Summary

In this study session, you have learnt

• A customer (also known as a client, buyer, or purchaser) is the recipient of a good, service, product, or idea, obtained from a seller, vendor, or supplier for a monetary or other valuable consideration
• An intermediate customer or trade customer (more informally: "the trade") who is a dealer that purchases goods for re-sale.
• An ultimate customer who does not in turn re-sell the things bought but either passes them to the consumer or actually is the consumer.
• Internal customers are people from within your organization who need your assistance.
• External costumers are people from other organizations who come for as recipient of a good or service .
• Attitudes required for creating a welcoming environment and that assist in providing good service include: enjoying helping people, handling people well, caring for your customers, giving fair and equal treatment to all and understanding people with special needs.
• Skills help you for developing and maintain a good relationship and required for customer service are: knowing about your organization, learning the technical parts of the job, communicating well, being consistent, being organized and knowing your place in the team and be a team player.
• Establishing rapport helps take the customer feel comfortable and also make the customer feel important and valued
• Maintenance of customer data involves: keeping customer records, updating customer records regularly, establishing regular contact programs, surveying customers and keeping customers informed.
• Customers have six basic buying needs pertaining to the product and these are as follows: safety, performance, appearance, comfort, economy and durability.
• Common expectations of customers include: service, price, quality and action.
• Most customer needs can be divided into four basic categories :the need to be understood, the need to feel welcome ,the need to feel important and the need for comfort .
• The RATER scale is one of the models that is used for categorizing what customers want and value. The RATER scale is made up of five elements: Reliability, Assurance Tangibles, Empathy and Responsiveness.