TQM project
TQM project
Madeleine Chocolate Factory is a food processing company that deals with various chocolate-based processed foods such as chocolate, candy, and gum. At its inception, there was the creation of the customer service department that handles all customer complaints and acts as the liaison between other departments and the final consumer of the product. Though the company has only been operational for a few years, some areas need significant changes and improvements such as the customer service desk. Today the complaints are received through phone calls, letters, and emails (Akhtari, akhtari & Torfi, 2015). Complaints also arrive through if customers short pay and ask for credit expressly. Short payments that are not accompanied by specific credit requests are also treated as potential complaints. The aim of this project is to come up with ways to improve how complaints are handled from their point of reception to the point where they are resolved, and the customer is contacted.
Once the complaint is received, the customer service agent determines whether the complaint is credible or not. If it is credible, they notify the relevant department, if not, they inform the customer that their complaint was deemed non credible. It leaves the customer feeling disgruntled and unsatisfied at which point they may decide to move to a different company (Akhtari, akhtari & Torfi, 2015). Credible complaints are classified and sent to the relevant departments. Recently there have been complaints by customers that most of their complaints are deemed non-credible. According to surveys carried out by current customers as well as previous customers. They also mentioned that most times the customer service personnel did not know what the customer was talking about. That customer had to mention the department, they required the problem to be handled under. Customers whose complaints had also been handled mentioned that the process had taken too long and that they had to follow up often to get any feedback.
One of the ways to deal with this problem is to ensure that all the personnel in the company have some knowledge about all the departments in the company. It will ensure that they can answer any questions brought to them by current or prospective customers. Ensuring that the customer service staff goes through training and seminars to enhance their skills in personal relations and to learn new and emerging ways to deal will customer complaints as they emerge (Akhtari, akhtari & Torfi, 2015). The company should build a formal customer satisfaction program which will help it improve the customer experience as well as help the company have some order in how they collect feedback rather than waiting for the customers to give feedback of their volition.
Another method that could improve how customer relations are handled is training specialists in different fields of customer service (Akhtari, akhtari & Torfi, 2015). It will ensure that they can give direct and immediate feedback to the consumers rather than having the complaints forwarded to different departments. It will shorten the chain through which complaints are passed as well as give the company a reputation for dealing with complaints and immediately.
This process would take about six months to introduce and implement including the time it would take to gather employee opinion. The first step is to get volunteers who would like to have the extra responsibility of the company. These individuals would still participate in their assigned duties within their respective departments. That means they would take shifts either daily, weekly to work in the customer service departments or work on rotation. The company would also bear the burden of educating the specialists. Also, the company should empower the customer service department to carry out customer satisfaction surveys semiannually (Akhtari, akhtari & Torfi, 2015). It will go a long way to ensuring that most customer complaints are dealt with before they emerge.
The company will also conduct surveys among the employees at the beginning of every financial year to check on the how well the implemented solutions are working. The long duration is to allow time for the programs grow it will also give time for proper evaluation and to decide whether the programs should be improved or done away with entirely. The company should appoint members of every department to form a task force to help with the new changes and structure. This group will also be responsible for evaluating the implementation and effectiveness of the programs over time.
References
Akhtari, P., akhtari, A., & Torfi, A. (2015). Measuring customer satisfaction in the food industry. Management Science Letters, 5(3), 235-244. http://dx.doi.org/10.5267/j.msl.2015.1.016
