Reputation

Do content and warning labels influence quality?

Posted on by f1211rbradow

There is a blog entry on Businessweek’s website entitled “McDonald’s Enters the Age of Transparency.” It explains that starting this week McDonald’s will begin to post the calorie content of their food on the menu boards in each establishment. This is two years prior to a federal regulation, stemming from President Obama’s health care reform, requiring all restaurants to do so on their menus. The article goes on to explain that McDonald’s has done this prior to the regulation because it is something their customers want and it shows that they are not trying to hide anything, which the entry calls transparency, making them a responsible, trustworthy and respectable company. Many people are becoming more health conscious and are starting to count calories or eliminate certain foods and/or ingredients from their diet as they become more aware of what constitutes a healthy diet.

Awareness is not only becoming important in foods but in products as well. The driving force behind this article is the fact that people want to know exactly what is included in the items they purchase as we are not only becoming a health aware society, but an ecological one too. Whether you consider it a trend or rising worry over global warming and oil prices, one thing is certain–people are being more attentive and frugal. The frugality may, and probably is, a result of our current economy both countrywide and worldwide; on the other hand the idea of worth or quality in a product may also play a key role. As we have learned in class, quality is one of the main factors in determining whether or not someone purchases something. The only problem is how do you define quality? The definition is different to everyone. For some it may be reputable brand, others may judge on materials, appearance and price. This is why companies must do extensive research in designing and developing their products to ensure they meet the customer’s wants and needs as closely as possible as demonstrated in our paper plane project.

While this transparency provides the customer with a clear picture of what is included in their purchases and the company with the possibility of greater profits, if they truly took customer opinion to heart. Looking deeper another benefit of transparency to a company is helping to reduce any liability issues if eventually sued. Cigarette and alcohol companies serve as the best examples since they are required to disclose the risks of using their merchandise in the form of Surgeon General Warnings. Toy companies also serve as a good example; they are required to state choking hazards on their products. The reducing liability aspect may be seen by some as a way of the company protecting itself, suggesting unsafe products or poor craftsmanship and possibly low quality. It all depends on the customer’s way of thinking showing that the customer truly leads the market.

What do you think?
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-09-18/mcdonald-s-enters-the-age-of-transparency

Cinderella’s shoe, does it fit everyone?

Posted on by nadaj502

Husband and Wife both are Six Sigma practitioners. Obviously, their daily lives conversations happen in Six Sigma parlance. The wife happens to be a very good cook, one of the reasons why the husband married her. Suddenly, three days at a stretch, the food starts to have extra salt. Husband objects, to which wife responds

“Common Cause of Variation”. One day, the wife adds a lot of salt to the food. Husband takes ill and is admitted to the hospital. Wife comes to see him and quips, “Sorry, special cause of variation.” Husband says, “It was Structural.”

Three days later, Husband hands out a divorce notice to wife and quips, “Process Unstable. Not meeting CTQ*.”
*CTQs are the internal critical quality parameters that relate to the wants and needs of the customer.

Thought of sharing this joke as I believe it will help us all in remembering few vocabularies used during our last session.

The last few session reminded me of one of the main product development projects that I’ve worked on, where we launched one product in 7 different markets, however we had to customize it a bit for each market in order to meet customer expectations in each of the 7 markets.
The product was basically a credit card in local currency, you may wonder what is so special about it? Well it was an American Express local currency Credit Card.  And as you may know, American Express is considered the most prestigious plastic card in the world, and it targets individuals with high expenditure patterns. Refer to this blog for American  American
Express’s Competitive Position.

As this may be very true for its main product “the Charge Card”, it was not applicable for their Credit Card target segment, which made the product development & marketing teams wonder of what would attract customers to American Express Credit Card rather than any other credit cards available in their market? Well the development team followed the differentiation strategy while designing the product. It was the feel of the prestigious card that attracted customers to it, in addition to the appropriately designed product that met customer’s expectation in each of the targeted markets. But how did the development team identify the customer needs? They utilized their existing data and referred to the Charge Card customer base, they asked them if they would like to hold supplementary Credit Cards for their spouses and children with a credit limit, and bang that was highly demanded. As loyal cardholders they didn’t want to hold many different brands of cards and also didn’t want to  provide the open limit charge card as supplementary cards to their family. Of course further focus groups were obtained then to identify the requirements of each market, and to develop a product that is different than the current ones in the market. Tremendous amount of work was held but it was worth it, the product was launched successfully and it was well perceived in all 7 different markets.

However, do you think what AMEX did for identifying customer’s needs in each market was enough? If not, what alternative ways would you suggest?

Winning with Customer Service

Posted on by maryama502

 

 

Operation management in the banking sector is challenging for me since I’m holding the duties of branch manager. Last class we have learned about operation management in the service sector. I didn’t realize that what I’m doing is considered as operation management. As you all know customer wants and satisfaction is the success measure of any business; i.e. if customer left our branch dissatisfied he will be unwilling to deal with the bank and it will affect the bank reputation.

I have just faced customer complaint last week when his car loan application went into a long process over our bank departments. He was saying that his friend applies for the same in other bank and he got the car after three days only. When I contact the other department asking about the reason for the delay it was not reason that will stop processing the loan and the loan can be processed now and then the customer is going to provide us with the requested document.
What I have realized here, bank departments that have no direct customer interaction will not do their job based on customer is first, what they do basically is to make sure that all documents needed are provided.

What do you think about operations, credit and risk department? How can they be involved in providing excellent customer service?

Moreover, the customer was complaining that the customer service representative was not clear about the missing document. I have talked to the customer service representative and realized that she did not read the document properly before sending it to the concern department and at the same time the car loan were approved from three departments without realizing the missing document.
I think the problem was from all departments starting from the front line to the back line. At the end his requested was processed in exceptional bases because the bank policy prohibits processing such loan without the required document.

Do you think the bank policy is a source of not meeting customer expectations? What about exceptions? Does it meet customer expectations?

At the end, the customer gets his car in the same day he raised the complaint and he left the bank satisfied and happy. He will be dealing with the bank as his loan will last for seven years which will leads for a strong customer relationship. As you all realized the problem was from the front line at the beginning, I have explain the problem with the customer service representative and instruct her how to deal with such cases.

How can the customer service representative avoid customer complaint? Is training enough?