Establishing the Needs of Targeted Customers - Term Paper Example

Movement of people Name: Course: College: Lecturer: Date: Introduction Entering a new market is one of the challenging tasks faced by managers of business organizations. A comprehensive understanding of the new market is a fundamental factor for the success of the business organization. Operations manager of a transport service company entering a new market is supposed to understand effectively the needs of potential customers in the new market for the organization attain its objectives. Appropriate techniques need to be utilized to gather accurate information regarding consumer needs (Identifying Customers’ Requirements). Both inter-modal and intra-journey movements pose some opportunities to a transport organization. These opportunities must be fully exploited in order for the business organization to improve its competitiveness (Hamberger 1). Establishing Travel Needs in the Community Establishing the needs of targeted customers is one of the most crucial aspects of customer service in a business organization. Effective understanding of customer needs facilitates provision of high quality services which are not only admired but also highly demanded by customers. As an operational manager of a transportation business organization, one is required to employ effective strategies to understand customer needs effectively. Such a move will enable the business organization ton attract and retain more customers thus registering high sales volume. Customers enjoy sovereignty especially in a competitive market. In this regard, business organizations are supposed to address the needs of customers effectively in order to remain competitive in the market (Identifying Customers’ Requirements). Exploratory research should be carried out to identify the needs of travel customers in the new community or rather market. Through exploratory market research, customers are given opportunity to highlight main aspects which make them satisfied or dissatisfied. In this regard, good interaction between the marketing team and the customers is very crucial in establishing customer needs. To carry out effective exploratory market research to identify customer needs, tools such as questionnaire and depth interviews should be utilized. In order for the exploratory survey to produce productive results, the questionnaire should be designed via customers’ lens. If the questionnaire is prepared through the lens of customers, more accurate information concerning customer satisfaction is likely to be attained. Designing the questionnaire on the lens of the transport company will only indicate expected performance of the products in the market but will not unveil needs of customers in the market (Identifying Customers’ Requirements). The questionnaires should be sent to various groups of targeted customers. Elderly, young, male, female, black or white customers living in the new markets should be sent questionnaires. While sampling customers for distribution of questionnaire diversity of customers must be considered. Every segment of the target market must be represented through questionnaire response to ensure that effective needs of all customers are identified. Since the target market is a community in a certain region, hand delivery and collection of the questionnaire will be the most effective method. Besides, the questionnaires should be easy to understand and should only ask for relevant information in identifying customer needs. The questionnaires should not ask for identification of the respondents in order to encourage more individuals to respond (Identifying Customers’ Requirements). Use of interviews with potential customers is another major technique for establishing the needs of customers. Talking to customers is very crucial in gathering information on the needs of travel customers. The operational officers must interview a sample of customers face to face and one to one in order to establish the travel needs of the customers in the new market. Before contacting the interviews, ‘best judgment’ principle must be utilized to ensure a rational mix of various types of customers such as elderly, young, high value and lower value customers. To obtain accurate information from customers, the interview must reach full spectrum of the respondents. It is through face to face interviews where the operational manager can get adequate and relevant information since he/she is in a position to control and guide the respondent more effectively (Identifying Customers’ Requirements). Another significant technique of tapping important information regarding the needs of customers in the new market is use of focus groups. Focus groups entail a conversation or rather discussions with a group of six t o eight customers. Focus group members should entail potential customers from the new market. To enable positive response of focus group members, the members should be invited personally but not as a group. Moreover, the time for focus group discussion should be well scheduled with effective consideration of the daily duties of all focus group members. Offering incentives or sitting allowances to members of focus groups plays a major role in ensuring active participation and positive response of the members. A good venue for discussions should be identified and utilized to ensure effective participation of all group members. An effective venue for discussion is one which makes participants to feel more comfortable. The venue should be a place where the participants are familiar with and somewhere where it’s more convenient (Identifying Customers’ Requirements). To attain reliable and adequate information on consumer needs, the focus group discussion should be subdivided into two major sections. The first section should not be structured while the second section of the discussion should be well structured. During the first section of discussion, the moderator or rather the operational manager should use various stimulus technique and material to generate discussion regarding customer needs. The unstructured discussion session will generate many significant issues regarding customer needs. However, the structured discussion will play a major role in disseminating crucial information regarding customer needs since the moderators takes more control and guidance of the discussion. For instance, the participants should be asked to rate the relative importance of certain needs such as quality and price of the services. However, the rating exercise should be done individually and the scores of all participants averaged to identify issues of more importance to customers. The most important issues raised in the focus groups should be used in the questionnaires to retrieve more reliable information regarding customer needs (Identifying Customers’ Requirements). Effective communication skills are very important aspect in gathering reliable information regarding customer needs in the new market. To start with, the moderators or the operational officers should be good listeners in order to understand all issues rose by customers appropriately. Potential customers in discussion forums and interviews should be given adequate time to express themselves regarding their needs in travel services. Such a move will enable the moderator to come up with not only reliable but also adequate information to make effective decision regarding transport services. Gathering information regarding the needs of customers is one of the fundamental aspects which determine success of a business organization in a new competitive market (Identifying Customers’ Requirements). Opportunities in Inter-modal Movement Inter-modal movement poses various opportunities to the transportation business organization. Inter-modal movement entails movement of people and shipment of goods using more than one mode of transportation in a single, seamless journey (Jones). Though inter-modal movement will lead to increased competition in the transport market, it creates various opportunities which need to be exploited by the bus track company to enhance its competitiveness. To start with, inter-modal movement will result to significant reduction of traffic congestion. Since a large number of travelers will board different modes of transport, the roads will be free of intense traffic congestion. This is an opportunity to the business organization since time utilized to transport people from one area to another will be minimized significantly (Hamberger 2). One of the factors which customers consider while hiring a service is expected time to attain the service. In this regard, time taken by passengers from one place to another is an essential factor in deciding which mode of transport to use. In this regard, more customers will be willing to board buses due to their enhanced speed and low cost. As compared to airplanes, buses remain to be less expensive thus more customers moving from city to city will prefer buses to airplane (Hamberger 3). Besides, inter-modal movement poses an opportunity of reduced cost of operation for companies in the road transport market. Since the traffic congestion is reduced substantially through adoption of inter-modal movement strategy within a region, buses will spend significantly less fuel. Buses and other automobiles usually use a lot of fuel during intense traffic congestion. One of the factors which lead to skyrocketing of fuel prices is the increased demand. However, reduction of traffic congestion will lead to reduced demand of fuel thus reducing its price. In this regard, the transport company should take advantage of investing saved money into profitable projects. This is a major opportunity which can improve the competitiveness of the company if well exploited (Hamberger 4). Opportunities in Intra-Journey Movement Intra-journey movement is the shipment of cargos and movement of people within a certain region using only one mode of transport in a single, seamless journey. Though this model of transports presents some threats to business organization, it poses some opportunities which must be exploited by business organizations. One of the major opportunities presented by intra-model movement is that it reduces competition within the transport market. In this case, the company will not face intense competition since other modes of transport will only be tertiary competitors. The company will primarily compete with other road transport business organizations thus placing it at a higher competitive edge (Hamberger 5). Decreased competition in the transport market is a major opportunity which needs to be exploited by the business organization in order to enhance its financial performance effectively. The business organization is likely to be insulated from the stiff competition of well established business organization in other modes of transport. Decreased competition leads to increased sales volume since customers will have few choices in the market. High profitability will also be attained by the business organization due to increased sales turnover (Hamberger 5). Besides, increased funding is expected in road transport in this case of intra-journey movement. This is an opportunity to the bus service department of the transport business organization. The increased funding in road mode of transport will lead to improvement road infrastructure. Improved road infrastructure reduces the rate of depreciation of vehicles thus enabling the business organization to save money. Vehicles are normally worn out at an increased rate in poor road infrastructure. In this regard, the business organization should take advantage of improved road network to save more money for investment in more productive projects (Hamberger 5). Challenges in Scheduling Bus Services Scheduling of bus services in the new market is likely to pose with various challenges which threaten the success of the bus operations if not well addressed. The fundamental objective of any transportation system is to maximize quality of service delivery to customers by minimizing travel time and delays. One of the major challenges which will face the subsidiary during scheduling is the customer growth. It is not easy for the operational manager to determine the exact number of customers in future. Based on the fact that people of the new market will not turn into customers on the day which the organization starts its operation, the rate of customer growth remains a major challenge to the operations manager. Besides, the number of customers of the company in future will depend more on the quality of services offered by the company and the rate of competition in the market. As a result, many buses are likely to be out of service if the operational manager is not able to determine the rate of customer growth in due time. However, the company may run out of buses or personnel if the rate of customers increases at a high rate than expected. In this regard, determining the growth rate of customers is a major challenge to the operations manager which needs to be addressed effectively in order for the company to be successful in the new market (Helena 332). Pressure from the top management to use resources efficiently is also another challenge of the operational manager. Operation in the new market requires additional resources such as employees and buses. In this regard, the organization will be forced to spend more financial resources. Consequently, the operational manager will be pressurized by the top management to minimize the cost of operation while at the same time providing high quality services to customers. Minimizing cost of operation and at the same time improving the quality of services is a major challenge to the operational manager which needs to be addressed effectively (Helena 332). Scheduling bus drivers is also a major challenge to the operations manager. The process of finding a set of daily duties of drivers that cover all vehicle blocks or all trips is a challenging task to the operational manager. Since bus services are provided from town to town and city to city, assigning each driver daily feasible duties is a major challenge. Besides, limited parking areas are another major challenge which can lead to ineffective operations of the buses if not well addressed by the operational manager. The operational manager will be challenged to determine bus accommodation with lanes and parking specifications as well as drop-off and pick-up points along the journey. Though packing areas for buses has been provided by local authorities, the packing areas can only accommodate a certain number of buses at a certain period of time. In this regard, the operations manager is challenged to determine the number of buses which should be at a certain place at certain period of time to ensure that all buses are well accommodated in packing lots. Otherwise, the company can incur unnecessary legal charges if buses are packed in restricted areas (Helena 335). Ensuring environmental conservation is another challenge facing the operations manager while scheduling the operations in the new market. Due to the global warming issues, government authorities and environmental activists require business organizations to improvise means of reducing environmental degradation. Bearing in mind that automobiles are some of the leading environment polluters across the world, operation of the company in the new market will be critically assessed by government authorities and environmental activists. Consequently, the operations manager is faced with the challenges of minimizing air pollution caused by the buses. This is a more challenging task since it might affect negatively the performance of the company (Helena 341). Minimizing the Scheduling Challenges The scheduling challenges need to be mitigated in order for the organization to be successful in the new market. Computer generated bus schedule is one of major technique which should be utilized by the operations manager to mitigate the negative impacts of the challenges of scheduling. Computer systems have proofed to be most reliable systems in planning due to their high speed and high degree of accuracy as compared to manual systems. There are various technology oriented business organization s which have produced various systems for scheduling. In this regard, the operations manager should seek for a tailored system for scheduling bus operations in cities and towns. Moreover, gathering adequate data is very crucial since the computerized schedules will require effective data to be entered as inputs in order to produce effective output. Computerized scheduling system will help in reducing time wasted in bus parks and stations thus saving the cost of operation significantly. Moreover, all human resources will be utilized effectively since idleness will be discouraged (Narasimhan 2). Besides, integrating vehicle scheduling and driver scheduling is also a major technique in mitigating the negative effects of the challenges. Bearing in mind that both drivers and vehicles have to be present in order for transportation to take place, integrating their scheduling will play a major role in coming up with an effective schedule which maximizes the productivity of the organization. Moreover, establishing a good relationship with other managers of the organization will be important in ensuring the success of the scheduling process. Such a move will minimize the pressure exerted on operations manager by top managers. Reduction in pressure leads to increased motivation and liberty to make decisions. Besides, a good relationship with other managers will enable the operations managers to get important information for successful scheduling from them. The operations manager should request other managers to provide him with information regarding the techniques used for past operations schedules. In this regard, the operations manager should review the past techniques used in scheduling operations and make some improvement where necessary and apply them. Such a move will help immensely in saving time spend in scheduling (Narasimhan 10). Conclusion Though entering a new market for a transport company is more challenging, effective understanding of customers’ needs, exploitation of opportunities posed by inter-modal and intra-journey movements and effective implementation of driver and vehicle schedule lead to business success. Use of exploratory research in the new market and development and application of good communication skills play major roles in identifying the needs of customers. Inter-modal movements reduce traffic congestion and the cost of operation of a transport service organization thus poses the opportunity of investment in more profitable projects. However, the intra-journey movement reduces competition and leads to improvement of road networks thus posing an opportunity for expansion. Challenges of scheduling bus operations can be minimized by using computerized schedule system, integrating vehicle and drivers schedules and creating a good relationship with other managers in the business organization. Entering a new market can be risky task for a transport service company if proper strategies are not employed by operations manager. Works Cited Hamberger, Edward. “Intermodal Transportation Systems.” FDCH Congressional Testimony 25.1 (2002): 1-5. Helena, Lourenco. “Multi-Objective Metaheuristics for the Bus Driver Scheduling Problem.” Transportation Science 35.3 (2001): 331-344. Identifying Customers’ Requirements. 2008. 11 September 2009. . Narasimhan, Seshagiri. “Computer Generated Time-Tables and Bus Schedules for a Large Bus Transport Network.” Transportation Science 3.1 (2006):1-17. Read More