniences, this book is a wonderful experience. But sharpen your research and math skills. Big things come in small packages.
Harris, Elaine K. Customer Service: A Practical Approach, 3rd Ed., Pearson Education (2002). ISBN: 0-13-097853-1
Harris' work is on a different level and forms a nice complement to Anton's work. She reminds us of some basis skills like problem solving and conflict management that we must exercise and hone to improve our customer care skills. We will take on each of her four challenges as a part of this course.
| We use WebTycho as our virtual classroom. Discussions take place there and documents are posted for exchange there as well. We will use email as our back-up mode of contact send me an email with your current or changed email address. Please place the course designator - bmgt395 - as the first item in the subject line of each email message. | |
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Class Participation: (25% of course grade)
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I will look at these three things that I ask you to do on a continual basis. You will be graded on your consistent, steady progress through this course. |
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Course Project: (25%) Alternative 1: Look around you. Find a customer service activity or program that you would like to investigate and gain the approval of the mangers involved to conduct a college research project in their facility. You will conduct your project in the following stages:
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You and I will agree on the businesses to be studied.
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Alternative 2: An alternative to Steps 2 and 3 of Term Project Alternative 1 described above will be to examine in detail the customer service function of a local organization drawing heavily from the 2002 edition of Jon Anton's CRM book which I will make available to you. (Anton's more recent work focuses on call centers and provides a very useful addition to our understanding of how customer service really works.) The CS/CRM function you select will have a telephone or computer link to the customer as the primary mode of contact or at least a commonly used supplement to face-to-face contact with customer service representative. You will use the techniques Anton and his co-author, Natalie Petouhoff, describe in their book as a minimum for data collection and analysis. You will get my approval for your research design prior to data collection and summarize your data collection process in a brief report to me prior to analyzing the data collected. Steps 1 and 4 remain the same. |
This option will allow you to bypass some of the more difficult quantitative methods used in Anton's 1996 work (regression analysis and analytical model building). You will nonetheless be responsible for understanding his key concepts and the important implications they have for the whole field of CRM. His linkage between quantitative and qualitative methods is particularly important. However, the price will be grasping the details of the optional book for this course, Anton and Petouhoff's CRM book. The questions you will address in this alternative term project include:
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| Midterm: open-book, take-home (20%). | You will have 48 hours for each of these tests. |
| Final exam: open-book, take-home (30%) . | |
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This is not a correspondence course. Your presence in our virtual classroom is a vital part of the learning experience for everyone in this course. Consequently lack of consistent participation 2-3 times weekly in spite of long hours at work, computer problems, deployments, vacations, business trips, other courses, etc. may earn you a grade of F(n) as such action overrides the grading percentages shown above. |
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I will
try to help every student earn an "A" by demonstrating a mastery of
course concepts. I do understand that students have many other responsibilities,
but it is your responsibility to your own learning and to assisting the learning
of others in this class that I will be most concerned with. I will work with
every student within reason to help her or him complete this course successfully.
I grade each exam and assignment on a relative scale (A-F; 70-0 points typically).
Your final grade is a weighted average of your separate grades in this course
with some allowance made for technical problems imposed by the delivery method
(WebTycho with email backup). It will come as no surprise that for a variety
of reasons a number of students each term choose not to earn an "A".
Consistent, quality participation and effort are essential if both you and the class as a whole are the reach our goals. You must check your WebTycho virtual classroom and your email account every 48 hours and respond to queries within one day (even if just to say when you will be able to give a more complete answer to the request). Additionally, you need to keep me informed of your primary and alternate email addresses, and any changes that occur. I will try to allow you time to explore the subject both individually and in small groups while giving you feedback on completed assignments.
Students will take turns leading group discussions.
Finally, do not fall behind. Work ahead if possible. Do some work on this course every day or two. Set aside time to do this. If confused, in doubt, or in need of a clarification on any aspect of the course, contact me first.
| Phil Richardson; prichard@faculty.ed.umuc.edu |
Revised
21 January 2003
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