Customer service assignment on the evaluation of a customer service experience

Question

Task: Provide a brief description of your organisation, including the products/services it offers in thecustomer service assignment. Outlining the need/want you were seeking to fulfill through your engagement with this organisation. Outline all of the customer service touch points on your customer journey and critically evaluate them against your expectations. Evaluate the organisations customer service delivery against your expectations and provide supporting commentary. Outline what, if any, customer service enhancements can be made by the organization.

Answer

Introduction
Amazon is an American-based multinational company that focuses on e-commerce,cloud-computing, digital-streaming, and AI technology. The corporation is widely recognised as a major financial and cultural influence worldwide. The business model of Amazon is built upon three main aspects. These are low price, fast delivery and wide product selection. Jeff Bezos has created an all-in-one platform for customers' daily requirements, which is named "online everything store". It is observed that the global trade of Amazon increases each year both geographically and in terms of their offerings. This customer service assignmentis going to offer a detailed understanding of Amazon's customer service approach and customer prioritisation policy.

Outlining the needsin the customer service assignment
The company creates and provides excellent products at a reasonable price along with some top-class entertainment options for their customers. The need for daily goods, fashion statements and groceries makes this online shopping platform a frequent requirement for many users. Users enjoy the larger benefits Amazon offers to use their online application for fulfilling their daily needs (Volleroet al. 2021). Amazon considered in thecustomer service assignmentoffers a variety of products within a reasonable range and Jeff Bezos has worked hard to make his company a customer-friendly one. Customers engage themselves with these products as they can easily avail them from the app and all the products are scheduled in the app as per the daily requirement of the targeted audiences.

Figure 1: Amazon’s business model
(Source: Businessmodelanalyst.com, 2022)

Customer touchpoints
The importance of touchpoints has been discussed in the customer service assignmentalong with how to increase eCommerce sales. Touchpoints are all interactions a customer has with your brand, including those that take place offline, online, on social media, and through customer reviews. Digital transformation as per the customer service assignmentinvolves significant adjustments to business operations, procedures, capabilities, and business models to effectively utilise customers at all points of the customer experience. Amazon has become a household name, and the "Amazon Effect" has fundamentally altered how companies distribute their goods (Manchaiahet al. 2019). Market share will remain dominated by Amazon. Almost 80% of the increase in e-commerce in 2018 may be attributable to Amazon's hegemony. This openness not mentioned in the customer service assignmentonly fosters confidence between the company and the customer but also gives the company several opportunities to reaffirm its brand and messaging.

Amazon replaces search, customer support, purchasing, and e-commerce services with new "people-first automation interactions" that are integrated into every job and step. The brand promise, brand history, creativity, buying moment, and user experience are its five primary customer touchpoints. They get to the customer regardless of the order (Ives et al. 2019). The consumer as per the customer service assignmentwill be confused and may stop using the brand if it does not convey a consistent message. These are ways of reaching customers so that they can avail of products from the business website. Amazon sends their users text messages and emails regarding their latest launches and sale prices. The marketing team updates users via a notification on their apps to make them aware of their upcoming offers.

In the pre-purchase phase of the customer service assignment, Amazon ads, website visits, product checking, reading description and others are examples of consumer touch-points as consumers are touching several areas of business due to their interest. While purchasing from Amazon, the official app is the major touch point. In the post-purchase phase, customer service of Amazon plays an important role as they guide their customers in gaining reviews for the product that can be used in convincing other customers in future. In case of any defect in thecustomer service assignment, the products are required to be exchanged or returned (Polacco and Backes, 2018). Its team of Amazon takes care of its customers' demands in the post-purchase phase, which is a gesture of the company to impress its customer base.

The ratio and proportion of touchpoints used indicate the popularity of the business. The more a customer will reach touchpoints; the more marketing reach Amazon will assess his or her interest regarding the app and its products. This is a way mentioned in the customer service assignmentof identifying potential audiences for a particular product. Amazon uses advertisement; digital marketing and third-party offers to attract their customers to avail their products. Coupons, discounts and rewards are offered by the brand to attract the attention of their customers towards their offerings. Once the customers get interested towards a particular product, they start reaching different touch-points.

Customer service value
The award-winning "Customer Service team" is a crucial component of Amazon's ambition to be "Earth's most customer-centric corporation". The company considered in thecustomer service assignmentsupports its clients from more than 75 service locations across the world thanks to our cutting-edge, top-notch self-service technology created by our "CS" team (Hardt et al. 2021). The company views every interaction as a chance to speak up for our clients, and they offer 24/7 phone, email, and chat support. Millions of customers utilise the excellent CRM systems and cutting-edge self-service solutions that the CS technology and product teams create every day on Amazon's websites, shopping applications, and through its family of virtual goods like the Kindle, Echo, and Alexa.

Figure 2: Customer service mission statement of Amazon
(Source: Businessmodelanalyst.com, 2022)

The CS team of Amazon is always increasing the bar for the customer experience while working in a fast-paced, dynamic workplace. By speaking for and developing for users, they are helping to advance Amazon's mission to become the most customer-centric company on Earth. The business considered in the customer service assignmentestablished the "prime" shipping facility to give its clients a quicker delivery service. To enhance and provide top-notch customer service, Amazon needs the CS team to actively listen to consumers and escalate their problem issues (Jindal et al. 2021). Every day, millions of customers interact with Amazon's "Customer Service technologies," product groups, and their innovative approaches to managing customer relationships and self-service. This occurs primarily via the company's internet sites, shopping apps, and family-based electronics. Throughout the Customer Service department of Amazon as per the customer service assignment, Customer Service associates are accountable for the growth, effectiveness, and engagement of various teams of associates. People make use of their analytical abilities to quickly reach data-supported conclusions in time-constrained circumstances. Their experiences have given them the chance to develop as a manager of people as well as an individual contributor, acquiring new abilities while utilising their technical knowledge. Customers can reach the customer support team 24 hours a day through the Amazon website, which offers online complaint and query resolution through chat and other methods (Gupta et al. 2021). As per the customer service assignmentcustomers can also ask for a response to their questions, and the customer care representatives of customer service would be pleased to do so. Amazon focuses on a single, straightforward metric for gauging how good and helpful customer support is. Constant communication with clients is maintained via these unobtrusive and straightforward questionnaires. As per the customer service assignmentsales may be boosted and new fans can be won over with the help of a well-designed survey.The business only exists to serve its customers. Even user concerns about their merchants are taken seriously. Users can email questions or complaints about the products they have purchased directly using Amazon's "buyer-seller messaging service". Users can also express concerns about the seller's services, such as refund assurances, warranties, and much more. Amazon considered in the customer service assignmentprioritises the needs of its consumers by making it simple to return a product or stop receiving services (Lee and Lee, 2020). Customers who wish to return an item are seldom ever asked any questions because the company does not want to make the entire process difficult and it knows that customers are the ones who know what is ideal for them. The customer support team at Amazon is prepared to handle complaints from customers under any circumstance, which is the main facility the brand offered to its customers.

Customer service enhancement in the customer service assignment
The business mentioned in the customer service assignmentwas a modest but creative bookstore at the time, with no evidence that it would one day develop into the e-commerce titan that Amazon is today. Amazon had to establish its image by providing efficient online customer care and support. The business cleared the foundation for an e-commerce explosion, added confidence and transparency to a previously unreliable shopping experience, and established customer satisfaction standards that other companies now follow. The business mentioned in the customer service assignmentemploys a variety of strategies to bolster and improve customer service. It is difficult to picture a period before businesses like “Yelp”, “TripAdvisor”, and “Uber” offered consumer evaluations on everything from five-star hotels to neighbourhood food trucks.

Amazon mentioned in the customer service assignmentbecame one of the pioneers of the e-commerce business when it came to displaying consumer reviews and promoting transparency (Daugherty et al. 2018). Consumers used to click blindly while making online purchases in the days before online reviews, not knowing what to anticipate from an item's arrival. Amazon, on the other hand, has emerged as the cross-selling king. The business now even offers recommendations based on what customers with comparable demographics have purchased to broaden the reach of its suggestions. To enhance its current market standing and level of customer service, the brand employs "layered customer service".

One of Amazon's greatest strengths is the use of the "network economy". Through bringing together their content, their network, and their support teams, they have developed a vertical integration strategy that enables digital scalability in customer service. Within hours after their purchase, Amazon gives consumers a tracking number and keeps them informed if their goods are delayed. Amazon's shipping approach emphasises proactive customer service, and the corporation makes sure that consumers are always informed of the progress of their packages. Before customers become aware of a problem and contact the service department, Amazon mentioned in the customer service assignmentnotifies and communicates with customers in the event of a problem (Sadqet al. 2018). The business supports the merchants that offer their goods for sale on its website, but if a problem arises with the shipping procedure or the product or, Amazon will side with its customers and work to resolve the issue.

The following clearly illustrates that, despite whatever the Amazon propaganda machine tries to convince the public of, they could care less about anyone besides Amazon. They are not required to steer the business in this manner. A business adopts the mindset and culture of the people who lead it. All of this is Jeff Bezos' responsibility. He is not just a bright innovator but also an expert at convincing others to hold opinions that can be disproven. In summary, Amazon mentioned in the customer service assignmenthas to improve associate training, find solutions, stop making excuses, and respond to consumer complaints. (Yang, 2019) They struggle with internal communication, which makes it difficult for them to solve any problems.

References
Journals
Daugherty, P.J., Bolumole, Y. and Grawe, S.J., 2018. The new age of customer impatience: An agenda for reawakening logistics customer service research. International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management.
Gupta, B., Mittal, P. and Mufti, T., 2021, March. A review of Amazon web service (AWS), Microsoft Azure & Google cloud platform (GCP) services. In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on ICT for Digital, Smart, and Sustainable Development, ICIDSSD 2020, 27-28 February 2020, Jamia Hamdard, New Delhi, India.
Hardt, M., Chen, X., Cheng, X., Donini, M., Gelman, J., Gollaprolu, S., He, J., Larroy, P., Liu, X., McCarthy, N. and Rathi, A., 2021. Amazon sagemaker clarify: Machine learning bias detection and explainability in the cloud. arXiv preprint arXiv:2109.03285.
Ives, B., Cossick, K. and Adams, D., 2019. Amazon Go: disrupting retail. Journal of Information Technology Teaching Cases, 9(1), pp.2-12.
Jindal, R.P., Gauri, D.K., Li, W. and Ma, Y., 2021. Omnichannel battle between Amazon and Walmart: Is the focus on delivery the best strategy. Journal of business research, 122, pp.270-280. Lee, S.M. and Lee, D., 2020. “Untact”: a new customer service strategy in the digital age. Service Business, 14(1), pp.1-22.
Manchaiah, V., Amlani, A.M., Bricker, C.M., Whitfield, C.T. and Ratinaud, P., 2019. Benefits and shortcomings of direct-to-consumer hearing devices: Analysis of large secondary data generated from Amazon customer reviews. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 62(5), pp.1506-1516.
Polacco, A. and Backes, K., 2018. The amazon go concept: Implications, applications, and sustainability. Journal of Business and Management, 24(1), pp.79-92.
Sadq, Z.M., Sabir, H.N. and Saeed, V.S.H., 2018. Analyzing the Amazon success strategies. Journal of process management and new technologies, 6(4).
Vollero, A., Sardanelli, D. and Siano, A., 2021. Exploring the role of the Amazon effect on customer expectations: An analysis of user?generated content in consumer electronics retailing. Journal of Consumer Behaviour.
Yang, S., 2019. The Study of Customer Experience Design and Optimization of Shopping Website: Case Analysis of Amazon in China. Asian Business Research, 4(2), p.1.
Website
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