Identifying Quality And Delivery Standards For Teams, An Essay.

External Customer Requirements

Make a list of the steps you would take and the processes you would put in place to identify the quality and delivery standards to which teams should adhere and to monitor and manage team performance so that it consistently meets organisational quality and delivery standards. Against what criteria might you measure performance and what action would you take if performance did not meet the identified standards? Upload your answer for assessment.

Kroger is an American retailer that is the largest supermarket chain by its revenues as well as the second largest general retailer. Based on the business planning processes of Kroger, this report investigates and assesses the requirements of the customers in their processes (Jolibert, 2012). The company chooses products that are being researched to establish the requirements of the customers in terms of quality, time as well as specifications of cost.

The management of the company supervises a business plan that totally focuses on the services of the customers. This report also summarizes the processes to their employees to identify both quality and delivery standards. It monitors the performance of the team and takes possible actions to meet the customer's requirements. Finally, a questionnaire is prepared that obtain the feedback of the customers in order to improve the provision of their products.

Knowing and understanding the needs of the customers is the center of successful business. It is required to identify the potential as well as existing customers those are buying the products from their stores. The demands of the customers are increasing from time to time due to improvement in the service quality with differentiation of products (Addas and Pinsonneault, 2014). Effective customer satisfaction leads long-term relationship with the customers and it creates a loyalty through its repeating purchase as well as recommendations that help the company to expand the market share as well as its position.

Service Quality: Customer needs are achieved by improving the quality of service. It is measured by the service level based on the attitudes such as the facility layout, display of the products, its cost and the proper labeling (Briggs, 2012). Other factors are the location of the store, waiting time, operation hours, queue management, delivery time and other additional services such as parking, loyalty cards as well as merchandise quality.

Price: The customers are desired to buy standard products at the lowest prices. Therefore, they shop from the supermarket that offers the lowest prices as well as provides the reasonable range of products to their customers (Ryding, Campaniolo and Carey, 2014). The customers have special tastes such as want to buy fair-trade products as well as organic foods.

Investigating the needs of customers in the planning processes

Branding, labeling and packaging of product: The customers are concerned with the product as well as its secondary features such as the packages and its services. The colors used on the labels as well as packages are attractive to the buyer. Each of the items is labeled individually and it is there should be a language of labeling (Chen et al. 2012). The product needs to be labeled with the language that is spoken by the country's customers. As for example, a cereal box with a picture of US athlete makes a new look and it will be attractive to the overseas customers.

At the time of selling organic products to the customers, there should be a balanced in what is being delivered based on the quality of the products. The quality of the service is what is being advertised. While selling products as well as services, the company ensures that the ordered should be delivered on time and supplied to the consumer on the time. Time management is one of the keys to keeping good customers. The price of the products needs to be competitive in the market (Dandira, 2011). Therefore, the customers shop around as well as if it is not balanced then it will not get the customers as per their expectations. These are three elements balances if the key to having constant customer flow. The following are the three elements of customer expectations:

Quality: Kroger that produces the organic products have the challenge to ensure their customers the safety and quality throughout their whole food chain market.  A small number of customers are willing to pay higher prices for these products based on its quality as well as product safety. The quality of the organic products ensures their customers that it contains no such food ingredient that has subject to irradiation as well as modified organisms are excluded from its production (Pasquier and Villeneuve, 2012). The customer expects that the percentage of fat in the product is less. The customer chooses organic products based on cell content in the milk, starch content in the potatoes and size of meat.

Time: Customers expect for timely delivery of their products and they expect what they have ordered. They are also expecting a reasonable return policy of their products when it is unable to meet the needs (Bouzaabia, Bouzaabia and Capatina, 2013).  The company should use a predicted technology for their delivery services such as it gives the customers with a guaranteed one-hour time slot in which the customers can change the delivery destination when they are not at home.

Identification of product and customer expectations in terms of quality, time and cost specifications

Cost: The customer expected that the food sector offers various products at different price points. It offers a middle as well as high-end price with various options (Gronroos and Gummerus, 2014). The customers are expected to pay for the item that is worth valuable as well as worth of the time, effort as well as income. Therefore, the customers expect that the values of the products are connected to the price.

The marketers are made up of groups of customers with various sets of expectations on the products as well as customer services that they want to purchase. Marketing oriented businesses are carried out research on the requirements of the customers to ensure that they provide the products that best meet the expectations of customers in the relevant market segment.

A business plan is a statement that focuses on the business goals and objectives, the reasons why they are believed to be attainable as well as outlines the strategies that are followed to reach the business goals i.e. short as well as long-term goals.

Manager: Our Company must have a business plan that focuses on the services of the customer. It is being seen that 70 percent of the consumers have to leave a business as well as buy another business selling the same goods as well as services if they are feeling that they have received poor customer service (Oliveira and Gimeno, 2014). As our businesses are striving to be successful, therefore we cannot able to lose customers over poor customer service.  Customers are important for our organization as our products are very dependent on the customer's satisfaction.

Employee 1: Based on the customer service, what are the important points that we should remember to achieve the customer satisfaction?

Manager: As our business is selling organic products to the customers, at first, we must be concern about the quality of the products and think of health and safety our customers. It helps to provide both revenues as well as the certainty of our business (Jayawardhena and Farrell, 2011). If our businesses are unable to develop customer loyalty, then we will lose our customers. Therefore, a proper business plan is required to expand our business in the marketplace.

Employee 2: What are the possible methods to plan a business in order to achieve customer service?

Manager: At first, we need a concept presentation plan that consists of the business concept, principles, targeted market, and products of our company. Even this plan cannot consist of any financial projections. We will try to make our specialized service that goes a long way in order to keep customers loyal. Our business plan requires re-evaluating the pricing strategy of our product to meet customer's goals. For premium customers, we should have to deliver the premium level of services that is superior to the competitors. We should try to raise the price levels and the benefit is that we are able to allocate more and more resources in order to create amazing experiences that make the customers satisfied.

Supervision of business plan and importance of business plan based on customer service

Our business is planned in such a way that the customers are treated like a boss and we should focus on measuring the customer satisfaction. We should build customer loyalty in order to increase the customer satisfaction (Kursunluoglu, 2014). Moreover, special training should be given to the employees so that they can get the idea of how to survey the customers in the right way. The proper business plan gives an analysis of the business revenue, its price as well as predictable profits. Using the business plan, the new employees are able to know what the company is all about and introduce the employees to suppliers and vendors (Peter and Donnelly, 2013). Therefore, without the business plan, we can lose our customers due to a poor quality delivery of products as well as services as it will earlier forecast how the business will run.

It is quite possible to monitor as well as manage the performance by setting goals and plans. When the goals are being supported by the plans, then it is probably to help the team to meet their targets such as delivering standard qualities to the customers.

The team members should be clear about the actions that they need to take to meet with business goals, therefore, the objectives of the team should be clear.

They should need to identify the sales target as well as reporting procedures and its expected outcomes (Nadiri, 2011).The team should use SMART objective to meet the goals.

The qualities of the products are achieved by constant learning of the organizational culture (Ryding, Campaniolo and Carey, 2014). The employees should encourage and attend organizationally sponsored training to visit other companies. It helps them to get new ideas as well as perceptive on it.

Develop and use better marketing strategies to monitor progress in order to achieve products as well as services targets with quality standards.

The performance against the organization's quality as well as delivery standards is involved to collect the data that are related to the actual performance of the employees as well as maps it against the predictable performance. The performances of the employees are collected using 360-degree evaluation (Witell, 2011). It is used to collect the feedback from the customers as well as it is conducted anonymously.  As today's customers are demanding, therefore they want high-quality products with high level of customer service. Service quality gap model is used for delivering quality standards to the customers. It helps to identify the gaps among the actual services as well as customer expectation (Quadrangle, 2015). It closes the gap with improving the services. The delivery gap is because the employees have the lack of product knowledge and they face difficulty in managing customer issues. It arises due to lack of cohesive teams as well as the inability to deliver.

1. For how long have you been using our products?

• 1-2 months
• Over 6 months
• Over 1 year

2. How often do you use our product or services?

• Once a week
• 1-2 times a week
• Once a month

3. How satisfied are you with our products and services?

• Very satisfied
• Satisfied
• Neutral
• Unsatisfied
• Very unsatisfied

4. What impressed you most about our product or service?

• Quality
• Price
• Shopping experience
• Customer service

5. What you like and dislike about our product/service?
6. What could we have done for better meet your needs?
7. What can we do to make our store more appealing?
8. How effective is the store at resolving customer concerns?

• Extremely effective
• Very effective
• Moderately effective
• Slightly effective

9. Does our employee give the best customer service?

• Yes
• No

10. Would you recommend our products/services to other people?Definitely

• Probably
• Not sure 

References

Jolibert, A. (2012). Marketing management. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.

Oliveira, A. and Gimeno, A. (2014). Customer service supply chain management. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson Education.

Pasquier, M. and Villeneuve, J. (2012). Marketing management and communications in the public sector. New York: Routledge.

Peter, J. and Donnelly, J. (2013). A preface to marketing management. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Witell, L. (2011). The theory of attractive quality. Bradford: Emerald Group Pub.

Addas, S. and Pinsonneault, A. (2014). IT capabilities and NPD performance: examining the mediating role of team knowledge processes. Knowledge Management Research & Practice.

Bouzaabia, R., Bouzaabia, O. and Capatina, A. (2013). Retail logistics service quality: a cross‐cultural survey on customer perceptions. Intl J of Retail & Distrib Mgt, 41(8), pp.627-647.

Briggs, J. (2012). Investigating situated cultural practices through cross-sectoral digital collaborations: processes, policies, insights. Digital Creativity, 23(2), pp.98-112.

Chen, C., Chong, Y., Chang, W. and Yan, W. (2012). A quality–time–cost-oriented strategy for product conceptualization. Advanced Engineering Informatics, 26(1), pp.16-25.

Dandira, M. (2011). The impact of executive directors' service contracts on strategic plan. Business Strategy Series, 12(1), pp.12-18.

Gronroos, C. and Gummerus, J. (2014). The service revolution and its marketing implications: service logic vs service-dominant logic. Managing Service Quality, 24(3), pp.206-229.

Jayawardhena, C. and Farrell, A. (2011). Effects of retail employees' behaviours on customers' service evaluation. Intl J of Retail & Distrib Mgt, 39(3), pp.203-217.

Kursunluoglu, E. (2014). Shopping centre customer service: creating customer satisfaction and loyalty.Marketing Intelligence & Planning, 32(4), pp.528-548.

Nadiri, H. (2011). Customers’ zone of tolerance for retail stores. Serv Bus, 5(2), pp.113-137.

Ryding, D., Campaniolo, D. and Carey, R. (2014). Customer expectations and perceptions of food product quality in the UK discount grocery sector. IJBG, 13(1), p.91.

Quadrangle, (2015). Customer Satisfaction Research 2014/2015. [online] Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/483705/Exec_Summary_-_Insolvency_Service_Customer_Satisfaction_report__2015-11-___.pdf [Accessed 2 Jan. 2016].