Improving customer service case study examples

How thoroughly the problems identified in the Customer Satisfaction

Survey or in the case you have chosen and explained, have been addressed.

In the Australian market, David scarf is a major retailer and over the past few years, its patronage has continually declined posing it to more and more non-moving stock. This has translated to profit loss thus swiftly becoming unbeneficial. In an attempt to identify the cause of problems, the Managing Director and the Chief Financial Officer engaged a third party organization. This comprised of senior managers, procurement manager, the distribution manager, the marketing manager and the customer care manager to conduct an arms-length customer satisfaction Survey hoping that it would provide information necessary to get back the business to the healthy growth that it previously had.

After conducting a survey, the third party organization addressed a report to the managing director (MD) and the chief financial officer (CFO). David scarf performance review seeks a management where customers drive the services and any service rendered to the customers should be fully satisfactory. If David scarf’s services are to go customer-driven, then they must have judgment based according to the expectations of the public and customers. Such expectations are set and in large parts by services’ quality that the American corporations and David scarf deliver continuously. The third party organization says that positivity has to be there overnight. David scarf needs to learn from commitments that best corporations make. They also have to learn from what their views are on service (Schneider, 2009, p234).

The best corporations have a different view of service since to them service is creating an experience. Provision of missing information and generation of a confirmation is not all that matters. There several things that add up to the characterization of a worth service occurrence such as surroundings, redress, courtesy, complaint procedures, choices and accessibility. When conducting the survey, the third party organization realized that customers came across many goods on offer but their sort and prices were not to their expectations. David scarf had also run out of the stock that many customers needed.

The idea of setting the standard for David scarf to be equal to those doing great and in private sector would require using huge amounts of money. An alternative to that is telling the workforce what kind of services to give to the company and the customers. Services like cleaning the stores should be excellent and the staff should be available and willing to be helpful to customers. David scarf employees should draw on their experience to give a good definition of quality.

Whether the solutions offered adequately remedy those issues

Today, customers have a variety of ways in which they can give feedback regarding their experience with products and services. For the purposes of improving the customer experience, David Scarf should use the customer feedback as a reference point when delivering services. To continue improving and driving continual customer service, there are four areas that David scarf should focus on namely storing customer feedback after capturing it then acting on the feedback after carrying out an analysis on them. The four things are therefore capturing the customer feedback, storing customer feedback, analyzing customer feedback and finally acting on customer feedback.

There are also several channels that make possible for obtaining customer care feedback that surround good experience of the customer care such as internet surveys, phone surveys, online chatting sessions, phone based and electronic mail based support where ready customer care attend to customers.

Whether possible issues with Suppliers have been addressed

Keeping the customers satisfied translates to better growth of a business and customer satisfaction is therefore essential in David scarf. Initially, the company concentrated on making profits and making more money forgetting that customers remain happy because of little things therefore buying more. It is easier for a company to maintain the relationship of the customers and retain them than attracting a new one. If David Scarf integrated the feedback from customers to the company, it will get more empowerment and profits. Customer satisfaction is all about meeting their expectations.

Instead of customers going to the stores and getting things that they did not expect like dirty floor, cluttered goods and disorganized products, they should get what they did not expect positively in terms of good service from the customer representatives and staff. In so doing, the customers get delighted and become more loyal. A delighted and loyal customer is more frequent to the store than the merely satisfied one. The third party organization pointed out that the best way of delighting the customers is through integrating the customer service profile into the policies of customer service.

The customer service profile is an investment in the human capital and has a significant impact on the bottom line of the company. Regardless of the position, all the staff at David Scarf interacts with customers externally or internally or both and the kind of impression they create on the customers make or break the sales in future. Whenever the customer is recruiting new employees, it should ensure that the employees are customer oriented.

It measures the tendencies and proficiencies associated with good customer service. It is clear to many that customer service is the heart to any given company. When the company employs staff based on profiles, customer service profile, the company will have enough people with good customer relations to satisfy customers and build customer loyalty as well as make sales go up. Such staff will have a significant role in profitability gains.

The main problems encountered when using organizational aspect when implementing strategy is quitting of the employees because they get no motivation from David scarf. When the situation gets to this point, chief executive officers and senior management in Woolworths impose the policy on those working in the company. The manner in which information circulates around the ranks is also a problem. If information circulation does not have a fluent flow, obsolete and outdated information would base the decisions made and it is not right. The solution to this problem is delegating the command for the purposes of easy and fluent streaming of information. This solution is through all the ranks especially those involved with new strategy implementation in David scarf (Grundy, 2007, p567).

Implementation of a strategy depends mostly on culture, which goes hand in hand with structure. Woolworths is a global company and it becomes a bit difficult to integrate and implement the strategy in all stores from all over the world. Because implementation involves the control of behavior of other customers and their perceptions alongside culture many problems are human related and the solutions would mainly depend on the structure of the management and the behavior of leadership. Structure and culture therefore go together and they act as big issues in implementation of strategies.

Nurturing relationships between customers and staff is an important ingredient in strategy implementation and its absence would very much affect awareness creation to customers and consumers at large. It is very important for every organization to create good relationships with clients surrounding community. Through this, there is creation of long-term benefits. It requires that David scarf hire good-hearted people during recruitments. It follows that David Scarf structures its organization around key strategies.

Market segmentation approach is a technique where products get certain products created for specific target markets. It refers to product’s design and this is something that David Scarf takes seriously. Its products are mainly for the music industry where young people are the target group. David Scarf performs product segregation approach to differentiate between its products and other products in the market (Howard, 1998, p87).

There are many methods applicable to market segmentation in use at David Scarf. They include cluster analysis, which is a set of methods meant for knowing the structure or groups of people in a set of facts having measures on each group. In David Scarf, all products get the same treatment and there is no dependent variable because they all get equal treatment.

Conjoint analysis should also be common in David Scarf where it decomposes preference into component parts. These parts are price, quality and brand. In this method, products get the view of bundles of characteristics where there is use of experimental design to create descriptions of products by varying attribute levels. According David Scarf’s analysis calculates each attribution towards creation of product description. This is a good method especially for the purposes of profit segment

Whether possible issues with Suppliers have been addressed

A program aimed at improving David Scarf suppliers’ service would not start from scratch. The third party organization has already started the task of empowering employees to give much concentration to real customers. David scarf should build a bigger building block for a customer-driven company because the company lacks policy statement that sets out what the company is trying to achieve. This should address things like security staff that belongs to the company and have same people consistently as security staff on duty. The company should also enter into agreements with card payment services and all banks to avoid customers using more money and paying more when using cards from other banks. The policy statement should also cater for loyalty programs, which they find to be too expensive to administer.

The company also needs an initial call to action for the purposes of thought-provoking extensive centralized participation. To top up to that, David Scarf needs direct input from customers. The current planning in the company depends on what the managers and stakeholders think on the wants of the public. The frontline employees need to get their voices heard and for the purposes of improving quality, employees should remain at the center of programs. The third party organization argued that it would only take 10 months to implement the changes, which would adequately remedy the issues. Reforms will only take place after implementations but if implemented well, it will take them not more than 12 months to reform the entire supply chain. The company will no longer receive bulk stock because transportation will not only be to individual stores but also to any store not necessarily in the major metropolitan area in Australia.

Whether the solutions offered reform the company’s Supply Chain adequately

David and Scarf should have an overall policy established for the quality of services given to the customers. They should also come up with programs that initiate customer service in all their outlet stores that interact with the public directly. The Chief Financial Officer and the Managing Director should issue a decision-making order that should change the quality of services rendered to the public and customers. Customer service is equivalent to the best in business. The order states that the principles below govern the provision of customer services.

The organization also came up with an executive order that they presented to the MD and the CFO with principles that would govern the employees provides quality satisfactory services. These included surveying customers frequently in order to get the quality and kind of services they might be in dire need. This will eliminate the problem of them coming to the stores and getting undesired services or getting what they did not expect. The order provides that the MD together with the CFO post employees’ service standards and measure the results against them. This means that the problem of customers getting unwilling to help staff will no longer be there (Schneider, 2009, p98).

Having point of reference performance against the best in the industry helps improve the store. This will ensure that the store stays clean, well arranged and in good order. This will not require them to put extra cash but only enhance the management. To both staff and customers, there will be choices of means of delivery and source of service. Some customers might be interested in one staff serving them throughout so as not to ask them what they want every time they visit the store. In the past, customers would come and get what they want but not the way they want it delivered to them. The executive order will make services, information and complaint systems that are easy to access. It will address and redress for poor services that the customers receive and some factors that could lead the staff to offering poor services. In matters relating to inquiries and courtesy, the order will handle them with professionalism ensure that the delivery of services is done with courtesy. The best thing that the third party did is advocating for provision of pleasant surroundings and a good shopping environment for customers in the executive order.

When the third party organization comprising of the low-level managers conducted the survey on customers and staff at David Scarf, they found it necessary for the executive order to recommend that all the supply chains and federal agencies directly delivers to the public and for them to be the best in terms of offering the services. The federal agencies should immediately identify their customers and survey them on services and giving satisfactory services as well as desired results.

According to the executive order, federal agencies should have a look at the front line employees’ barriers so that they can match with the best ideas in business. Within 12 months, the federal agencies should report the results to the chief financial officer and the managing director of David scarf. After one year, the federal agencies and the third party organization should be in a position to publish a plan for the customer service. The customers should be able to understand the published plan.
ntation.

How the company’s systems might be improved or replaced to achieve the goal.

The goal of every company is to see customers are well attended to and satisfied. This also applies to David Scarf and the systems in place determine their fate. Changing company systems or improving them helps a company achieve the goals. They can replace or improve company systems in several ways including putting new registers in place. Such systems help the Managing Director determine who to reward and who to fire.
n (Loudon, 2008, p123).

Whether the solutions are actually capable of being implemented, at reasonable cost, within the 12-month timeframe.

The report presented to the managing director, chief financial officer of the company will improve the position of the company, and within the 12 months of implementation, there will be tangible change. Customer service profile is the leading service assessment in selection in any industry and so is it in David Scarf.

Whether the end result is likely to produce the desired improvement

in the company’s market position. Regression trees, which many referred to as automatic interaction exposure, which many people now refer to as answer trees and CART. This method can examine many buyers quickly. In David Scarf, this method helps in demographic variables such as age group, gender and occupation. Headphones and earphones mainly target the middle age group comprised of young people and youths in general. Occupation still matters because many customer care representatives use headphones and earphones for communication meaning they concentrate much on the customers without distraction. Previous behavior about who bought and who did not buy helps in knowing how to improve them and make them the preferred choice.

References

Loudon, D. 2008. Consumer Behavior: Concepts and Applications, McGraw Hill Macmillan: London.

Howard, J. 1998. Theory of Buyer Behavior. J. Wiley & Sons: New York.
Schneider, B. 1998. The Perception of Organizational Climate: The Customer’s View. J. Wiley & Sons: New York.
Federal Quality Institute. 2008. Presidential Award for Quality. Washington publishers: Washington D. C.