8607-509 Managing Customer Relations

Introduction

The course 8607-509 Managing Customer Relations is a part of the ILM Level 5 Qualification in leadership and management. It’s all about learning how to handle customers effectively. The organisation’s main focus is to provide valuable services and products that meet the needs and expectations of the market. Since the market is competitive, organisations must build good relationships with customers to meet their goals.

This means being good at communicating with customers and making sure everyone in the workplace shares information effectively. All the people involved, like employees and leaders, need to work together to figure out what the customers need and expect. They also need to understand the market and build good supply chains to create strong relationships.

The course 8607-509 Managing Customer Relations is designed to help you understand how managing customer relations plays a big role in reaching the organisation’s goals. The goal of the course is to make sure middle managers, whether they’re already doing the job or want to in the future, know how important their role is in making customer relations successful. The course takes about 10 hours to complete, and it adds 3 credit values to your progress in the ILM Level 5 qualification in leadership and management.

Who is this unit suitable for?

Everyone involved in the organisation needs to make sure customers are happy. This means understanding how to build good relationships with customers, so we know what they need and can make sure those needs are met in our areas of work. Leaders, especially, have a big job in making sure everyone, both inside and outside the organisation, is part of important decisions and knows about the different plans we have.

That’s where the course 8607-509 Managing Customer Relations comes in. It’s a helpful unit that teaches us why customer relations are so important and gives us useful ways to make them better. The course is mainly designed for middle managers – those who oversee different parts of the organisation. They’re the ones responsible for making and carrying out plans to meet customer needs.

But here’s the cool thing: it’s not just for managers. Other people in the organisation, like top-level managers, junior managers, and all employees, can take the course too. It helps them get better at working with customers, contributing to how the organisation runs. Even external consultants, who bring outside ideas to the organisation, can benefit from this unit. So, it’s like a course that helps everyone play a part in making customers happy and the organisation successful.

What are the learning outcomes of this unit?

After finishing this unit, learners should be able to do the following:

• Conduct an Environmental Scan:
  • Understand the roles, responsibilities, and obligations of the organisation within its context by checking out the business environment. It’s like scanning the surroundings to see what the organisation should be doing.
• Understand Factors Impacting Customer Identification and Retention:
  • Get why the organisation might face challenges in finding new customers and keeping the existing ones. This involves understanding the things that can affect how well the organisation connects with customers.
• Develop Plans and Strategies:
  • Use the information gathered from the environmental scan to make plans and strategies. These plans should help the organisation get better at finding and keeping customers.
• Manage Implementation of Strategies:
  • Take charge of putting the plans and strategies into action. It’s about making sure that what was planned happens and works to improve the organisation’s ability to find and keep customers.
• Conduct an Appraisal of the Customer Supply Chain:
  • Check out how the organisation handles its customer supply chain – the process of getting things to customers. Figure out what’s good about it, what needs work, and what challenges might pop up.
• Develop Strategies to Improve the Supply Chain:
  • Use the results from the appraisal to come up with suggestions on how to make the supply chain better. This helps the organisation meet what the customers need more effectively.

What are the key learning areas of this unit?

Environmental Scanning:

This part of learning is all about gaining skills to smartly check out the market and understand the customers we’re serving. You’ll learn about two types of purchases – high-involvement and low-involvement – which will help understand how customers behave. Plus, you’ll get to know cool tools like PESTLE to scan the environment and figure out what factors are affecting our services to the market. This knowledge helps us adapt to changing customer needs and come up with plans to make our organisation perform better. Also, you’ll learn about benchmarking, which is like picking up the best tricks from others in the industry to improve how we handle customers.

Customer Supply Chain:

Now, this area of learning is about understanding the principles that make sure we can get our products and services to customers smoothly. You’ll learn about supply chain modelling and management, which are big deals in understanding how to make customers happy. The course guides you on managing the whole process – from getting the stuff to delivering it, managing money flow, and making sure everything runs smoothly. You’ll also learn to analyse the supply chain we already have to see what’s working well and what needs improvement. This helps us figure out how to make our supply chain meet the market standards, making our organisation even better.

How is the unit evaluated?

Once you finish the course 8607-509 Managing Customer Relations, you go through a check to see how well you’ve learned everything. This check involves doing an assessment, which is like a test, to make sure you get both the theory (the stuff you learn) and the practical information (how to use it in real situations).

This assessment isn’t just a one-time thing; it happens in two ways:

• Written Assessments:
  • You’ll have a written test that looks at what you’ve learned in the course. This helps figure out if you understand the information on paper.
• Supervised Practice and Simulated Exercises:
  • You also get to practise what you’ve learned in a supervised way, like having someone guide and watch you. Some exercises simulate real-life situations, so you can show how well you can use what you’ve learned in practical scenarios.

Both these ways of checking – written tests and practical exercises – are used to see if you’ve really nailed the learning goals and objectives of the course. It’s like making sure you’re not just good at knowing the stuff but can also put it into action in the real world.

References

• “The Customer Service Revolution: A Practical Guide to Managing Customer Relationships” by Jagdish Sheth, David Sollars, and Rajendra Sisodia (2019)
• “Customer Experience Management: A Strategic Framework” by John Hagel, John Seely Brown, and Lang Davison (2018)
• “Delivering Exceptional Customer Service: A Guide for Managers” by Peter Drucker (2017)
• “Building Loyalty in the Age of the Customer CEO” by David Edelman and Kevin Hartline (2016)
• “The Customer Experience Advantage: How to Create a Competitive Edge by Putting Customers at the Heart of Your Business” by Fred Reichheld and Rob Markey (2011)

FAQ

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• ILM Level 5