Innovative Techniques To Improve Customer Experience At Oz Supermarket

RFID Technology and PayWave Cards

Questions:

1. Write a well presented report for the above outlining the Business Operation of Oz Supermarket.

2. Provide Suggestion to Improve Customer Service.

A retail chain known as Oz Supermarket is a new store. Its target is to eliminate or minimize the problems that arise at the queues during the time of exit. The retail chain is responsible for selling stationery goods, household and non perishable goods. The several methods that are adopted by this retail chain to improve its business are very innovative in nature.

This report discusses about the several techniques that are followed by Oz Supermarket in order to improve its working process and minimize the exit queues. The customers face a lot of issues while waiting in the queue. This supermarket aims to reduce such issues. This report also recommends other methods to improve the customer satisfaction and business processes of the Supermarket.

Oz Supermarket is a store that has recently opened. It is a retail store. This supermarket has implemented a set up procedure for eliminating all types of issues that the customers face at the exit queues. There are several techniques that have been implemented by this store to resolve the limitations of any retail chain regarding the exit queues.

The first or initial step that is taken by the Oz Supermarket is to keep the stock of only non perishable goods along with household and stationery goods. The most important step that is taken by the store is the use of RFID technology (Jia et al., 2012). They issue a PayWave card to all the customers that visit the stores. The customers do not have to take the burden of paying or carrying huge cash amount. This technique of using electronic card has helped the store in many ways. The customers are able to purchase any products by using their cards that are issued by the supermarket. The entry of the customer is allowed by using the PayWave card. They have to wave it at the gate. The supermarket uses trolleys that have special type of RFID cards installed in them. This RFID reader chip carries out work in a systematic manner. The trolleys are accountable for keeping count and calculating the total bill amount of a customer depending on the items picked. These items or products get automatically queued. On removal of any product, the item is deleted from the queue and the bill amount is reduced. In other stores the customers have to wait in a queue in order to pay their bills. But in this store the total amount is reduced from their PayWave card when they move out of the store. The gate is also installed with RFID technology.

Assisting Customers with Employees

There is a separate policy for the new customers that arrive at the store. Suppose a tourist or any native person visits the store for the first time. At that time they do not have the PayWave card. They need to speak with the front office executives and deposit a certain amount of cash to get the PayWave card. This card can be used by them on a temporary basis. This card will also give them the facility to buy products and simply walk out of the store. The amount of the bill will be deducted from the PayWave card. If they do not need the card again then they can get the money back. They can use this card any time in the future. The RFID chips are installed in every product in the store. The store uses the extra cost in the interest of the customers.

There are several number of stations located at the store. These stations can be used by the customers to check their bills in order to understand what item is to be added and what item is to be added. The shopping summary stations are placed at regular intervals. Oz Supermarket also gave a thought about the parking problems that the customers face in any other retail stores. The customers are charged a low rate for parking during the non peak season. They have made a special offer for disabled people. They can park the car without any charge. The store has taken several steps strategically in order to improve the customer satisfaction and generate more revenue.

Engaging and hiring more number of employees for the purpose of assisting all types of customers can be one of the best options to improve the process of customer service. Proper selection of employees at the time of interview along with proper training after they have been hired is essential for improving the customer service of the Oz Supermarket. This type of method will help the tourists and new customers in many ways (Sung & Choi, 2014). Employees can take special care of the customers by guiding them to the area of different products and also to the various summary stations. The customers might not be comfortable with the new and advanced method used in this store. More number of employees will help to take care of all the customers equally. Once the customer finds it good and safe they will return again. The customers should feel safe and important after entering the store. The goodwill of the company will increase by serving the customers in an excellent manner. It should be the responsibility of the higher authority to identify the weaknesses of each and every employee in the store in order to improve them. Well trained and efficient employees will be able to serve the customers in a better way improving the customer satisfaction and loyalty (Ford, 2014). Accessing the system in the store will get very simple for the customers. Once the customers are happy with the working mechanism of the store then they will suggest others to come to this store. This will also indirectly help to increase the number of loyal customers of the store.

Customer Feedback and Product Quality Review

Suggestions to Improve the Business Operations and Services

Feedback of the customers: Some stores try to understand their customers through their purchasing behavior. But this is not enough. The feedback of the customers explains about their feelings (Olsson & Bosch, 2015). Customer feedbacks can help the Oz Supermarket to understand their customers in a better way and also to improve their existing systems. This technique is considered to be the most important as well as effective technique in order to improve the business operations. It will help them to understand the loopholes present in their existing system. It will also help the store to modify existing and add new products according to the needs of the customers. Customers are the reason behind the growth of the business (Nacif, 2012). Their satisfaction should be given the highest priority. This process of customer feedback will help the store to improve their services as well as business operations.

Review of product quality: There are several items that are sold by a store. Product quality reviewing is an important step. This will help the Oz Supermarket to be well informed about their products (Goetsch & Davis, 2014). The products of the stores must be reviewed on a regular interval in order to determine their quality. This will help the stores to improve the quality in case of any loopholes. Any kind of complaints regarding the product must be given full attention to. The products of the competitors must be checked and compared in order to understand the present position of the business. This will help to improve the product. The expected and the actual product must be nearly same if not totally same. This method of product quality review will help the supermarket to improve its existing product and improve their business operations and services.  

Implementation of new business models: The Oz supermarket should create their websites like any other ecommerce site. This can be done in order to improve customer service. The customers will need to register through their PayWave card and view and purchase any product online (Laudon & Traver, 2013). This can help the customers to even put up any feedback online. This will help the customers to save cost because they will not have to travel to the supermarket. This will also help the customers to save their time which is very precious. These types of business models help the business to grow on a global basis and also to improve their efficiency level in terms of customer satisfaction and business operations.

Implementation of New Business Models

Enterprise Resource Planning: ERP software can be implemented in the business process. This software is has several providers like SAP (Monk & Wagner, 2012). This will help to reduce the amount of manual works that done in the organization that are important for running the business (Leon, 2014). These human works of entering information and analyzing it for a special purpose can be done by the software. ERP software is responsible for integrating the information of various departments in order to help the business to work in an efficient manner. It has high installation cost but the benefit provided by this software is very high. Oz Supermarket should improve their business operations as well as their services by using ERP software. Supply chain management and customer relationship management can also be used in order to have a positive impact on the work of the business environment. ERP is the most feasible solution for any organization in this present world.

The three suggestions that are mentioned in this report in order to improve the efficiency of Oz Supermarket are as follows.

Minimizing and eliminating the RFID interference: The working mechanism of the RFID tags can get disturbed due to electromagnetic and light wave interference. This interference can cause problem in the working procedure in the stores. These can be resolved by the Oz Supermarket in several ways. They need to check the frequencies in the devices. They must gain protocol commitment from the suppliers. Before the original installation of the tags there must be a trial session (Krigslund et al., 2012). The efficiency of the RFID tags must be reviewed on a regular basis. They should try to minimize the interference if not eliminated.

Removal of security threats: The use of technology has several security issues associated with them. Security threats have been a serious issue for most of the organizations. The PayWave technology has the threat of getting hacked (Coleman, 2013). It can also get affected by any type of malicious software called malware (Zhou & Jiang, 2012). Hackers can attack and steal money of the customers through the PayWave cards. The PayWave card if gets authenticated by signature, can eliminate the threat of security attacks. Installing antivirus software for the information system can also reduce the chance of any loss of sensitive data and protect the system from any spyware attack (Agrawal & Smith, 2013). 

Cutting down the cost: The RFID tags are extremely expensive. There are different categories of RFID tags like passive and active. Depending upon the requirement of the store they must select the idle type of tag (Fan et al., 2014). Active tags are more expensive than the passive ones. Oz Supermarket should select the passive tags because they are cheap and the speed is more. The store will be able to execute all its functions in a cost effective manner by this. This can also be done by carrying out a proper budget plan before starting the operations in every month.

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Software

Conclusion

This report concludes that the supermarket called Oz Supermarket has used several techniques with the intention of improving its business operations as well as customer service. They have made a totally different set up to eliminate the problems exit queues by taking the help of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. The customers face a lot of issues while waiting in the queue. This supermarket aims to reduce such issues. This report also recommends other methods to improve the customer satisfaction and business processes of the Supermarket. This report provides with essential recommendations to improve the process of the business.

References

Agrawal, N., & Smith, S. A. (2013). Optimal inventory management for a retail chain with diverse store demands. European Journal of Operational Research, 225(3), 393-403.

Choi, J. S., Lee, H., Engels, D. W., & Elmasri, R. (2012). Passive UHF RFID-based localization using detection of tag interference on smart shelf. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part C (Applications and Reviews), 42(2), 268-275.

Coleman, E. G. (2013). Coding freedom: The ethics and aesthetics of hacking. Princeton University Press.

De Marco, A., Cagliano, A. C., Nervo, M. L., & Rafele, C. (2012). Using System Dynamics to assess the impact of RFID technology on retail operations. International journal of production economics, 135(1), 333-344.

Fan, T. J., Chang, X. Y., Gu, C. H., Yi, J. J., & Deng, S. (2014). Benefits of RFID technology for reducing inventory shrinkage. International Journal of Production Economics, 147, 659-665.

Ford, J. K. (2014). Improving training effectiveness in work organizations. Psychology Press.

Goetsch, D. L., & Davis, S. B. (2014). Quality management for organizational excellence. Upper Saddle River, NJ: pearson.

Jia, X., Feng, Q., Fan, T., & Lei, Q. (2012, April). RFID technology and its applications in Internet of Things (IoT). In Consumer Electronics, Communications and Networks (CECNet), 2012 2nd International Conference on (pp. 1282-1285). IEEE.

Krigslund, R., Popovski, P., Pedersen, G. F., & Olesen, K. (2012). Interference helps to equalize the read range and reduce false positives of passive RFID tags. IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, 59(12), 4821-4830.

Laudon, K. C., & Traver, C. G. (2013). E-commerce. Pearson.

Leon, A. (2014). Enterprise resource planning. McGraw-Hill Education.

Monk, E., & Wagner, B. (2012). Concepts in enterprise resource planning. Cengage Learning.

Nacif, R. C. (2012). Online Customer Loyalty: Forecasting the Repatronage Behavior of Online Retail Customers. Springer Science & Business Media.

Olsson, H. H., & Bosch, J. (2015, June). Towards continuous customer validation: a conceptual model for combining qualitative customer feedback with quantitative customer observation. In International Conference of Software Business (pp. 154-166). Springer, Cham.

Sung, S. Y., & Choi, J. N. (2014). Do organizations spend wisely on employees? Effects of training and development investments on learning and innovation in organizations. Journal of organizational behavior, 35(3), 393-412.

Zhou, Y., & Jiang, X. (2012, May). Dissecting android malware: Characterization and evolution. In Security and Privacy (SP), 2012 IEEE Symposium on (pp. 95-109). IEEE.