Customer Relationship Management: A Case Study On Swensen And Shoten Essay.

Based on the company that you have selected, discuss your views on how successful or how unsuccessful the organisation has been in their overall Customer Relationship Management (CRM) effort in meeting customer’s needs. 
    
In your discussion, address the following aspects: 

i. Explain if the company has applied or did not apply each of the 4 Principles of CRM (refer to Lecture 1 and 2),

ii. In your opinion, do you think the company will benefit from implementing a CRM system? Provide reason(s) to support your discussion (refer to Lecture 5)  

Description of the Encounter

Name of the Organisation: Swensen

Industry type: Food and Beverages

Type of Encounter- Bad Service

The occurrence of the encounter took place on 12^th May 2017 when my family visited Swensen for celebrating my mother’s birthday. From taking entry into the restaurant I faced the following bad services of the concerned industry:

Long time have to wait for taking a seat in the restaurant though it was empty.

The staff members who assisted us after a long time were rude as well as irritated.

Many of the staff members ignored when I was attempting to place the order.

Staff member has not made an eye contact when receiving the order

When I asked about the promotion of ‘Young and Heart” the staff member was rude in his behaviour.

Before Confirming the order staff member walked away rapidly from our table.

Staff member was failed to explain about the promotion’s terms and conditions.

As it was a birthday party the appearance of the staff member who was attending us should have shown his emotions. Instead his appearance was sullen and he did not smiled at all during the celebration.

The restaurant manager was not at all apologetic instead he was rude as well as insisted angrily for paying the full price.

Later after coming back to the home e-mail was been sent to the customer service of Swensen but no reply was been received from them.

This was the bad service that I encountered after taking entry in the restaurant.

Five customer service concepts are been discussed that are been related to encounter:

Stage of Communication comprises of three significant sections Body language, delivery tone and words used during communication. 55% of the total facial expression depends on body language. Facial expression which is a type of non-verbal communication are been considered as the significant way to convey social information among human being. It is also significant component for customer service. Therefore customers can achieve negative impression for the company if the first encounter is bad due to mismatched facial expressions (Sohn).

Encounter: This stage was been encountered at the time of taking entry in the restaurant as none of the staff greeted nor they smiled at our arrival as a token of greetings. It was also been encountered at the time of placing order as the staff did not bother to look at the time of placing order. The staff member also did not show any emotion at the time of celebration.

Knowledge on the product is significant for the skills of sale. If the employee is successful in delivering the strong knowledge about the product then an experience of positive customer can be created. Customer will be confused if the sales person did not have a strong knowledge on the product and this will led to the negative customer experience resulting in losing of customers. Good knowledge on product will help in boosting the confidence of the employee as well as efficiency for interacting with the customers. This will ultimately lead to increase of customer satisfaction (Nyikal).

Customer Service Concepts

Encounter: The staff did not have any idea about the promotion going on as ‘Young at Heart’. His short of knowledge on product that is the payment had to be made before 5 pm has affected me as I have to pay the whole amount instead of half amount.

Customer complaints are considered to be a negative occurrence but they are very much significant on the aspect of concept of services provided to the customers in organisation. If they failed to handle this then the customer may post this situation online and that will affect the publicity of the organisation which will result in lowering the brand image of the company (Kumari et al.).

Encounter: After returning from the restaurant the email was done to the customer service executive for three times giving details about the problem but they did not to bother to reply back the mail.

The responsiveness to the customer is about helping them about the requirement when they are in a state of confusion. It also means helping the customers and providing them the quickest service. It makes them feel valued as well as cared when provided by organisation. Organisation should monitor about the handling of customers quickly and effectively by the employees (Tucker).

Encounter: The first encounter was when we took entry in the restaurant no one came for assisting. This exhibits lacking in responsiveness from the staffs. They were not quick to their service and as a result I had to approach them for the help I needed. They further ignored when I called them for ordering the food. Again I had to approach them for help.

Empathy is the experience in understanding the condition of another person from his perspectivesEmpathy is not that significant but employees should have empathy in order to effectively communicate about the problems as well as complains of the customers (Baker).

Encounter: Absence of Empathy was encountered when manager was not willing to assist for the problem happened due to his staff on regard of promotion. He did not emphasise the condition that we were going through. He also insisted us to pay the full price.

The few recommendation for Swensen are provided as the services provided by them was poor:

Entrance Section: The restaurant can include the self system of walking in during non peak time. This will make the customers to walk in and seat according to their wish. This will help the staff to concentrate on the customer for delivering food.

Training of Employee: The employees of the restaurant were not given enough training as they were not proficient in many aspects. They should be given extra training on empathy, body language, communication and responsiveness.

Contingency Plans: All the managers of Swensen should be trained for the scenarios of contingency because this type of situation may occur and the managers need to act best during this time. Manager should not ignore this situation as this may have negative impression on the customer and they should act according to the plan of contingency.

Recommendations

Improving systems of feedback: The feedback system of the company should be improved. Despite sending of 3 mails no feedback mail was been received from the customer executive. As feedbacks from customers are significant therefore it should be given priority. 

CRM is basically formulated on 4 principles and the restaurant has not given emphasised to implement those.

Customers are significant assets: The restaurant failed to make the customers (in this case me) as valued and important for them. As I have to wait in the outside premises for more than 20 minutes, it showed that they did not value their customers. The service provided by the staff was slow and they were also rude.

Customers should be treated equally: The staff did not treat my family as priority. The staff members were giving priority to the customers who were already eating and making order over that. Every customer should be treated equally as all the customers are paying for the service they are getting and so there should not be any discrimination (Baines, Fill and Kelly).

Company can maximise the value by understanding their customer: Swensen have not understood the customers and so the customer care services did not gave value to the emails sent on the field of negative experience. They don’t even have the idea that feedback of the customer should be valued for gaining maximum value in the market. The restaurant authority should look into the matter that the customer care is looking after the feedback of the customers and solving the negative experience of the customer in order to compete in the industry of food and beverages (Carmen and Spinciu).

CRM mainly concentrates on the customer loyalty as well as engaging customer with the organisation for a long term. This relationship marketing is quite significant for Swensen according to me. In F&B industries the involvement of the customers are very high and therefore CRM plays a vital role. As the empowerments of customers are increasing therefore the organisation must try in engaging customer with the help of emotional level. Swensen need to develop relationship marketing which will benefit them in building long term relationship. This will also make the customers feel that they are been respected as well as valued. It will also make the customer feel that the restaurant is trying to assess the individual requirements of the customers. Because of the way that clients move toward becoming ambassadors of brand, abandoning them with a vital affair will permit the opportunities for them to spread positive verbal exchange and repurchase.  

Reference List

Baines, Paul, Chris Fill, and Kelly Page. Essentials of marketing. Oxford University Press, 2013.

Baker, Michael J. Marketing strategy and management. Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

Carmen, Radut, and Spinciu Marius. "Customer Loyalty Using Customer Relationship Management." Management Strategies Journal 31.1 (2016): 285-288.

Kumari, Sony, Alex Hankey, and H. R. Nagendra. "Effects of SMET on the Emotional Dynamics of Managers." Voice of Research 2.1 (2013): 49-52.

Nyikal, Rose A. "Approaches in analyzing the marketing sector." (2015).

Sohn, Hae-Kyung. "Verifying the moderating effects of personality factors on the relationship between emotional labour and customer orientation." International Journal of Tourism Sciences (2017): 1-14.

Tucker, Frances Gaither. "Creative customer service management." International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management (2013).