Production Department

Consider the scenario.

Janice works in the production department of a book printing firm. Her role involves collating printed documents, binding them and preparing them ready for shipment to the customer. She has no direct contact with the customer and believes that she has no responsibility for quality management. If a mistake in the print run is made, then she is not responsible. Her responsibility is just to take the printed material, collate it, bind it and ship it. Janice has reasonable communication and interpersonal skills. She is friendly and gets along well with her coworkers.

Although Janice prepares the products ready for shipment she does not address them. In fact, if you asked her, she would not be able to tell you who the organisation’s customers were. As far as she is concerned all the knowledge about customers—who they are and what they actually want—is processed by other people in the organisation. All she does is work on the production line. This means that as far as she is concerned, she has no responsibility for customer service. Other people in the organisation are employed to provide customer service because they are good at it.

What is wrong here—with Janice’s attitude and with the organisational system?

How do you think attitudes like Janice’s impact on other employees, on the supplier–customer chain and on the organisation’s outcomes?

What do you think should be done to make Janice more aware of her responsibilities toward the organisation’s customers? Why is it necessary that she understands that she has a very definite role to play with regard to customer service?

How can these problems be overcome?

This study deals with a scenario where Janice was responsible to work for the Production Department. The Key responsibility of Janice was to collate the printed documents, bind it and prepare for shipment. Janice was not ready to take any additional responsibilities for any matter. In this study, the negative attitude of Janice is explained and her inability to understand the importance of customer service prevailing in an organization.

This present case study includes Janice who works in the Production Department of a book printing firm. Janice was responsible to collate printed documents, bind it and prepare it for the final shipment to the customers (Wilson et al. 2012). This study focuses on the key issues in checking the attitude of Janice in customer service attention. It is necessary to remind Janice on matters relating to attaining customers and communicating with them in the most appropriate way.

Janice’s attitude will affect the organizational system in an adverse manner. She believes that addressing the customer and maintaining relation with them does not come under Job description and Job Specifications. As she is working in the production department, she should look into the matters regarding processing line channels of book printing firm in an overall manner (Jasmand et al. 2012). She is not interested in addressing the customers and only focuses mainly on the production line for future business activities.

This negative attitude of Janice affects other employees in the organization. It is important to make her understand that each employee should communicate with its customers and higher authority for the same. She is good at communication as well as interpersonal skills. However, she fails to address customer service, which is an important element in an organization (Homburg et al. 2013). Employees working in an organization should have a clear understanding of their regular customers, markets, product offerings in an overall manner.

It is necessary to make Janice understand her importance and role in the attainment of customer service processes in an organization. Maintaining good customer service will enable to reach customer satisfaction level in the future business activities. Customers will spread good word of mouth communication if they are satisfied with the given services offered by a particular organization. In other words, retention of existing customers is very important for an organization. Retention is cost-effective in comparison to acquisition of new customers for the same. It is advisable for Janice to understand the roles in the most appropriate way (Wilson and Gilligan, 2012). She should have a clear idea on matters relating to organization’s customers and its products offerings for the same. She should understand the fact that customer service requires urgent attention by the employees working in an organization. Scalar chain is a management concept, which signifies that employees should share an equal responsibility among the team members. It is advisable to help each other in time of need and work well in an organization. Coordination is required among the team members so that each understands their key responsibilities and work accordingly in an overall manner (Kotler et al. 2014). Literal meaning of customer service is meeting the needs as well as expectations in accordance with the requirements of an organization.