Problem Analysis
Discuss about the Operation Mangement of Wesfarmer.
Serving the customers with appropriate services and a product is the main aim of every organization which is conducting its operations in the form of business. Customers are the lifeblood of an organization without which goals and objectives of the company cannot be achieved. A business if formed to attract the targeted audience from the market so as to have optimum result in the form of revenue and development. Hence, this proves the fact how important business and its customers are to the economy of a nation. Retention of customers for a greater period of time is more important than selling the good for just one single time (Akalin, Huang and Willems, 2016). For this factor, many business organization aims to have customer services such as after sale services, guarantees, repairing etc. so as to maintain the loyalty and responsiveness with the customers and make them feel connected to the company as a part of stakeholders. In the Australian market, there is a lot of business which is going on upon which Wesfarmers is among the top most business entities with several chains of it across the nation. Being number one is not a pre-creation a business has to perform and serve its customer first in order to be in the topmost position. Wesfarmers as a firm is doing really well but there are several issues which are related to customer services which are being faced by the company. A justification for such issues and a solution and mandatory recommendations for the same is given in this course of study. Overall analysis of the problem and its current performance results has been included in this research. Best solution followed by a proper conclusion is contained by this assignment for the company Wesfarmers customer services.
Wesfarmers as a company owns many retail stores and is known as the very good company in markets of Australia. Hence, the standards of the business activities of the company are high and the quality of its products is maintained. In spite of having the best quality of products and everything in line, there are some problems in relations to customers services which keeps on rising in Wesfarmers. The company has a policy of getting feedback from every client on the various problems which they are facing over email and every email is being read by the employees of Wesfarmers so as to reach out to a solution for the customer’s problem (Anderson, Anderson and Parker, 2013). But there are chances when each and every complaint is not answered by the company. This creates a problem for the company and a huge strategic analysis is required on this. The company is operating on a very large scale which further has to deal with several problems of customer services. As there are people who are not fully satisfied with the services and need guidance upon the product and its usage. Eventually, after a complete study, it was found that the customer’s complaints were large and they were not heard in terms of satisfaction.
Current performance analysis
The time which is taken to precede the feedback is sometimes very long for which customers have to wait and proceed further with the procedure. In other words, the company has a time-consuming process for solving a process sometimes which creates a problem for the customer to hold on to the services of Wesfarmers. Although the company has really good and regulated form of safety measures for the products bit still there are chances of default which creates a problem further for the people who have been using those products which are not proper (Bamford, Moxham, Kauppi and Dehe, 2015). Quality of company to serve the clients is very high and satisfaction of customers is also in a huge number. As the company holds a huge number of shares in the market of Australia. There are some or the other problem where clients losses their patience and start acting aggressively upon some matters. The company is having a channel for communication inside as well as a phone number upon which various customers can reach to it which are being unanswered sometimes. The process of the whole solution is very slow and time-consuming which often creates a problem for the company and its image. Hence, this problem of the company and its function has to be taken into account for a better performance measurement in order to have the better culture of the organization for its people and customers who are associated with it. Likewise, they will be retained for a long period of time as an investment for the company and its future (Bianchi and Åhlström, 2014). Sustainable growth is significant in today’s world where competition is rising and has to be taken into consideration by every organization so as to set standards of performance for each and every employee who is associated with the company.
There is the number of factors that are considered as the reasons for the issues and create problems for the business corporation. As per the given scenario, the current issues that are faced by Wesfarmers are due to the dissatisfaction of the low quality of offerings of services (Bouchery, Corbett, Fransoo and Tan, 2016). This one of the major issue due to which the organizational structure is affected the most by the satisfaction of customers has been considered as the most significant task for any of the firm. There are various factors due to which the customers face several issues and the same are mentioned below:
Financial analysis
Longer duration of resolution: This factor has been considered as one of the biggest and common problems that are encountered by the customers (Brown, Bessant and Lamming, 2013). The issue rise due to the longer durations provided by the company for solving the problems and examples of the same are difficult troubleshooting is needed etc.
A customer is being transferred over and over: One of the biggest reasons due to which the customers lose their temper as they are being switched between the departments (Brown, Blackmon, Cousins and Maylor, 2013). In most of the cases, this happens as the customs agents are lacking proper knowledge regarding the problem and also does not know what to do.
Low proficiency with communication skills: While the customer raises a query or is facing an issue, it the duty of the customer service agent to collect the feedback and revert in an appropriate manner (Gupta and Starr, 2014). But if the customer service agent is lacing appropriate set of communication skills then it will be a problematic situation as communication gap will develop the chances of issues and problems.
Favors that cannot be done: There are two types of favors that cannot be done, in some cases the business entity promises to do something to the customers and are unable to keep the promises and sometimes the entity cannot complete the problems due to almighty policies.
Performance analysis is the process in which there is an in-depth evaluation of the performance deriving a particular scenario to actually achieve a particular objective. The performance analysis can be done on the basis of return on investment of the company the working style and the policies and the strategies used by the company to take it to the next level (Hitt, Carnes and Xu, 2016). Underperformance analysis various techniques are used to derive the quantity factor of the company. Further, the recruitment practices are also taken into consideration.Benchmarks, on the other hand, is a kind of the methodology which uses the best industry practices as a factor to create a comparison level and find out the variances. The dimensions of the benchmark are typically inclusive of time cost and quality.This can happen only if the relevant key performance indicators are used and applied. With the help of these performance indicators, a review can be done of the external opportunities and factors (Khanna, 2015). The liquidity KPI’s include the ratios of the company, then the assets efficiency KPIs are also included to determine the level of assets required to finance the company.
Recommendations
Further, the Under the current scenario Wesfarmers has written down its value of retail chain by $306 million after lower than expected sales in the first half of 2018 the net profit of the Wesfarmers has reached to $212 million on target. The plunge was around 86.6% in total (Mahadevan, 2015). Underlying ratios indicate a major setback in the history if the Wesfarmers. The earnings per share of the company have been increased by nearly 0.67 times which indicate that the company is performing consistently. The company has a diversified range of products which includes retail chain, insurance, operates mines, manufactures, and distributor of the industrial product. The entire group generated revenue of $66,981 million in 2016 which is 5.9% more than last year (financials.morningstar 2018). The retail chain Coles has made revenue of $42,242 million which is 2.7% up from last year. The operating cash flows of the entire business amounts to $3365 million which is $426 million less than the last year as compared. The higher working capital investments were plunged to improve the inventory and the sales of the business.
At macro level under the analysis of pestle, the impact on the political area is usually large in terms of the retail industry. The Wesfarmers are able to create more competition among the co-business holders. The decisions taken by the Wesfarmers company includes the lucrative perspective in the field of coal, the complete abandonment of the interest rate on electricity is also one such feature which proves to be favorable in case of the company (McCrie, 2015). The economic condition also affects the performance of the company. The global crisis of 2009 affected the market position of the company, however; the chemicals and fertilizers are affected today because of the natural calamity.
At the social level, the Wesfarmers is the major recruitment base of the employees along with the shareholders within the company. The acquisition of the Coles Group has been one of the reasons to capture the greater population which is round about 22 million. The company also takes extensive efforts and initiatives for the purposes of upliftment. In terms of technology, the Wesfarmers is following the policy of the “one shop” and new point state of technology. Across the entire industry portfolio which is owned by the Wesfarmers has kept in such a way that it shall not affect the environment. The company has consistently invested in the technology related to the environment to avoid the free flow of resources, improve the climatic conditions and resilience (Slack, 2015).
The legal implication of the carbon emission limit has been cut off by the Wesfarmers which has substantially improved the name of the company under the tax regime.
Micro-level analysisTo understand the performance of the Wesfarmers at the micro level the inclusion of Porter’s five forces model is applied by the company.Under the bargaining power of the buyers, the power of the buyers has been increased significantly. The other dominant competitor which is Woolworth in the retail industry provides a wide range of options for the customers. This kept the company at the second position. The bargaining power of suppliers is moderate in case of Wesfarmers. Being a part of sourcing the company maintains a committed relationship with the suppliers.The threat of new entrant is extremely low as the company like Wesfarmers have an exclusive portfolio and multiple operations to run (Wisner, 2016). Wesfarmers faces average competition from companies in different industries and is trying it lower down the impact of the same by mitigating the services of best nature and increase the customer satisfaction. In retail business the products are used on regular basis, therefore not many options are available. Therefore, the threats of the substitute are very minimal.
If it is thought that having a customer service department is just enough, then it is wrong. Today, in the digital age, it is very important to give a good customer service which is backed up by innovative tools, strategies, and methods. And to do that, the company should start from improving the customer service in the business.
Customer these days are not just demanding but they want their needs to be satisfied as early as possible (Goetsch and Davis, 2014). 75% of the online customers need help in 5 minutes. This is where the company business comes to light. Customer service means satisfying the needs of the customers and increasing loyalty. And making sure that they don’t leave the company by being unsatisfied.
If they feel that their company is good at providing a good customer service, they’ll be more successful in keeping the existing customer as compared to their competition.
Thinking that keeping the customer service without improving the company can lose a lot of billions due to a bad customer service. If the customer service is optimized it will result in more happy customers and reduction in costs (Heizer, 2016).
It also creates a positive brand image for the business. 95% of the customer’s complaint about a poor customer service experience with other people.
What customers actually want-?
Self-service:
Besides the excellent service and product, the customers need a personalized timely and an easier customer service with instant solutions to the issues. It involves everything from making it easier to solve the current issue.
Customers also need to have the ability to be able to solve their own issues with a self-service option. 45% of the companies providing web and mobile service have reported a hike in site traffic and a reduction in phone inquiries (Krajewski, Ritzman and Malhotra, 2013).
If the company wants to better the customer service experience they can start with the customer service improvement straight away by the implementation of the innovative ideas for service. Some of them are strategies which are easier to implement and execute as compared to others (Jacobs and Chase, 2017). They can choose the best one which suits their industry and business type they will definitely improve the customer service:
Training the contact center agents: without the correct training of the call center agents, they won’t get to know how to efficiently deal with the customers. What is more important is knowing the product or the service beforehand, the agents have to be trained on building customer relationships by empathizing with their troubles and talking to them nicely and giving them the surety of the satisfaction they expect.
Improving the standards of the service: without a definite set of standards for the customer service, the agents will handle the customer problems according to how they fit. Improving the interaction quality, behavior, and appearance. Going through common customer service problems with their most appropriate solutions. And then, imparting this info to the agents and the common standard for customer service in the entire organization. And rewarding the employees who put in extra effort for the customers.
24/7 Customer service: if the company is not available to the customers all the time they pose the risk of losing them. Being available 24/7 is sometimes enough for improving the customer service. One easy way to execute this is by making use of a social self-service Chat-bot for intelligently solving the queries in real time (Topmba 2014).
And if the first call response is improved the contact center will eventually improve by saving money.
Empowering the agents: without the right technology for the contact center, the agents cannot do their job effectively of making customer relationships. If an investment is made in a high-end contact center platform to handle the contact center, it will give the best tools for the empowerment like ACD, CRM, 360-degree customer view and unified desktop.
Incentives and rewards: if there are a lot of unsatisfied customers, it is always a good idea to give out incentives and rewards to make them satisfied.
Conclusion
In the limelight of the above-executed analysis, it has been concluded from this report that operational management is an area that is an important part of an organization. It deals with designing as well as controlling all the process in an organization. Various frameworks used for analyzing the problem has been discussed along with the processes used to manage all the operations of an organization have been discussed. Various benchmarks have been analyzed to find the effect of issues on the organization and their impact. It can be concluded that business practices various techniques to achieve the high level of efficiency within an organization. Operational management helps a business to grow efficiently with gaining maximum profit within an organization. In this report, certain techniques have been analyzed that have proved to be successful for the company’s growth. Operational management involves complete planning of all the operations in an organization by controlling and coordinating all the activities that are needed by a company to achieve the good position of a company. From the analyses of this report, it can be stated that operational management is all about improving the efficiency of a company by undertaking various steps. It basically covers the ways of transferring the manual work into proper service to maximize the profit of an organization.
References
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