DMAIC for Six Sigma in Customer Relationship Management - Case Study Example

DMAIC for Six Sigma in Customer Relationship Management Name Institution DMAIC for Six Sigma in Customer Relationship Management Introduction Abu Dhabi International Airport is located in Emirates of Abu Dhabi, UAE. To improve its customer services, the airport recently completed its expansion project in 2002, which involved construction of new 4,100m runway, taxiway, satellite terminal, a series of brand new aircrafts, which cost about $230m, and rapid transit shuttle. However, these developments failed to address the problems especially since it resulted in increased passenger traffic that proved to more than the management of the airport could handle comfortably. This led to increased customer complaints. With increased level of globalization in Emirates, there is need for the airport to enhance its responsiveness which one of the critical factors determining customer satisfaction. In 1998, the Airport could accommodate more than 3.4 million passengers; however, the number escalated to 5.2 million in 2004; in 2005, the number rose to 5.2 million; and in 2006, the number hit 6.7 million. In 2010, Abu Dhabi Airport had 11 million passengers. Looking at the trend, the number has been on the rise, which means that the management needs to implement adequately the management practices that enhance its responsiveness. CRM and Complaints System in the Airport Customer relationship management (CRM) is an approach focusing on customer related services. Based on the definition, CRM is a business strategy that assists to leverage on specific technology, business processes, management philosophy, and customer focused culture with an aim of attracting and retaining the customers for profitability. Customers are increasingly becoming integral part in ensuring institutional success; as a result, Abu Dhabi International Airport has been keen on improving its customer relationship. In the Airport, the four components of CRM have been integrated: technology, people, process, and business culture and relationship. Technology involves computing abilities that allow the business to collect, save, and use data to satisfy the needs of customers. Technology has enabled the airport through its CRM system to achieve its objectives of collecting, classifying, and saving important customers information. Such integration assisted the business to develop better relationship with the customers through provision of wider customer behavior. Therefore, it is important that businesses integrate IT into their operations to improve the ability to understand the behavior of customers, develop productive business models, and build an effective communication medium with the customers. Another component of CRM is the people. The main objective for establishment of CRM is translation of customer information into customized products and services to meet the ever-changing needs of the customers, which in turn assist in gaining the required trust. However, it is essential that the business show commitment to effective CRM implementation to serve the customers better and satisfy their needs. Complaints are important ways of managing the businesses to ensure that they are accountable to the customers and providing valuable prompts of reviewing institutional performance. Complaint is defined as an expression of dissatisfaction made to organizational services. Abu Dhabi has an effective complaint handling system that resolves issues raised by dissatisfied customers in a timely and cost effective manner, provision of information leading to improved service delivery, and ensure that the complaints are handled properly. Currently, the Airport has an effective complaint handling system that has incorporate three steps: enabling the complaints, responding to the complaints, and ensuring adequate accountability and learning. In the enabling complaints, there are arrangements that enable people to make complaints, which are customer focused, accessible, visible, valued, and supported by the top management (Abu Dhabi Government, 2017).. Under responding to the complaints, the organization responds to the raised issues promptly, objectively, fairly, and confidentially. The Airport provides remedies in areas the complaints are upheld and where the system is under review. Finally, there are accountabilities for handling the complaints and ensuring that these complaints are used for stimulation of organizational improvements. Problem Identification and Solution In the modern competition driven market, customers have become more powerful than ever. Whenever customers have positive customer experience, then they are likely to share their experiences with friends, family, and connection which turn contributes to effective institutional performance and profitability (Al-Khouri, A. M. (2012). Throughout the years, the number of customers received has been on the rice with certain institutional infrastructures remaining the same. With increased deficiencies in customers satisfactions due to increased traffic beyond organizational management, the Airport has continued to receive customer complaints. In 2004, the Abu Dhabi Department of Civil Aviation came into agreement with the Supervision Committee for the Expansion of Abu Dhabi International Airport focused on an ambitious plan of expanding the Airport but failed to recognize the significance of other infrastructures associated with customer management. Therefore, the organization identified its problem through customer complaints. To address effectively the problem, the Airport described exactly the problem it had, the time the problem started, and established whether the problem had occurred in the past. The customers responded to these questions to enable the business understand and verify the facts. To develop the solution to the problem, the Airport management used various analytical tools to ensure that the decision meets the needs of the customers. In this case, the management focused on adequacy of the staff to carry out the solution, the parties involved, time required to solve the problem, the required resources, and ways of notifying the customers on the solution. To solve the problem, the Airport empowered the Abu Dhabi Government Contact Centre (ADGCC) to help in addressing the challenges associated quality issues, traffic originating from increased numbers of customers, and customer dissatisfactions due to lack of information. ADGCC was a solution-oriented institution that aimed to assist the citizens, business people, tourists, government employees, and residents with quick, direct, and easy access to any entity from the government. The centre provides a state of art government wide and properly integrated customer relationship management platform and as an online platform, it allows many people to access vital information in the Contact Centre and across the government in a collaborative manner to solve customers’ cases. The organization is an infrastructural support service that majorly focuses on the core competencies in the provision of high quality products and services that meet the needs of the people. Considering the diversified nature of the businesses operating in Abu Dhabi, the government had interest to establish control centre for real time to track various services offered to the customers. Different businesses that offer products and services operate under different platforms without any central control of information with every entity operating independently across the country to provide services to the customers. With increased needs of the customers to have access to the real time information, the government felt the need of developing efficient information management system for various activities of the business. The selection of this project was based on the strategic needs of the businesses. In the modern competitive business environment, information is of essence to any company and effective management of the information is on the rise. With the diversified operations and the spread of customers across the country, there has been need for centralization and consolidation of the information. Focusing on the cutthroat environment within which the organization operates, the aim of implementing this project is to ensure adequate provision of the competitive advantage within the market place. Application of DMAIC in Solving the Problems The aim of the project is to identify the efficiency of the current services that businesses use, categorize the problems based on the modern systems and explore the main causes of the problem. Based on the needs of management within Abu Dhabi Government Contact Centre and keeping the strategic focus for the business in this view, various factors were identified as critical to the project. Some of the included timely reporting of information, portable and applicable solutions in business units, and centralized data access for reporting management. To deal with these problems and achieve the required objectives, the business applied DMAIC model (Rababah, 2013). In this case, the Six Sigma approach was adopted considering that it tends to facilitate and fact driven approach. Moreover, it provided the management concrete evidence of findings, which facilitated requisite in decision-making. Considering that, there was no available solution and the extent of the problem, the methodology streamlined the flow of information within the organization. In this case, the Six Sigma DMAIC approach assisted in identifying the major cause of the problem and definition of various control measures. Define Phase This phase aims to identify the customers and needs of the processes, definition of scope, and goals of improving the project accordingly. During definition of the problem, the project used various tools such as the SIPOC diagram, affinity diagram, and voice of customers (VOC). These tools also assisted in determining the focus points of the project. A SIPOC diagram was used in identifying various elements of process improvement before commencing of the project (Six Sigma Online, 2012). In most cases, the diagram is used in defining business processes in which the teams identify and maps the existing basic connections between various elements including the suppliers, inputs, processes, customers, and outputs. In this case, the Six Sigma team developed the SIPOC diagram after thorough discussions and brainstorming with the stakeholders. To ensure that the established goals are realistic and satisfy the needs of customers, the business collected and analyzed the problems based in the VOC concept (Elewa, 2008). In this project, customer data were collected from various samples of the end-users information within various environment: operation and management. The collected VOC were based on the discussions and reviews, which assisted in determining the problems, encountered frequently on information management and various process flaws that cause hindrances. Considering that there was need to make clear representation of the collected data, the business used affinity diagram in analyzing and structuring the gathered feedback for the generation of solution ideas. In this phase, the Airport defined the goals and boundaries that required improvements based on the needs of the increasing numbers of customers and the Airport and various process of delivering these activities. Besides preparation of the SIPOC, the Airport management also prepared Critical to Quality specification timetable (table 2) as important analytical tools. The major problem that the business was experience was that the average time taken for addressing the needs of the customers could sometimes extend beyond 30 days against the set maximum limit of 14 days. This led to increased traffic, customer levels of dissatisfactions, extra efforts in following up and closure of discussions, and increased piles of customer complaints. The aim of applying the DMAIC model was to reduce the customer complaint resolution time from the current 30 days to less than seven days. The Airport used customer complaint analysis process through process mapping (SIPOC) table, which assists in defining the project boundary, identify data collection system, and resources needed for improvement of the customer experience as outlined in Table 1. Table 1: Abu Dhabi Airport Process Mapping (SIPOC) for Analyzing Customers' Complaints Table 2: CTQ Specification Table Measure Phase In the measure phase, the business collected accurate information on the project scope and problems that is to be solved, estimation of the process capability, detailed mapping of various processes to eliminate the possible failures, and identifying the areas that needed improvements. In addition, it involves identification of data considered reliable for comparison against the future results. In this project, the main aim of the measure phase was to assist in establishing the most important aspects of the current business aspects and collection of relevant data. In this regard, various aspects are important: analysis of the output and input, definition of the measurement plan, and testing the measurement systems (Pan, Ryu, & Baik, 2014). There was already existing data for the response time rules; nonetheless, for validation of the measurement systems, there was need to understand if customer assistants were measuring in similar manner. The results from analysis demonstrated that the current measurement systems were unreliable enough to guarantee an accurate measure required; thus, another measure had to be used. Random samples of the reports were chosen and important data manually taken from various information systems. Through collection of each date according to specifications of the indicator, it is guaranteed that the response time and quality evaluation would be respected. The sigma value was used in relating the ability of the processes for performing defect-free work. The higher the sigma value measured, the better the processes are running; therefore, the probability that the defect would occur is minimal. In this phase, the Airport dealt with data collection plan and identifying various stratification factors, collecting information regarding the cycle time, and analysis of the cycle time data meant for Sigma level estimation. To ensure effective management of the issue, the management collected about 100 reportable complaints documented on certain issues to have data on cycle time for closure customer complaints. Moreover, the cycle time data was subjected to normality in a bid to determine whether the data originated from the normally distributed process or not (Rai Technology University, 2013). The measure, as in figure 1 revealed that p value < 0.05 meaning that data failed to follow the normal distribution. The Airport realized that the initial data of customer complaint resolution time for the 100 complaints failed to follow the normal distribution. Moreover, the Airport found that the initial Sigma Level is 0.40. Figure 1: Normality Test for Cycle Time Data Analyze In this case, the business used brainstorming to gather ideas regarding the possible causes leading to excess deadlines in the complaint process of the customers. Main causes of problem that influence customer relations management were identified in the observation process. The findings added and similar cases verified. Moreover, the business undertook interviews to establish the levels of standardization and structure with an aim of finding causes that are more specific. The business used Fishbone analysis to understand the main cause and effect relationships of the defects associated with response time and quality of the customer relations management processes (Kamar, 2014). In every cause identified through interviewing processes and observations, different methods were used in taking out the root cause influencing the processes. A particular cause on the measurement system was detected in the Measure phase. The system used in the process needed constant manual control and manual. Moreover, it was difficult for organizational database to ensure effective communication between themselves, which was derived from various languages, and data shared. It was difficult to involve people considered external to the business if the data was not integrated and prepared entire for them. At this phase, it Airport aimed to determine the major causes responsible for the increased customer complaints. The management used brainstorming session through involving the cross function team that yielded into the causes of high cycle time for closure various levels (Ranjan & Agarwal, 2009). Improve and Control Based on the findings of the analysis stage, the team decided to reduce the number of defects through ensuring adequate improvement in the customer relations management. To achieve the require efficiency, the business pursued various objectives: having accurate and precise system of measurement, increasing the level of communication between various team that solve problems, having standard report between the customers and the business, reducing wastes in the report systems (International Six Sigma Institute, 2016). In addition, the business also ensured increment in the quality of problem solving investigations, ensuring that customers are informed, provision of speedy feedback that has reliable information, and to have a reporting system to check recurring problems that affect customers. At this stage, it was necessary for the management to take corrective actions to validate the root cause of the identified cause of customer complaints. The management proposed the actions considered to incline towards the improvement instead of taking action towards a particular complaint. The management undertook modification of various steps of customer complaint analysis and improvement processes to ensure that ensure action that organization implement improvement systems that cover the whole Airport, people, and processes. Conclusions and Discussions Solving the problem has substantially benefited Abu Dhabi International Airport through reduction of the follow-up time, ensuring adequate accessibility to information, decreasing closure time, and the ratio of pending customer complaints. The Airport used the DMAIC approach of the Six Sigma, which is considered a systematic approach to utilize training, measurement, and data analysis tool of identifying the cause of customer complaints and eliminate them to improve the current institutional process, hence achievement of the required results. Through qualitative and quantitative tools, the Airport management was able to identify, prioritize, and validate the possible causes of the customer dissatisfactions and their association with CTQ. The Six Sigma DMAIC tool often allow effective definition of the problem, enabling the use of data instead of trials and conjuncture during critical decision making, assisting the management to think of the processes, and think of various ways of managing real improvements. In this study, the focus was on adoption of Six Sigma to improve customer complaint resolution especially those resulting from increased organizational traffic. Moreover, the study described the specifications of the project, the manner in which the organization employed various analytical tools in each phase to identify, improve, and control various variation sources that result in poor customer responsive. Through the years, the business has concentrated on its Six Sigma’s customer-focused, information driven ideology, and incorporate it everything that does. Moreover, the business is keen on building such successes through sharing the most appropriate practices across the shareholders and putting its full power behind its quest of delivering better and faster customer solutions. Satisfaction is not only limited to government services but also businesses which need to leverage on competitive advantage through offering quality products and services which in turn improve the level of customer satisfaction (Saraf & Yadav, 2012). For effective achievement of these objectives, both the governments and business entities are focusing on the CRM concept in building a long-term and value-added relationship that ensure high level of customer satisfactions and loyalty. References Abu Dhabi Government. (2017). Abu Dhabi Government Contact Centre: At Your Service. Retrieved May 4, 2017, from https://www.abudhabi.ae/portal/public/en/abu-dhabi-government-contact-centre-at-your-service;jsessionid=JvcnZKYBxpV2fvvsL4JQwWTJTlg04hnLMQX4RZLJn5yddJ1nb6pm!1510499604!-2077067910!1493883105961 Al-Khouri, A. M. (2012). Customer Relationship Management: Proposed Framework from a Government Perspective Times. Journal of Management and Strategy, 3(4), 34-54. Elewa, A. A. (2008). Abu Dhabi government's 24-hour contact centre | GulfNews.com. Retrieved May 4, 2017, from http://gulfnews.com/news/uae/government/abu-dhabi-government-s-24-hour-contact-centre-1.93275 International Six Sigma Institute. (2016). Six Sigma DMAIC Process - Define Phase - Capturing Voice of Customer (VOC) - International Six Sigma Institute. Retrieved May 4, 2017, from http://www.sixsigma-institute.org/Six_Sigma_DMAIC_Process_Define_Phase_Capturing_Voice_Of_Customer_VOC.php Kamar, M. S. (2014). Six-Sigma Application in the Hotel Industry: Is It Effective for Performance Improvement? Research Journal of Management Sciences, 3(12), 1-14. Pan, Z., Ryu, H., & Baik, J. (2014). A Case Study: CRM Adoption Success Factor Analysis and Six Sigma DMAIC Application. South Korea: Fifth International Conference on Software Engineering Research, Management and Applications. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/f308/11a54720daba7e8ad26bb5d231bef0c0fa2a.pdf Rababah, K. (2013). Implementation Methodology Of Customer Relationship Management (Crm) Systems: Towards Developing Successful Principles And Guidelines. Academic Research International, 4(6), 551-561. Retrieved from http://www.savap.org.pk/journals/ARInt./Vol.4(6)/2013(4.6-58).pdf Rai Technology University. (2013). Service Quality and Customer Relationship Management. Retrieved May 4, 2017, from http://164.100.133.129:81/eCONTENT/Uploads/Service_Quality_and_Customer_Relationship_Management.pdf Ranjan, J., & Agarwal, R. (2009). Application of segmentation in customer relationship management: a data mining perspective. International Journal of Electronic Customer Relationship Management, 3(4), 402. Saraf, V., & Yadav, L. (2012). Six Sigma CRM: An Innovative Marketing Strategy. International Journal on Emerging Technologies, 3(1), 65-68. Retrieved from http://www.researchtrend.net/ijet/ijet31/ijetnew/11%20DR%20SARAF%201.pdf Six Sigma Online. (2012). Six Sigma and Customer Relationship Management. Retrieved May 4, 2017, from http://www.sixsigmaonline.org/six-sigma-training-certification-information/six-sigma-and-customer-relationship-management/ Read More