Customer-Driven Project Management: Dragon Market - Case Study Example

Business site Visit-Dragon Mart By student’s name Course code +name Professor’s name University name City, state Date of submission Introduction 2 Purpose 4 Methodology 6 Results 9 Conclusion 13 Recommendations 14 Introduction Dragon market in Dubai()UAE) is one of the China’s biggest market for electronic products such as headsets, Ds, and children toys .The mall also gives a shopping chance from jewelry to home ware items such as furniture. The mall is 1.2 kilometers long, which has a structure that resembles the shape of a Chinese dragon (Brown, 1997.pg 19). It is located in the Hatta Al Ain highway. It includes a rage of fashion home accessories, jewelry, toys, home appliances and many other products that gives room for great bargains. The following of the mall from the front section Total quality management is an important factor that all businesses within the mall need to consider. The quality of children toys, headset, and headsets should be of high standard. This aspect will help them to remain customer focused and the products and services offered will be worthwhile. It is also worth for browsing to be able to see all the products that are not accessible from the main shopping mall in Dubai. Again on the issue of total quality management of several products one cannot determine it without visiting the underlined sections. It contains a large number of shops with a few restaurants where people can sit and relax. For, example located in its entrance is a large Chinese restaurant, that has delicious genuine Chinese food to complete a day out. The unfortunate thing about the mall is that there is no genuine general description about it and as a result, anybody’s valuable travel is needed (Wood, 1994.Pg 43). The mall was worth the visit because it contains a variety of business shops especially on the toys section. This section would play a key role in analyzing the issues of customer service and drivers. Customers are highly sensitive to the quality of the products offered. Purpose The objective of this assignment is to define a several issues after visiting the mall. This assignment seeks to get answers on general information about the mall, such as is the customer always right all of the time or some of the time? After getting facts about customer’s students will be able to get experience of how to recognize customer performance, excellence, and dimensions (Brown, 1997. pg. 120). They will also acquire skills in measuring customer’s service. The saying on customer being right or wrong is a great way of determining customer roles in a business. It is note able that there are some complications to those who offer these services. For example, several people depend on CIO to meet their needs .When a conflict arises with another customers need s, the CIO makes decisions that favors one customer and alienates the other. There are several facts that students need to understand about the customer in regard to them being all of the time or some of the time (Tucker, 1997.Pg 20). The first fact is that customers do not have time to concentrate on all their known problems and opportunities that are significant. This means all customers’ needs every bit of time saving that the company, and products any business can provide. Customers are also considered to have unidentified problems and opportunities. Most customers are unconscious of something. In this case, every customer requires each bit of appropriate insight and a point of view on what a company ,products , and services being offered can offer (Tucker, 1997.Pg 28).. This aspect brings in the issue of total quality management. Once all the products and services offered by a business satisfies customer satisfaction retaining the customers is easy and possible. Another fact about customers is that their decision process is not a robust one to deal with intricacy of their problems and opportunities. It is clear that the best business processes becomes unable to deal with changes in the market and it becomes more absolute. It is not easy to find even one customer who can reveal what his or her decision process is. The point is every customer is always in need of the business owner spin on factors to consider while evaluating the type of products and services to offer in the market. The final fact about the customers is that it is only a selected number of individuals who puts their entire businesses up while making decision. This makes it clear that a large group of people know very little about processes that are outside their direct responsibility. For example, a purchasing agent who cares only about product price is a discouraging factor in the market. In such a case, the agent does not put factors such as product quality, durability, integration and warranty into consideration (Caropreso, 1990.Pg 67). Therefore, all customers’ needs business owners ability on how their products and services integrates with and assist in harmonizing all business connections. From the above analysis on customers altitude students are able to recognize performance excellence, and dimensions of customers. all the facts discussed have very little influence on the business products and services. These facts almost have nothing to do with the knowledge and skills of creative business executives. Therefore, any selling or business functions depends on the owners prospects, and realization of how one can save customers time(Wood, 1994.Pg57). The customers should be provided with skills and knowledge that they require in order to solve their problems and be able to address their opportunities. Pointing out their hidden problems, improving their decision process, and help them think big, generally and long term are some other important points in understanding customer service. The above analysis has enabled students to come up with clear knowledge that customers reorganization, performance, and excellence dimensions depends on the problems and opportunities they have in the market. The customer is not always on the right side, but they will prefer products and services from business that gets well with the four aspects of managing a business. Methodology Dragon mart is a big mall and in order to collect data on a in the toys and electronic sections customers observation method was the most appropriate way to use. The other method was on the case where students had to pretend being good and bad customers. In this a students had to pretend as good customers while others took the role of a bad customer. The two methods aimed at collecting customer behavior in the following areas, Performance Dimensions that is customer service drivers or factors, Performance Dimensions the process of customer services of business stores in the mall. Be aware of the salesperson’s demeanor, attitude, composure, customer service drivers or factors (Tucker, 1997.Pg 37). It is clear that customer service process contains a number of key drivers. These drivers enables successful enterprises to have a clear and sustainable competitive advantage in the market place especially in the mall where competition is stiff. Therefore, in order understand on the customer service focusing of the strategic differentiation is a key area to address(Doane, 2005.Pg 59). This can be gained once businesses focus on the most important element of success which is the customer. The business in the mall are enjoying success because in one way they have been able to manage the relationship between them and the customers. This has been achieved by the world class customer care service that is observant(Edosomwan, 1993.Pg 129).. The billing services and field support in many stores within the mall are efficient and possible. This was very clear from the observations analysis done. On the issue of customer service drivers there were several evolutionary drivers that were evident. These drivers had intense impact on the customer services quality. Some of these drivers includes the strategic value of customer care, business stores approach to the management relationship with customers, outfitted innovation, the technological advancement and customer prospect. On the Strategic Value it is clear that the service businesses are strategically evolving. For example from cost of operating a business to a multi-channel, cross-organizational advance that is straight associated around customer-focused processes. This approach gives acknowledgment to the customer service administration and a valuable asset to the organization businesses revenue generation opportunities. Customer Relationship administration is another customer service driver that was observable from the stores in the mall. The customer relationship administration has managed to make the concept of customer service more broad. For example , it is a satisfactory action to come up with operations and strategies in the business silos (Edosomwan, 1993.Pg 136). Common customer knowledge is required in the personalized customer contacts , which helps in building up strong business relationships. Flight risk can be reduced through customer segmentation rules. Under this driver approaches such as understanding the expectations that customers have on relationship management trends, a wide customer administration, and coming up with learning relationships with customers are very important in defining the customers decision. Every customer who works in the mall has expectations of getting what he or she needs. This makes the Customer Expectations an important aspect in this assignment. Customers are developing: their expectations are changing with time (Doane, 2005.Pg 50). These expectations have grown to a point where now exceptional services are considered as the minimal requirement of any business. The primary goals for exceeding customer expectations is on an solutions implicit explicit and explicit on customer requests. The customer service observant in the mall stores shows that success is triggered by the issue of customer experience from an horizontal point of view across the entire business. That is identifying the practical level of every single action that takes place in the enterprise and the impact they have on the success of the customer (Saylor, 1994.Pg 87). Therefore, these businesses need to understand the customer needs, anticipate on them and make sure that all services give support the aptitude to deliver the eminence services that customers need. A strategy where administration teams articulate the intentional importance of customer service is highly encouraged. Some of these key business strategies include: an increase in customer satisfaction, creating customer allegiance, investing more on total quality management, and increased maintenance, among others. Results The aim of visiting the mall was to be to get a clear knowledge on consumer service and its drivers. In order to get quality results on these aspects patronization method was used where visitors of the mal pretended to good and bad customers. The customer service on the various business stored visited reacted almost the same to both the good and bad customer. The treatment both acting customers got helped in the analysis of a good and bad customer service. The results showed that every customer service that is good is worth being appreciated. The take all the both from both good and bad company on behalf of the entire business. The sections of customers service receives all irritations that customers have about business services (Saylor, 1994.Pg 98). A good customer service section in any business should be patient in that case all the issues of concern from consumers will be handled. In almost all stores the representatives had patience and handled matters of concern in a polite manner from good and bad customer. The first conduct of the angry or bad customer falls on the customer service of much business. Therefore, representatives held a smile as a tactic of making them relax before even proffering of a solution. The biggest barrier that cans hider getting solutions is lack of good communication between the business representatives and customers (Caropreso,1990.Pg65 ). Representatives in the customer service sections communicate d eloquently to both types of customers. In respect to the kind of services that the patronizing customers got, it is clear that respect is a key factor in customer service. Retaining or loosing potential and new customers highly depends on how customers are addressed with due regard making customer representatives more effective and professionals. Apart from good treatments the patronizing customers also got very discouraging treatments in some of the stores they visited. This makes it very clear that it takes only one incident to lose a client completely (Berry,1999.Pg 136). When customers enter in the door of a business they expect to greeted and welcomed. Once this quality factor lacks in the businesses customer services forces customers to feel unwelcomed and do not consider themselves as a valuable commodity in the premises. Avoiding or yelling at a customer was a common issue in most stores in the mall that did not appreciate the bad customers. The representatives also avoided an eye contact with customers which was a clear indication of rudeness to bad customers totally discouraging the customers. Another common character was a social session between employees and the customer service representative when customers waited to be served. This personal conversation in business premises dismisses customers. Bad customers were lucky because common curtsies such as please and thanks were not used on them (Berry, 1999. Pg. 124). Use of these phrases makes customers feel appreciated and encourages them to continue on accessing the business services at all times. The language used in some stores towards bad customers was not clear and it was hard to understand especially on important matters about businesses. This analysis shows that customers services that are not efficient are prevalent and acts badly to customers who are disturbing. It is hard to overcome these characters in the business by simply studying the bad part of it. There is a possibility to swap it with stellar provision that will boost business customer base and its profits. Drawing examples from the headset customers in the electronic section, it is clear that customers are well treated. The customer service is favorable to both bad and good customers. This encourages them to build loyalty on these stores and there is a likelihood that they will come back and buy from the stores once more. The products were also of the right standard and issues such as warranty were offered. The following picture is a representation of sellers in this section: In the toy section things were different the customer services offered in this section were discouraging. The sellers were not smiling towards customers and also avoided an eye contact with them (Caropreso,1990.Pg 17).. This show of ignorance and disrespect, which annoys and discourages customers. The result of these treatments is that customers fails to buy these products and in the long run effect is the business loses such potential customers forever. The following pictures are a representation of this section in the mall. This picture represents a salesman waiting for customers inside a shop at Dragon Mart in the toys section. It is not a surprise to learn that customer will ditch service providers because of bad service as much as they will on price. Customers services greatly affects the decision on whether to give a service provider a repeat business or not. Most of the stores visited in the mall showed great customer service on resolving problems, product knowledge, and a clear understanding on customer requirements (Caropreso,1990.Pg 23). On the other hand, business who did not appreciate bad customers showed great characteristics on the following areas, inability in resolving customer questions, always an available to serve customers, showed great need to deal with multiple customers at the same time, and unprofessional conduct. Customer focused is a summary of what total quality management is all about. Many businesses that were visited used strategy such as effective communication as a way of integrating the quality of products, services in to the culture of these business activities (Educational foundation (national restaurant association). 2007). Total quality being a customer focused issues shows that the level of quality is determined by the customer. Therefore, no matter how a business enterprise adapts to foster quality improvements, the customer remains the determinant of whether the efforts employed were worthwhile. Conclusion Customer service and its drivers are important aspects in the development and success of most businesses. A good customer service is what brings back customers to the business. Customer service drivers that pass the total quality management set up helps in improving the services offered to the customers by enterprises in the mall. Services delivery is improved by TQM where by it incessantly strives to improve customer satisfaction through improvements on the service delivery process. The most crucial component of total quality management is that it provides a vision whose main focus is on each member in the entire firm on improving the customer service.it is clear that some business gave bad customers a very negative approach which may result in losing such potential customers forever. Therefore, for any businesses to be able to retain customer its customer service and drivers must conform to the total quality management standards in order to be able to service the customer needs. Recommendations Customer service and its drivers highly determine the performance and success of any business enterprise. They should try and conform to the standards and requirements of total quality management. The business in the mall will also be able to improve the quality of their products and services. All this will be possible through continuous refinements to customer feedback. Therefore, for these businesses operations to meet and exceed customer expectations every aspect of total quality management has to be employed. This can only be possible once all quality related functions are integrated in the enterprise (Total Quality Management Institute. 1992. Pg27-26). Focusing on the customers’ expectations and level of satisfaction will also help these businesses mange on quality development, quality control measures, improvement and quality assurance. Once these standards are adapted and applied customers value to businesses will increase because they stand to be the only key elements in a business. Reference List Brown, S. A. (1997). Breakthrough customer service: best practices of leaders in customer support. Toronto, J. Wiley & Sons Canada. Berry, L. L. (1999). Discovering the soul of service: the nine drivers of sustainable business success. New York, NY, Free Press. Barkley, B., & Saylor, J. H. (1994). Customer-driven project management: a new paradigm in total quality implementation. New York, McGraw-Hill.? Caropreso, F. (1990). Making total quality happen. New York, N.Y., Conference Board. Doane, D. S., Sloat, R. D., & Doane, D. S. (2005). The customer service activity book: 50 activities for inspiring exceptional service. New York, AMACOM. Educational foundation (national restaurant association). (2007). Customer Service: competency guide. Upper Saddle River, N.J., Pearson/Prentice Hall. Edosomwan, J. A. (1993). Customer and market-driven quality management. Milwaukee, Wis, ASQC Quality Press. Gale, B. T., & Wood, R. C. (1994). Managing customer value: creating quality and service that customers can see. New York, Free Press. Tucker, R. B., & Tucker, R. B. (1997). Customer service for the new millennium: winning and keeping value-driven buyers. Franklin Lakes, NJ, Career Press. Total Quality Management Institute. (1992). Quality through customer driven service: TQMI, Total Quality Management Institute 2nd New Zealand Conference, Sheraton, Auckland, 26-27 August 1992 : conference proceedings. Auckland, N.Z., NZ National Quality Awards Foundation. Read More