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Customer Service scenario

 
Author dosmst
Member 
#1 | Posted: 26 Feb 2007 04:32 
Dear Sir/Madam,

I would be going for an assessment and two questions that I know i would be asked are:

1-Give a scenario where you helped a customer and you know that the customer was satisfied.

2-How can you tell that your actions were positive.

I hope to receive feedback and i would be happy if the scenarios would be based on a transport organisation.

Regards,
Dylan

Author patilint
Member 
#2 | Posted: 26 Feb 2007 07:01 
I think they would be looking to see how you handled a situation regardless if it were in a transport organisation or not. They want to see how you handle problems and if you can think rationally. I don't think you should manufacture this for the assessment, you need to have a personal experience that they can hear you describe.

You may not know if the actions were positive or not but you should have some type of feeling from your interaction with the customer, friend or whomever.

Good lucl!

Author ayaree
Member 
#3 | Posted: 2 Mar 2007 20:14 
You know, Dos, if you were able to call upon a guess at what you might be asked--or even if you came upon the knowledge of what would be asked via the related experiences of a friend--I'm a little surprised you are asking how to answer the questions. Not sure when the assessment date is, we might be too late. Maybe you are nervous about the assessment and not thinking back to your own experiences (applicable experiences). Maybe so, maybe not.

If it's not too late, here is what I'm going to suggest: Let go of all the buzzwords and whatever else is encouraging you to get "formulaic" and to set up canned answers to canned questions. What anagram says is right. The person that assesses you needs to see whether you know how to interact with someone in a constructive manner. Manufacturing an answer isn't going to demonstrate that you had a positive impact on someone. If a friend asks you what an unfamiliar word means, you tell him the meaning in your own comfortable, every day language--or do you recite a dictionary definition that you have memorized? Of course not!

Maybe you are concerned that you don't have enough applicable experience in transportation or customer service itself? (Again, maybe so, maybe not.) I can relate to that. Sometimes I think I am more about HR than customer services or operations or "business." But I haven't been in an HR-defined role, so I guess I would feel a wee bit of a challenge applying for an "HR job." But I know I have had to look out for the interest of employees and do some tough work at making the interests of a person become aligned with the interests of a business. I have some examples of that, and I guess I would need to flesh out those examples with some words I am familiar with and with cases I know were important to me and should have been important to the other people involved.

Also, maybe you have to remove the word "customer." Again, take the "1+1=2" mind-set out of this. Think about a work context when someone needed something and they got it through you, and maybe they would never have gotten it if you had not been there. Obviously you wouldn't say you helped a cutie carry their groceries to their car, but maybe you would say, "There was a time when there was really bad weather and few people made it in to work; normally I work in X dept, but the logistics team was short, so I suggested that my teammates help finish what I was doing while I helped to coordinate in the logistics team and I stayed late, and we got it all done." You may not have found out positive details about that example from my imagination, but you helped a "customer" (your company) get through a bind, and maybe hundreds of customers got what they needed (there's the positive impact).

You're the one who really knows the answers to the questions. Just remove the "math exam" flavor from this and speak from experience. Do homework for an assessment, yes; but be you, not a walking textbook. If you know how to apply what you can do in this transportation company and this role, then don't forget it, be convinced that you do know and describe good reactions, interactions, collaboration, insights, suggestions, whatever, that made something work for somebody.

I'm sorry if my approach to this was WAY off-base. Was it? Or was that not the kind of answer you were looking for?

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 Customer Service scenario

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