Research Aim and Objectives

Discuss about the Importance of different customer elements of customer service to Indian customers.

This report provides a detailed overview of the proposed research on important customer service elements relevant to Indian customers in Australia. The major purpose of the research is to analyse the importance of customer service elements and evaluate the actual elements that are relevant and applicable to people in Australia who are migrated from India. The research also pays attention to personalization as the customer element applicable for Indian customers in Australia. In order to gain a suitable outcome from the research, suitable research techniques which will be used in the proposed research have been discussed in the following. This research report also provides a detailed overview of the ethical issues that might create a significant impact on the research have been discussed.

The aim of the research is to evaluate the customer service elements for Indian customers who are currently living in Australia and specify the elements that are relevant to those Indian customers. In order to achieve the research aim, the following research objectives have been formed.

• To evaluate the elements of customer service
• To specify the customer service elements relevant to Indian customers living in Australia
• To critically analyse how personalization as the customer service element can create a differentiated customer experience

• What are the most important key components or elements of customer service?
• What about personalization, can that create a differentiated customer experience?

It is observed that customer service element remains as the part and parcel of every day’s existence and moreover, it needs to be the very reason for the existence of a successful business. According to Verhagen et al., (2014) the success of a business of an organizations depends on the level of customer satisfaction and in order satisfy the needs of the customers, it is necessary to pay attention to some particular customer service elements. On the other side, when paying attention to the customer service elements, it is necessary for business to consider the fact that the competitive climate in Australian financial sector has changed gradually over the last few years. This means that the expectation of the customers are changing in a steady manner. However, the following are some of the identified elements that have strong impact on the customers.

Respect: Tynan, McKechnie and Hartley (2014) mentioned that it is necessary for a business, organization or the employees of the organization to resect the fact that consumers are major key resource or the profits of the business, this mean if the customers do not buy the item, the employees will not receive salary or the business will not able to gain its desired amount of profits. So, in a direct sense, it can be mentioned that customers actually pay the salary or provide the financial support to the business. Thus, it is highly essential for a business to make the customers feel important and appreciated. It is also necessary to tram them as individual instead of treating them as the people who need items to buy and so they visit the outlet (Stein & Ramaseshan, 2016). If a business or the employers treat the employees in a polite way by accompanying them to the items they need and providing them relevant information about the products and most importantly responding to their frequently asked questions, the customers will be impressed and automatically, they form positive view about the brand in their mind. Hence, the business knows that this positive view will further influence the customers to buy any particular item.

Research Questions

Understanding: The sales person in business should have an adequate understanding about the purpose of customers’ purchasing and anticipate the possible needs. Liat, Mansori & Huei (2014) mentioned that customers do not actually buy the item or the service, they rather buy the solution to the issues. So when the business is able to resolve those problems, the customers will become more responsive and appreciative towards the brand.  They might gain a positive experience about h brand or the products.  Heinonen and Strandvik (2015) mentioned that the more the business known about the customers, more the business is able to identify or anticipate the needs of the customers. Thus, it is necessary to be involved in conversation and share ideas, the sale person could become aware of the needs and demands of the customers. Flint and Woodruff (2014) mentioned that the best way to do this, is by asking some relevant questions to the customers, which would attract the attention of the customers and they pay attention to the sales person.

Listening: When welcoming the customers in the outlet, it is necessary for sales individuals to keep their and ears open. They need to hear what the market is saying and become a good listener. The sales people can identify the needs of the customers by asking some relevant questions as well as concentrating on what the customers actually wants or is saying (Kursunluoglu, 2014). Especially, listing to the customers and giving them the undivided attention; in fact in the online channels or environment are highly important. The business must have to encourage the customers to provide feedback and suggestions about the service or the products. The business should design methods that help to them to offer some constructive criticism, suggestions and comments.

Responding: Responding is one of the highly important elements among others because when dealing with the customer, it is necessary to respond them positively. In order to do this, the organization does not to change the entire business model or the product line to fit the demands of different customers. Hence, the business needs to find the ways to help customers and provide them what they are actually looking for. It is certain that in most of the cases, the request remains fairly straight forward as well as achievable. Hence, Hallikas et al., (2014) mentioned that responding positively does not mean that the business or the sales persons have to give in. For example, providing the customers with a bill after the purchase is not the way of responding, instead, the business needs to create in a way that resolve the issue. Hence, the major gaol of the business is to keep the customers happy and keep thing fair for all other customers.

Analysing the business decision or problems

Serving: Serving is another significant element of developing an effective customer service. Particularly, this means fulfilling the promises of the customers. The business should help the customers to understand the process. For example, the organizations probably have the best system for accomplishing things or getting things done on time but the customers do not understand the system, they might get confused, or they might become angry (Malik, 2014). Thus, the organization should take time and should explain the process to the customers.

The above mentioned discussion helps to understand that the element and responding and respecting are associated with an emerging element called “personalization” which is highly applicable for Indian customers. Khurana (2014) mentioned that a large percentage of Indian customers in Australia tend to receive information about the products and services from the sales and person and it is certain they will keep on asking questions about the products. Thus, respecting their curiosity and responding to their queries are treated as the significant practice of approaching customers. Customer service elements and relevant for Indian customers

The proposed study will be conducted by applying a descriptive research design. The descriptive research design will be effective for the proposed research because the research context requires additional information about elements such as respecting, understanding responding and serving. According to Creswell and Creswell (2017) the descriptive research design is treated as an attempt to discover and explain the fact by providing additional information about a topic. Thus, the above mentioned discussion talks about six different elements including personalization. The element personalization is derived from the recent global e-commerce trend in Australia. In addition, the element personalization is also associated with the element respecting and responding to the questions of the customers.

 Wang (2015) mentioned that almost 51% of young adult customers tend to make purchase items online and they are more responsive towards the personal offers and deals. In other sense, it can be mentioned that personal deals ad offers drive the buying behaviour of the customer. However, to understand the importance and presence of “personalization” as the element of customer service, there research requires a proper design that helps to provide more detailed information about a known context. Thus, descriptive research design best fit with such requirement. As put forward by Yin (2017) descriptive research design helps to describe what is exactly happening in more detailed and it fills in the missing part of the elements. This descriptive research design will help to uncover the facts related to personalization as the major elements of customer service particularly applicable for the Indian citizens in Australia. Moreover, the descriptive research design will help to learn the hidden facts about other elements.

Customer service elements and relevant for Indian customers

However, Solomon et al., (2014) mentioned that due to the rapid development of internet, the now the migrated young Indians in Australia have become accustomed to online shopping, where they receive an adequate amount of information about the products and service. Moreover, the customers have the choice of receiving personal deals and offers. The personal deals and offers are designed for the customers because today customers have plenty of information about the brand and their products. Thus, to attract customers from such a mass crowd of different brand, the marketers have to include personalization. In this context, Choudhury (2014) commented that personalization as the customer service element is often used in Australian market because Indian customers, especially the young adults look for the best deals and offers when purchasing product online and the same goes for offline shopping as well. Understanding the needs and demands of customers, e-commerce vendors in Australia such as Amazon, eBay tend to offer personal deals or exclusive offer as the purpose of driving customer purchase decision. Thus, the customers are influenced by such online trends or the practice of the brands; so, when buying product offline or from an outlet, the customers tend to look for such element.

Furthermore, it has also been identified that in order to build an effective and loyal relationship with the customers, the element personalization is effectively applied to the business context. It is identified that some marketers tend to build relationship with the customers by adding additional value to the products and service. For example, by understanding the purchasing habit and usual needs of customers, the brand tend to offer personalized emails containing an unique coupon code, which can exempt the price to some extent. However, such offers and deals highly influence the customers. On the other side, it is also identified that brand’s responsiveness is another driving factor which is treated as the most significant element of customer service. Kursunluoglu (2014) mentioned that two decades ago the brands or the marketers in Australia were not able to help their customers providing them the relevant information which the customers need. However, due to the development of internet technology, the brands have resolve this issue. Now, providing customers a quick response remains as driving element of customer service. For example, in most of the cases, it is observed that brands remain laidback towards customer’s’ emails.  However, the customers could be more responsive and they may prefer a brand which responds to their individual query through emails or message.

Overall Research Design –Evaluating options

As the customer service element is a broad topic, the research require a detailed primary analysis and to conduct the primary analysis, the primary data should be collected.  Hence, the primary data is a fresh data that have not been used before in any research context. Thus in the proposed research, the collect primary data, appropriate sampling method will he used.  As put forward by Palinkas et al., (2015), there are two fundamental sampling techniques such as probability sampling and non-probability sampling technique.

Accordion to Etikan, Musa and Alkassim (2016)  in probability sampling technique, each population has a known zero chance of being involved in the research and the authors has also stated that randomization remains as the fundamental of probability sampling. On the other side, in non-probability sampling, only certain individuals or the members are entitled to take part in the research. However, in the proposed study, probability sampling technique will be used. Probability sampling is further divided into four different type of such as simple random sampling, stratified random sampling, systematic random sampling and multi-stage random sampling. Under this probability sampling, simple random sampling method will be used in the proposed study. Simple random sampling remains as the purest and the most straightforward probability sampling. It is known as the most popular method for selecting a sample among the population for a large range of purpose. In this simple random sampling method, each individual of the population is probably to be chosen as the part of the sample. The simple random sampling method is effective for performing the survey among the customers because this customers will be selected randomly from a large population. The population size for survey is 200 and it is certain that not all customers will respond to the research questions; thereby, only responses of 150 customers will be considered in the analysis, the sample size for the survey is 150.

Research ethics play a great role in deriving the desired outcome from the research. As the proposed study is supposed to involve primary analysis, maintaining ethics can be a challenge during the collection of primary data through survey. Thus, to avoid ethical issues in the research, the researcher makes sure that no respondent will be forced to take part in the data collection process. The researcher also makes sure that each respondent holds thee right to withdraw their participation at any moment. It will be ensured that respondents of the survey should not be subjected to harm in any way at all. Identity and confidentiality is another significant concern for academic research, therefore, the principles of Data Privacy Act 1998 will be applied to the process.  To avoid unnecessary ethical issue, the researcher ensures that adequate level of confidentiality of study has been ensured.

References

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