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American University of Culture and
Education
FUCULTY OF BUSINESS ADMINSTARTION
Senior Project for the Bachelor Degree
Customer Service
Presented by:
Mohammed Hassan Badereddine
Under the supervision of:
DR. WAEL NAJDI
Summer 2014

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Acknowledgments
Any attempt at any level cannot be satisfactorily completed without the guidance
of well-educated people. I greatly appreciate the variable contributions of several people
who really helped me to do this kind of project.
I owe very special thanks to my Dr. Wael Najdi for his constant support and
motivation that gave a positive influence towards making this one. In addition; I would
never forget the interview that I did with the MANGO Company that are no words to
express how much I appreciate for their help by giving answers without hesitation and
complaint.
After reading, understanding, and analyzing my project; I would be glad if you
people will write or note the questions of the confused information that I tried my best to
reach them to you.

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Abstract
The sector of clothing in Lebanon is represented by different brands which differ as for
the qualitative, quantitative and functional characteristics that they have. Clothing and
footwear constituted mostly on consumer expenses and based on estimates, and as for the
Lebanese in general most of them tend to keep their life style up-to-date. This opened the
appetite of major international fashion brands as clothing is one of the biggest
consumption categories, and this fact makes young people a very important customer
target group because they are the ones who spend a lot of money and care that much
about their look, also due to that the latest fashion trends and most of the innovations in
the textile industry are related to them.
The aim of this research is to examine the tendencies and consumer behaviour and study
the effect of customer satisfaction inside the fashion industry and for that reason we have
conducted a fully detailed research about MANGO LB and make clear the several factors
that influence repeatedly young customers to keep returning back to MANGO STORES
in Lebanon by which we can know how international MANGO works in all over the
world.
Our main results have to do with the reasons that a young person makes a buying process
and highlight the customer service importance where many young companies ignore to
invest in such field. We have a group of people who are traditional buyers and they buy
just to cover their needs and other, who buy because they recognize buying process as a
game or a kind of entertainment and they want to show their financial class and their
status through the purchase and use of expensive brand name.
Our suggestions for future research should be carried out and focus on the satisfaction of
young people after buying process and the factors that influence and increase this
satisfaction which in few words can be called after-sale services.

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Table of contents:
Introduction 6
Customer service definition 7
Phases of customer service 7
Benefits of Customer Service 9
What customer service consists of 11
Motivation in customer service 11
Customer service team motivation 12
Customer service team with positive attitude 13
Empowerment in customer service 16
Techniques for empowerment 17
Myths about empowerment 18
Problems of empowerment 19
Customer satisfaction 20
Steps for achieving customer satisfaction 21
Satisfaction restoration 24
Empirical Part: Mango Stores 28
Customer service at Mango 29
Central Offices 30
Motivation at Mango 32
Empowerment at Mango 34
Customer satisfaction at Mango 36
Satisfaction restoration at Mango 37
Conclusion 38
References 41

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Introduction:
The focus of this project that I aim to explain is how customer service works and
to see how it is applicable at MANGO™ Stores in Lebanon.
Customer service today is very important in competitive markets. Every company
aims to attract and retain customers in any possible way, excellent customer service is one
of key ways available, however it remains rare for many reasons, including the ignorance
of its importance by managers, or even for the lack of knowledge and information about
it.
That's why the customer will decide whether the product's price is right. However,
company's today face a fierce and fast changing pricing environment; the value seeking
customers put increased pricing pressure on many companies.
I decided to cover motivation, empowerment, customer satisfaction and
restoration. I visited the local branch at Saida and met with Mrs.Hanadi Maatouk who
was very kind and gave me all the answers I needed, we compared between theory and
action and we found great similarity.
Services have grown dramatically in recent years. Services now are growing even
faster in the world economy, making the services industries great. Government offer
services through courts, employment services, hospitals, military services, police and fire
departments, police and fire departments, postal service and schools.
I hope that I will satisfy in my project with the information that was collected and
further explain how customer service is applicable in real life, and that my project would
be much helpful for those who would love to know about this topic.
Whether at MANGO or any other facility on earth there are special goals that
should be achieved by customer service support, no matter if it is personal or business
group but the main goal should be reached which are simply a series of activities
designed to enhance the level of customer satisfaction – that is, the feeling that a product
or service has met the customer expectation."

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PART ONE: Customer Service in theory
Customer service definition:
Customer service is a widely implemented strategy for managing a company’s
interactions with customers, clients and sales prospects. It involves using technology to
organize, automate, and synchronize business processes—principally sales activities, but
also those for marketing, customer service, and technical support.
The overall goals are to find, attract, and win new clients, nurture and retain those
the company already has, entice former clients back into the fold, and reduce the costs of
marketing and client service. Customer relationship management describes a
companywide business strategy.
It can be summarized as a series of activities designed to enhance the level of
customer satisfaction – that is, the feeling that a product or service has met the customer
expectation.
In fact the definition of customer service to meet the customer expectations are
business logic as a company is founded to serve customers and without these customers
there shall be no businesses.
Customer service is an extremely important part of maintaining ongoing client
relationships that are the keys for continuous enlargement and profitability. For this
reason, many companies have worked hard to increase their customer satisfaction levels.
Often there are many more people working behind the scenes at a company than there are
customer service representatives, yet it is primarily the personnel that interact directly
with customers that form customers' perceptions of the company as a whole.
Phases:
The three phases in which Customer Service supports the relationship between a
business and its customers are to:
 Acquire: CS can help a business acquire new customers through contact
management, selling, and fulfillment.
 Enhance: web-enabled CS combined with customer service tools offers
customers service from a team of sales and service specialists, which offers
customers the convenience of one-stop shopping.

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 Retain: CS software and databases enable a business to identify and reward its
loyal customers and further develop its targeted marketing and relationship
marketing initiatives.

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Benefits of Customer Service:
The use of a well-created customer service system will confer several advantages
to any company or business established and the following steps summarized by these
ideas:
1. Good Public Publicity
Good publicity from clients comes from great customer services. When a client
receives excellent customer services, they tend to tell their friends and families which
leads to word of mouth and good public publicity. This not only creates more exposure
for your business, but it also increases your visibility and popularity around products and
services you provide.
2. Satisfied Shareholders
When customers are happy, your shareholders will be happy as well. Quite
honestly, when customers are happy – this typically leads to more business. More
business means more profits, and more profits which translate happy shareholders and
higher returns on investments.
3. Higher Profits
As stated in point 2., happy customers lead to higher profits. However, there are a
number of business owners that aren’t aware that this is one of the major benefits they can
receive when providing good customer services. Higher profits mean more money to re-
invest on employees and new business.
4. Increased Employee Pride and Motivation
Although it may seem hard at first for employees to grasp how the process works,
but after providing excellent customer service regardless of the industry you are in, this
will eventually build employee pride and motivation. Reason being, the employee will
begin to discover, through others, how well people like the customer service, which is
being provided by their company. This will instill a sense of pride and extreme
motivation to continue in this process.
5. Increase Customer Confidence
As word begins to spread about the service being provided at your company, this
will begin to build customer confidence. After all, this is one of the primary focuses of
any business. In order to build credibility, it will be important to build a customer base by
providing excellent customer services.

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6. Increased Responsibility
You will discover that over time, your employees will begin to take on additional
responsibilities in order to make this process work effectively. By setting the bar high,
you will find that many of your employees will try to meet or exceed expectations of the
company as a result of the popularity your company will experience.
7. Saving Money
An efficient workplace has always allowed the business owner to save money.
After all, when providing excellent customer services over time, you will discover ways
to streamline this process which will allow you to save on training new employees,
developing different systems, and taking care of problems that are a direct result of bad
customer service.
8. Reduction in Staff Absenteeism and Turnover
When employees begin to be prideful in their work and extremely motivated you
will experience a reduction in staff absenteeism and turnover. This not only helps the
company to save money, but it increases employee retention, which allows everyone to
profit as a result.
9. Reduction in Waste
You will discover that your company will no longer be wasteful in areas such as
training, materials, or acquiring new help. Because you’ve made it your sole focus to
provide excellent customer services, this is something your employees will learn from the
onset, which will reduce your company’s issues with wasting time and resources.
10. Enhanced Efficiency
As a result of all of the nine previous benefits, you will be able to enhance the overall
efficiency of your business. After all, the primary goal for a business owner is to be as
efficient as possible. By providing good customer services this is something you will
achieve and everyone who is involved will be a winner as a result.

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The consisting of the customer service
There are five essentials for brilliant customer service:
 Essential One: Quality should always meet or exceed customer’s expectations.
This means identifying the customers and planning to give them consistent,
predictable outcomes.
 Essential Two: Quality is measured by customer expectation.
 Essential Three: The goal is to meet or exceed customer expectation 100 percent
of the time.
 Essential Four: Quality is attained through prevention of conflict by showing a
clear policy and using unconventional methods like using visual aids such as easy-
to-read wall charts to share information quickly.
 Essential Five: Management commitment and involvement lead the quality
process. Leads by trusting employees, empowering them and giving them
responsibility to make important decisions. Management must be committed to
staff. You can't have good customer satisfaction without employee empowerment
and you can't have good employee empowerment unless your management is
empowered.
Motivation in Customer service:
Providing outstanding customer service is one of the most rewarding yet challenging
activities within an organization. There are many benefits for good customer service like:
* Increased customer satisfaction.
* Increased revenues.
* Increased repeat and referral customer traffic.
* Less employee turnover.
* Increased profits.

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How to support and motivate the customer service team to give an outstanding
customer service?
1. Provide Ongoing Learning: As a manager It’s important that you not only
provide training on organizational policies and technology, but also how to handle
customers. Create an ongoing system for training and feedback. Request
continuous feedback and have the “courage to listen” to your customer service
team’s responses, because they are on the frontline, can provide you with
excellent information on how to service your customer.
Market conditions are changing all the time and the one piece of
information your customer service team can share with you can make the

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difference between success and failure. After receiving the information, if
necessary, provide the training to your customer service team so that they can
provide outstanding customer service.
2. Adjust the Attitude: Constantly work on your own attitude and your team’s
attitude to providing outstanding customer service. As a customer service leader,
always be aware of the tone you set and how your customer service team will be
motivated by your attitude. If you are upbeat, your team will follow the lead and
provide outstanding customer service. If you have a negative attitude, your
customer service team will follow your lead and communicate this negative
attitude to the customers they serve.
Work with your customer service team members to create a positive attitude in
the following ways:
 Look at every customer service experience as a learning experience
that is preparing them for future opportunities.
 Put your team in the customer’s shoes to understand the customer’s
“pain” and create empathy for outstanding customer service solutions
 Have your customer service team take on the persona of a positive
individual they admire to help them through a difficult customer
service situation.
 Create “positive triggers” to remind your customer service team why it
is important to give outstanding service. Your trigger could be as
simple as a family picture or a picture of an item (new car, home, etc.)
that is important to you.

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3. Give Incentives: Motivate your customer service team by giving incentives based
on meeting your organization’s mission, goals, and values. Be timely, fair, and
public with your incentives. Also, when putting together an incentive program,
ask your customer service team what they would like as incentives. Many times
organizations will invest thousands of dollars on incentives, which are not the
ones their customer service team wants. Just ask.
4. Show Appreciation: Appreciate to motivate your customer service team as much
as possible. Remember, many times they are facing very challenging customer
service situations every day. Keep them motivated by sharing your appreciation in
a timely, sincere, fair, and encouraging way. By consistently showing
appreciation, you will motivate your customer service team to excel when it is
most difficult for them to do so.
5. Support Outstanding Customer Service: Support and motivate your customer
service team in a number of ways. You can support and motivate your customer
service team by making sure the technology supports them and the customers.
Support your customer service team by delivering their concerns to upper
management. Champion their concerns to upper management and let your customer
service team know the progress of each concern.
6. Keep High Standards: Support and motivate your customer service team by
keeping standards high for customer service. When your organization is facing
challenging times, it is very tempting to lower standards. That’s the last action you
should take. By lowering standards, you decrease customer satisfaction, increase
customer service turnover, and muddy your organization’s name in the
marketplace, instead train and develop your customer service team.
In addition to what’s been said, as a manager you should hire the right people
with the right characteristics needed for frontline customer service, make the job more

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interesting through empowerment, incentives, job rotation and create nice working
environment that makes your employees comfortable.

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Empowerment in customerservice:
In general Empowerment refers to increasing the spiritual, political, social, or
economic strength of individuals and communities. It often involves the empowered
developing confidence by their own capacities.
Empowerment includes the following, or similar, capabilities:
 The ability to make decisions about personal/collective circumstances
 The ability to access information and resources for decision-making
 Ability to consider a range of options from which to choose (not just yes/no,
either/or.)
 Ability to exercise assertiveness in collective decision making
 Having positive-thinking about the ability to make change
 Ability to learn and access skills for improving personal/collective circumstance.
 Ability to inform others’ perceptions though exchanges, education and
engagement.
 Involving in the growth process and changes that is never ending and self-initiated
 Increasing one's positive self-image and overcoming stigma
 Increasing one's ability in discreet thinking to sort out right and wrong.
Empowerment can help in:
 Increased creativity.
 Increased productivity.
 Increased teamwork and motivation.

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 Increased initiative.
 Increased ownership of work.
 Reduced employee turnover.
 Reduced human resources situations.
 Better work environment.
 Increased results for the organization.
 Increased career opportunities.
Ten techniques for empowerment:
 Motivate Your Employees to Find Solutions for problems.
 Motivate Your Employees by asking for Opinions.
 Motivate Your Employees by Managing to Their Level.
 Motivate Your Employees by Delegating Tasks.
 Motivate Your Employees by Encouraging Ideas.
 Motivate Your Employees by Letting Them Run you're Meetings.
 Motivate Your Employees by Embracing Mistakes.
 Motivate Your Employees by letting those set goals; they would be more
motivated this way.

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Myths about empowerment:
 Customers are not to be trusted, many executives think the customer is out to take
advantage of a business in any way possible, consequently, they develop rules,
policies and procedures to ensure that doesn't happen."
 Front-line employees are not to be trusted because of getting minimum wage or a
little higher.
 Empowerment will diminish or eliminate the role of middle managers.
 Employees are afraid of empowerment
Executives must excise these myths from their organizations, if empowerment is to
work and their businesses are to prosper and succeed.

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Problems of empowerment:
 Masked empowerment – when empowerment decision is made but not really
delivered.
 Misunderstanding of empowerment by management or employees.
 Not setting boundaries for empowerment.
 Continuous intervention by management in employees work and decisions –
eradicating empowerment.
 Not providing continuous training and development on how to deal with
customer’s problems and needs.
 Not embracing mistakes done by employees.
 Not rewarding them for the responsibilities they have that are above their rank.

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Customer satisfaction:
Customer satisfaction is a measure of how products and services are supplied by a
company to meet up or surpass customer expectation. It is seen as a key performance
indicator within business.
Customer satisfaction distinguishes six categories of quality attributes, from which
the first three actually influence customer satisfaction:
1. Basic Factors. (Dissatisfies. Must have.) - The minimum requirements, which will
cause dissatisfaction if they are not fulfilled, but do not cause customer satisfaction if they
are fulfilled (or are exceeded). The customer regards these as prerequisites and takes these
for granted. Basic factors establish a market entry.
2. Excitement Factors. (Satisfiers. Attractive.) - The factors that increase customer
satisfaction if delivered but do not cause dissatisfaction if they are not delivered. These
factors surprise the customer and generate 'delight'. Using these factors, a company can
really distinguish itself from its competitors in a positive way.
3. Performance Factors. The factors that cause satisfaction if the performance is high,
and they cause dissatisfaction if the performance is low. Typically these factors are
directly connected to customers' explicit needs and desires and a company should try to
be competitive here.
The additional three attributes are:
4. Indifferent attributes. The customer does not care about this feature.
5. Questionable attributes. It is unclear whether this attribute is expected by the
customer or gives the customer any single interest.
6. Reverse attributes. The reverse of this product feature is expected by the customer
and all these attributes are inter-related together.

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Steps for customer satisfaction according to the 6 categories
Questionnaire in order to identify the basic, performance and excitement factors as
well as the other three additional factors:
1. For each product feature a pair of questions is formulated to which the customer can
answer in one of five different ways.
2. The first question concerns the reaction of the customer if the product shows that
feature (functional question).
3. The second question concerns the reaction of the customer if the product does not
show this feature (dysfunctional question).
4. By combining the answers all attributes can be classified into the six factors.
Seven steps for achieving customer satisfaction:
1. Encourage Face-to-Face Dealings
This is the most daunting and downright scary part of interacting with a customer.
If you're not used to this sort of thing it can be a pretty nerve-wracking experience. Rest
assured, though, it does get easier over time. It's important to meet your customers face to
face at least once or even twice during the course of a project.
Mangers’ experience has shown that a client finds it easier to relate to and work
with someone they've actually met in person, rather than a voice on the phone or someone
typing into an email or messenger program.
When you do meet them, be calm, confident and above all, take time to ask them
what they need. If a potential client spends over half the meeting doing the talking, you're
well on your way to a sale.
2. Respond to Messages Promptly & Keep Your Clients Informed
This goes without saying really. We all know how annoying it is to wait days for a
response to an email or phone call. It might not always be practical to deal with all
customers' queries within the space of a few hours, but at least email or call them back
and let them know you've received their message and you'll contact them about it as soon
as possible. Even if you're not able to solve a problem right away, let the customer know
you're working on it.
3. Be Friendly and Approachable
You can hear a smile through the phone. This is very true. It's very important to be
friendly, courteous and to make your clients feel like you're their friend and you're there
to help them out. There will be times when you want to beat your clients over the head
repeatedly with a blunt object - it happens to all of us. It's vital that you keep a clear head,

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respond to your clients' wishes, as best you can, and at all times remain polite and
courteous.
4. Have a Clearly-Define Customer Service Policy
This may not be too important when you're just starting out, but a clearly defined
customer service policy is going to save you a lot of time and effort in the long run. If a
Customer has a problem, what should they do? What If the first option doesn't?
Should they contact different people for billing and technical enquiries? If they're not
satisfied with any aspect of your customer service, to whom should they go and express?
There's nothing more annoying for a client than being passed from person to
person, or not knowing who to turn to. Making sure they know exactly what to do at each
stage of their enquiry should be of utmost importance. So make sure your customer
service policy is present on your site -- and anywhere else it may be useful.
5. Attention to Detail (also known as 'The Little Niceties')
Have you ever received a Happy Birthday email or card from a company you were
a client of? Have you ever had a personalized sign-up confirmation email for a service
that you could tell was typed from scratch? These little niceties can be time consuming
and aren't always cost effective, but remember to do them.
Even if it's as small as sending a Happy Holidays email to all your customers, it's
something. It shows you care; it shows there are real people on the other end of that
screen or telephone; and most importantly, it makes the customer feel welcomed, wanted
and valued.
6. Anticipate Your Client's Needs & Go Out Of Your Way to Help Them Out
Sometimes this is easier said than done! However, achieving this supreme level of
understanding with your clients will do wonders for your working relationship.
Example:
Anticipate that you are working on the front-end for your client's exciting new e-
commerce endeavor. You have all the images, originals and files backed up on your
desktop computer and the site is going really well. During a meeting with your client
he/she happens to mention a hard-copy brochure their internal marketing people are
developing. As if by magic, a couple of weeks later a CD-ROM arrives on their doorstep
complete with high-resolution versions of all the images you've used on the site. A note
accompanies it, which reads:
""Hi, you mentioned a hard-copy brochure you were working on and I wanted to
provide you with large-scale copies of the graphics I've used on the site. Hopefully you'll
be able to make use of some in your brochure.""

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Your client is heartily impressed, and remarks to his colleagues and friends how
very helpful and considerate his Web designers are. Meanwhile, in your office, you lay
back in your chair drinking your 7th cup of coffee that morning, safe in the knowledge
this happy customer will send several referrals your way.
7. Honor Your Promises
It's possible this is the most important point, the simple message: when you
promise something, deliver. The most common example here is project delivery dates.
Clients don't like to be disappointed. Sometimes, something may not get done, or
you might miss a deadline through no fault of your own. Projects can be late, technology
can fail and sub-contractors don't always deliver on time. In this case a quick apology and
assurance it'll be ready ASAP wouldn't go amiss.

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Restoring satisfactionamong unsatisfied customers
Though excellent customer service efforts steps have been taken, at some point a
problem would occur, a customer might get dissatisfied and might not have a pleasant
experience.
A customer service failure, simply defined, is customer service performance that
fails to meet an individual’s expectations.
Typically, when a service failure occurs, a customer will expect to be
compensated for the inconvenience.
The success of such customer service recovery efforts is determined by the
individual’s expectations and perceptions of the organization. Two key elements impact
any effort to restore customer satisfaction: the strength of customer relationships and the
severity of service failure.
The strength of the customer relationship with the organization prior to a customer
service failure has a buffering effect in the event of failure. Research suggests that
customers who expect the relationship to continue actually have lower service recovery
expectations, and in turn, are more satisfied with customer service performance after
recovery.
Conversely, a customer with strong commitment may demand less immediate
compensations with the expectation that strong future interactions may correct the
customer service failure over time. Such findings suggest that service providers not only
have measures in place to identify the strength of customer relationships but also the
ability to react to customer service failures.
The severity of the customer service failure moderates the relationship between
customer satisfaction and commitment. Even with strong service recovery, research
indicates that customers may still be upset, engage in negative word-of-mouth, and be
less likely to develop trust with and commitment to the organization, if the original
customer service failure was really bad.

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Sevenways in which customersatisfactioncanbe stored:
 Employee's behaviors
Certainly, anyone in the position of interacting with customers must be friendly,
helpful, polite, courteous, and flexible. These attitudes and behaviors are not just nice, but
they are indeed expected. But when it comes to complaint handling specifically, we know
that employee politeness while addressing the issue helps diffuse the problem in the
 Customer’s thinking
When customers see they are being treated with respect, dignity, and sensitivity by
employees, they feel a sense of justice and fairness from the company.
As simple as it may sound, politeness is a tangible asset that can positively impact
customer satisfaction with service recovery. If you solve the customer’s issue, but are
rude or indifferent in the process, you can still negatively impact the relationship. Simply
put, when your employees are polite and courteous, customers will experience more
satisfaction and reward you with stronger loyalty.
 Apologize
Making an apology to customers after things go wrong is positively related to
satisfaction with the recovery. When a service employee apologizes to a customer, she
conveys politeness, courtesy, concern, effort, and empathy and this goes a long way.
Researchers have shown that a genuine apology can actually strengthen a
customer’s emotional bond to a company, leaving him or her more emotionally connected
than customers who never experienced a problem. It also proved that when an apology is
perceived as genuine, customer satisfaction increases 10 – 15%.
Offer your customers a heartfelt apology after a service failure and you will not
only restore customer confidence and regain goodwill, but you should also realize the
benefits of reduced litigation expenses and claims costs.
 Justification
A vital, but often overlooked element of customer recovery is to provide an
explanation for how or why the problem happened. Taking the time to explain to a
customer what might have caused the problem helps organizations re-establish trust.
Providing an explanation can be as simple as saying, “Thanks for taking the time
to let us know about…. We appreciate customers who let us know when things aren’t
right. Here’s what we think may have happened...”

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 Resolution
One of the gifts of a voiced complaint is that if offers the company an opportunity
to re-perform the service. When given this second chance, companies must bend over
backwards to fix the problem and restore customer confidence. When a company fails to
resolve the issue, the customer is left hanging, she begins to lose trust in the organization,
and feels like voicing the complaint was a waste of time.
Studies have discovered that a customer who goes to the effort to complain, but
remains dissatisfied is usually 50% less loyal than someone who did not bother to
complain.
Resolving the customer’s problem will have a positive impact on customer
satisfaction and customer loyalty. Failing to fix a problem after a customer has gone
through the trouble of voicing a complaint is treacherous because customers have been let
down twice and they may not be as willing to forgive you.
 Immediateness
Not only is resolving the customer’s problem obviously important, but a fast
recovery response will enhance customers’ evaluations of your company .Your goal with
problem resolution needs to be “One and done”. Meaning, your employees need to be
equipped with the trust (from you), empowerment, and training to be able to resolve
complaints on the first phone call or first visit. Not only does a fast recovery improve the
customer’s perception of the company, but it actually has a greater impact on loyalty than
the resolution itself, 95 % of complaining customers would remain loyal if their
complaint was resolved on the first contact. That number has dropped to 70% when the
complaint was not immediately resolved.
The longer it takes for the service provider to provide a full recovery, the greater
the customer’s perception is that they have been treated unfairly. Improve your
organization’s ability to handle problems quickly and well and you’ll undoubtedly realize
increases in customer satisfaction and loyalty.
 Compensation
Reparation (in the form of discounts, free merchandise, refunds, gift cards,
coupons, and product samples) after a service failure has been found to restore equity and
improve customer satisfaction.
A Society of Consumer Affairs Professionals customer loyalty study found that
58% of complaining consumers who received something in the mail following their
contact with consumer affairs departments were delighted, versus only 40% of those who
did not receive anything.

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Don’t hesitate when it comes to compensating customers after a service failure.
Your reward will be increased customer satisfaction, loyalty, and powerfully persuasive
positive word-of-mouth advertising.
 Surprise & Delight
This bonus element is all about going beyond problem resolution and inspiring a
feeling of astonishment through unexpectedness.
Try a little surprise & delight and you’ll get your customers talking and, if you
design it right, you’ll also enjoy growth as a direct result of the WOW factor.

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III-PART TWO
CUSTOMER SERVICE APPLICATION AT MANGO™
3.1-Mango’s Background
Mango is a transnational Catalan Spanish clothing company based in Barcelona, It
designs, manufactures and markets clothing garments and accessories for women and
men with more than 8600 employees, It has more than 1,700 stores in 100 countries
located on five continents. First store was opened in 1984 in the city of Barcelona,
international expansion began year 1992 when they opened 2 stores in Portugal, Mango
H.E is the first men's line from Mango, it hit stores year 2008, and Current public face for
mango is Scarlett Johansson since 2009.
The keys to its success can be summarized in three points: Concept, Team and Logistics
System.
Concept
They are differentiated for having a highly defined concept. The MANGO concept is
based on an alliance between a quality product, with an original design and a coherent
and unified brand image.
The team
MANGO’s greatest asset is its people. Above all, the secret lies in banking on a
motivated and flexible work team, able to adapt to and promote change. Professionals
who come up with ideas in order to bring MANGO closer to the largest possible number
of customers.
Logistics system
MANGO bases its logistics on an in-house system , a management system which has
proved its huge success in many business categories including fashion business.

30
3.2-Customer service at Mango:
One of their fundamental commitments is to provide a service to society as a whole, in
the following areas:
Stores
One of their organization’s priorities is service to their customers, including advice,
suggestions, complaints, etc. and also obtaining customers’ opinions on their offers so
that they can adapt to their tastes and requirements.
Customer service is provided in the stores directly through their specially trained
personnel. This training (theoretical practical)
is focused on the areas of customer service policy, the offers, merchandising, trends, the
company’s philosophy
The training is always adapted to the employee’s role.
They are very aware of the fact that their store personnel have to face the daily challenge
of offering an excellent service to the clients and to find a solution to their needs.

31
Central offices
Mango’s central offices include a specialized customer service department to respond to
any enquiry, problems or suggestions. Requests are dealt within Mango’s fi e official
languages: Spanish, English, French, German and Catalan.
In 2009, a total of 79,818 requests were handled. The main means of communication used
were as follows:
The source of these enquiries varied: direct from customers, from stores, form head office
staff, etc. The main themes were as follows:

32
In addition, numerous calls were received from students: 192 in the year 2007, requesting
information about Mango for research projects. Mainly these were design, marketing,
advertising, economic science and business students.
Store design
Mango’s stores are designed with comfort and enjoyment in mind. Mango stores project
the spirit of our people and our:
clients: a dynamic environment resulting in a harmonious space, a selected product,
displayed in small collections so that they can be easily appreciated, selected and tried.
Comfortable stores, spacious and luminous, with a spirit of boutique rather than that of a
chain, to make shopping a real experience.

33
3.3-Motivation at Mango:
 Mango always tries to motivate their employees by many ways, including:
Communicating with them all the time to know their concerns and worries , the
problems they face and the ideas they think of that can help them solve the
problems , whatever is it mango listens to their employees and pay close attention
to their wants , they consider their employees to be the most important asset , as
they are the ones on the front-line , and their attitude directly affect the customers
and the company’s image.
 Spreading a good halo around the work place, keeping a positive attitude in the
shop can enhance the motivation of the employees; friendly managers are a part of
their policy, feeling like a family in the work place, with no pressure of feeling
alienated, the feeling of the employee that he/she belongs just do the trick of
motivating.
 Giving incentives, offering a percentage on sales for employees, and promotion to
employees with outstanding performance, a yearly contest for the best employee
at every branch to win a trip to a touristic place, and flexible work hours are
always available.
 They show appreciation for every simple job they do, managers should always
keep the “thank you” word on their mouth, two little words, big effect on
employees, when they feel appreciated they get more motivated, employees who
faced a big problem and solved it are rewarded for their effort from the head
manager himself.
 They use a special software system designed for the Mango chain that largely
decreases problems and increases the chance of solving them, showing detailed
information on every case making it much easier for employees to deal with mind
exploding problems “worries are away”.

35
3.4-Empowerment at Mango:
At Mango they give empowerment a great deal of importance, they believe that it’s the
key element for delivering superior customer service, and in the bigger picture having a
competitive edge against other competitors.
They authorize their employees to make many decisions that would speed up the process
of dealing with a customer problem or case, however for major problems their employees
refer to the manager for solving them, information is shared among our software system
with no restriction for them making it easier to resolve a conflict with a customer and
knowing the needed information, they give them the ability to make non-routine
decisions, if they sometimes do mistakes, Mango’s managers and administration embrace
the mistakes and points the employees for the mistakes they did with tips on how to solve
the problem the next time it occurs , sometimes they allow them to set goals for the store ,
like increasing sales in a certain time , taking the small flow in the budget for re-
decoration and similar issues.
Applying empowerment at Mango increases the productivity of the employees, they have
noticed that letting them share their ideas with the management, and participating in
setting goals motivated them to be more productive and creative in problem solving, not
just that but taking initiative to solve hard problems, with the hope to get promoted with
their promotion system that encourages creativity and outstanding performance in
customer service, they have so little employee turnover, most with reasons connected to
family and travel issues.
However to make sure that only positive outcomes derive from empowerment they have
set some boundaries for empowerment, new comers always feel afraid of make decisions
they help them but continuous training and development alongside with the current
employees, they have some problems sometimes like when the manager goes in to correct
an outstanding wrong decision made by an employee related to a customer, they do not
encourage such situation, and they would allow the employee to do that mistake and learn
from it.

37
3.5-Customer satisfaction at Mango:
Mango cares a lot about customer satisfaction and the customers are the reason why the
company is here, their satisfaction is linked directly to its existence.
At mango employees are trained to be friendly and always smiling, they believe that the
smile is one of the most important factor in customer service, a smile penetrates through
the heart of the customers, and everyone loves to see a smiling person, no matter what
happens the customer is right to a certain extent (it goes far away).
Their policy-a clear and well detailed and defined policy- states a month free return of
goods and exchange, they answer their customer’s inquiries rapidly in any
communication method available, and they keep a constant follow-up using the software
system.
Employees are trained to anticipate the needs of the customers and even try to exceed
them, for example if a 30 years old woman enters the store, an employee would offer to
help her, and lead her to the clothes he/she expects the woman would love to see, show
what her what she would need, and even show her some new pieces, or un-usual products.
At mango they never make a promise without fulfillment even if it costs money loss to
the store, the customer always comes first.

38
3.6-How Mango restores satisfaction among dissatisfied
customers:
Dissatisfied customers are a major concern to Mango; they believe that word of mouth
can greatly damage their business, so they always try to restore their satisfaction, no
matter what it costs or what it takes.
In case of good customer service delivery failure, they always approach the customer in a
friendly way, they aim to lower their anger to a level of a good conversation, knowing
what they need can help solve the problem, apologies are a must in case of making a
mistake, it has a great effect for restoring satisfaction of the customer, explanation of the
situation comes next, they do not encourage giving excuses, but just giving explanation
about the situation and its causes, and with the empowerment policy at Mango,
employees are allowed to make decisions to resolve the conflict with any customer, any
delay in the resolve will have a bad effect and greatly might affect the process of restoring
the satisfaction of angry disappointed customers. Employees are given the freedom of act
to solve customers’ problems, they are allowed of many decisions like reparation, giving
free merchandise and refunds of goods and return of goods even if its past the month,
they believe that they might lose in the process, but on the long run its an investment that
with time will pay off.

39
VI-Conclusion:
we understood that Mango considers customers to be the most valuable asset , and
considers their dissatisfaction as a huge loss and try the best to restore their dissatisfaction
, to achive these goals they take good care of their employees , train and develop them
and use the newest software systems , always motivate them and empower them with
sufficient authority to make the right decesions on the right time , in their business
customer service is the most important process.
Customer satisfaction is the key aspect for whole MANGO enterprise to think about.
From the whole thesis’s discussion, there exist mostly satisfied aspects with MANGO
core customers. Hence, it is very interesting topic for MANGO headquarters and so does
with all other brands focusing mainly on satisfying everyone by which I believe after all
evidences I provided they are putting intensive effort to achieve one of the top fashion
brands in Lebanon and around the world.
Another important aspect MANGO takes care of is that is studies each market carefully
before it enters and studies all cultural and values of that market so that when entering
any MANGO store around the world you can still feel home.
we understood that Mango considers customers to be the most valuable asset , and
considers their dissatisfaction as a huge loss and try the best to restore their dissatisfaction
, to achive these goals they take good care of their employees , train and develop them
and use the newest software systems , always motivate them and empower them with
sufficient authority to make the right decesions on the right time , in their business
customer service is the most important process.
We can clearly see that the practical approach for customer service at Mango goes in
almost full harmony with the theortical approach , motivating employees and empowering
them with the authority they need , achieving customer satisfaction and restoring
dissatisfied customers , Mango applies correctly the theory which explains the huge
success it has and its expansion around the world , in this business customer service is
vital for its survival , and for its growth.
According to MANGO customer satisfaction analysis, there are some differences
between MANGO customer satisfactions compared to other brands.
Considering the importance of customer satisfaction such as age, sex, culture and values,
becomes easily to understand that from the present research comes out a question. “How
much the traditional consumer behavior is opposed to the current consuming behavior of
young person’s?” It was realized that there are consumers who mainly buy goods aiming
to the satisfaction that they will have for some of their basic needs and some other – the
young person’s that they come from a safety socio-economic environment – which breaks
the traditional consuming habits through selecting expensive brand-name products for

40
reasons such as prestige and social projection. In a lot of cases some customers buy goods
that probably will never use because for them, the process of purchase is a way of
entertainment, characterizing thus their consuming behavior as total absurd and in all
cases MANGO tries to satisfy all type of customers no matter what is their taste by huge
collections launched each season and keeping up the track in the fashion world.
MANGO has succeeded in containing all fashion business aspects and as evidence it was
able in few years to open over 100 brands around the world all connected to the main
company headquarters with over 9000 employees.
We can clearly see that the practical approach for customer service at Mango goes in
almost full harmony with the theortical approach , motivating employees and empowering
them with the authority they need , achieving customer satisfaction and restoring
dissatisfied customers , Mango applies correctly the theory which explains the huge
success it has and its expansion around the world , in this business customer service is
vital for its survival , and for its growth.

41
:Recommendations-VII
First of all, we would like to salute Mango for the brilliant job they’re doing in the
customer service field, and secondly we would like to recommend few thing.
A-Get more involved in the community, make festivals, and organize events about
fashion, and about other fields like animal welfare and taking care of environment or even
about motherhood, that can attract all kinds of people.
B-Increase the collection of their clothes, some customer complains about the relatively
small collection, though its wide, but some customers have different thoughts.
C-Keep up the good work, the excellent customer service they offer and keep on
developing it to reach higher levels!

42
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Heinemann ISBN 978-0-7506-1707-9
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Service Company: Case Study. Organizacija, Vol: 42, pp. 199-208
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 Lisa Whatley, International Miracle Mind Mentor and Empowerment Specialist,
Energy Medicine Healer, Published Author and Expert - Infinity Light
Healing RR#1,Mt. Elgin, Ontario N0J 1N0 Canada
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 Adrian Thompson, qualified social worker and community trainer, UK -
http://www.sitepoint.com/satisfaction-7-steps/
 Beverley Sparks, PhD Customer Service Failure and Recovery - Griffith Business
School ,Griffith University, PMB 50, GCMC, 9726, QLD , Australia
 Myra Golden Customer Service PR Consultant & Professional Speaker- Myra
Golden Media - Phone: 918-398-9368 , info@myragolden.com
 « Mango accusé de contrefaçon », Katrin Acou-Bouaziz, L'Express Styles, 15
June 2011

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