Managing Customer Relationships: A Project Guide For Students

Current Situation

Customer Relationship Management refers to practices, technologies and strategies that an organisation takes to manage the customer interaction. Organisations can use CRM to research about customers’ data, customers’ life cycle and CSR can be used to manage business relationships with customers. In this study, an organisation will be chosen and organisation’s customer management policies will be discussed. In the later section, customer service policies will be redesigned. In accomplishing customer service programme, IDIC model will be used to understand the organisation’s current process. Customer loyalty strategies will be discussed and customers will be differentiated by loyalty segments. Moreover, the aim of the study is to evaluate Customer Service Tools (CRM) to support customer relationship management.

Ollie’s Trolley is a family owned restaurant and it is in Washington DC, US. This restaurant was established in the year 1987. Ollie’s Trolley is famous for the seasoned burgers and fries. Customers also visit Ollie’s Trolley for desserts like milkshake and ice cream. This restaurant is located near Metro centre and it is just walking distance near Smithsonian mall. Ollie’s Trolley restaurant is mainly famous for the family and kid-friendly atmosphere. Ollie’s Trolley serves natural 100% premium beef in burgers from local Roseda farms (Olliestrolleydc.com, 2017).

The goals of Ollie’s Trolley:

• To reach to new the customer base in Washington DC specifically to young customers
• To increase the market share of 5% by the end of 2020
• To enhance the profitability by 3% by the end of 2020

 Ollie’s Trolley does not do enough marketing and they do not have any social media accounts to promote their restaurants. Ollie’s Trolley restaurant mainly gives discounts to the customers on special festive occasions and they inform the customers by hanging a poster outside the outlet. Ollie’s Trolley provides quality food items to the customers and this does the word-of-mouth marketing for the restaurant.

Ollie’s Trolley organisation does not have PR team that takes information about customers’ preferences and choices. Ollie’s Trolley tries to provide quality food items and tries to retain the customers. IDIC model describes the customer relationship system of the organisations (Mithas, Krishnan & Fornell, 2013).

‘I’ stands for identification of the customers, Ollie’s Trolley organisation identifies the customers as they are mainly families and kids, customers also feel that they also know the organisation. The waiters at the restaurants identify the customers mainly and waiters bring the customers to their seats, take orders and deliver the foods.

‘D’ stands for differentiating the customers, Ollie’s Trolley organisation understands the value of the customers and family persons are the mainly the target of the organisation. Needs of the family customers’ are mainly good and quality food items. They differentiate the customers according to various timing also. Mainly in the lunch hours, office crowd come to the restaurant and in the evening, families come with children.

Second ‘I’ stands for the interaction as organisations need to make a relationship with target customers. Customers’ services, discounts and concerns of the organisation for the customers make the interaction in Ollie’s Trolley. From the side of Ollie’s Trolley, these efforts make customers’ loyal and it helps to make a long-term relationship. Since the customers come at the doorstep of Ollie’s Trolley, the waiters treat them well and ask them about food and order. In post-purchase stage, waiters ask to follow the customers to the gate and greet them well.

Redesign the Customer Service Policies and Strategies

‘C’ stands as customisation; however, Ollie’s Trolley does not have any policy to behave in accordance with customers’ needs. Ollie’s Trolley sells the products which are healthy and they offer 30 types of herbs and spices in their food items. Ollie’s Trolley has weakness in customisation and they need to work in this sphere.

Identification

In order to identify the customers, Ollie’s Trolley needs to train the employees how to treat them. Ollie’s Trolley has normally 4-5 waiters inside the restaurant who serve the people. There needs to be one staff who can stand at the entrance to greet the customers with smiling face. This staff can approach the customers to make the customers familiar and understand the customers’ preferences. In the purchasing stage, the staffs need to behave well and identify the customers’ food preferences. Experienced staff needs at least three to four times before he/she can recognise the face of the customers. Waiters can ask more questions humbly in order to distinguish the preferences. The trained staffs can speak to the customers to know about their residence whether they locals or foreigners. The conversation tones must be relaxed and composed and customers would feel friendly and positive (Srinivasan & Moorman, 2013).

Differentiate

Ollie’s Trolley differentiates the customers in observing their timing. Ollie’s Trolley distinguishes the customers in the different target market. Families with children mainly come after an evening or at dinner time. In the afternoon or early evening, Ollie’s Trolley wants to target the young customers who would visit with their friends. Ollie’s Trolley can engage the customers by setting large television screen and play nice music or sports. As stated by Khodakarami & Chan (2014), in differentiation stage, an organisation focuses mainly its resources on customers who can bring the most value to the company with setting customer specific strategies. Customers who would spend more than $25 in a single bill would be entitled to 1 lucky. Ollie’s Trolley can differentiate the customers by providing promotions like deals in happy hours (between 12 noon and 3 pm) off on chicken burgers. For customers who like to visit for a burger, they can have a special sandwich offer with 30% off. They can differentiate the customers to offer 50% off on each Friday.

Interaction

Sometimes, it is seen that customers cannot decide which food items to eat. In this scenario, before making a purchase from the restaurant, staffs of the restaurant can suggest the best items of Ollie’s Trolley. Moreover, Ollie’s Trolley does not have any social media page. In recent time, social media interaction is very important, Ollie’s Trolley should open Facebook and Twitter page to interact with customers and get to know their preferences and feedback. Ollie’s Trolley has a website of them; they can post the good customer feedback on social media page to generate conversation on social media platforms. Ollie’s Trolley can reply one-to-one on social media pages in case any query is posted by customer understanding each customer feedback.

Customisation

Ollie’s Trolley needs to understand the value of customisation in fast food industry. In the restaurant industry, in this stage, an organisation mainly does upsell and cross-sells their products in order to increase profits and also understanding staffs’ recommendation in interaction process (Küpper et al., 2015). Ollie’s Trolley can make combo offers to merge two or three items at lower prices that would be helpful for office goers to have lunch at a lower price. In case of family visitors, they like to have healthy snacks with low trans fat, Ollie’s Trolley can mention calorie and nutrition value on the menu card. This strategy would help the family customers to make a decision in food choices. In addition, they can make soft ice cream completely free on purchasing of burger on weekend in order to increase sell among young generation.

Design Customer Loyalty Strategies and Programs

Ollie’s Trolley has been in the industry for more than three decades; however, they have not been in marketing. However, Ollie’s Trolley can follow customer loyalty strategies that would enhance customer relationship management resulting to improve profitability. Ollie’s Trolley can support local food suppliers. This is the thing they have been doing for long; in addition, they can engage local artists and musicians at restaurants on weekends. The increasing demands of customers’ support in recent time are evident in the restaurant industry (Zhang et al., 2017). Instead of playing music in the juke box, Ollie’s Trolley can engage local artists to play their music and people will enjoy this. Moreover, another strategy could be pairing the food items and drinks. Ollie’s Trolley can boost the customer loyalty by unique pairing the food and drink at minimum pricing.

In customer loyalty programmes, Ollie’s Trolley can use:

Refer a friend customer rewards:

Referral rewards will be beneficial for Ollie’s Trolley as they want to enter young generation target market. On social media page, Ollie’s Trolley can provide a unique code to the customers; existing customers can refer to these codes to their friends. In this case, new customers, as well as existing customers, can get discounts in this scenario. American cab Lyft uses this strategy for rewards the drivers of the cab.  

Multi-visit loyalty rewards

The more the customers’ visit Ollie’s Trolley and spend the time, customers can earn loyalty rewards through this. Each time, customer visits Ollie’s Trolley, they will earn points based on the amount of purchasing. On next purchase, the customer will have extra discounts as per the generated points. Multi-visit strategy will allure the customers to visit more and Southwest Airlines uses this strategy to retain more customers (Chuang & Lin, 2013). Multi-visiting will increase more points and customers can get more discounts on each purchase.

Multi-brand programmes rewards

This loyalty programme is helpful to the customers and Ollie’s Trolley. Ollie’s Trolley can get extra customer by making ‘tie-up’ with another brand. Ollie’s Trolley needs to make loyalty partnership with an online based company like Uber or any e-commerce. In this regard, customers can get extra discounts who will make a purchase from e-commerce or travel by Uber. Extra points collecting from loyalty-partners of Ollie’s Trolley, customers can get extra discounts and it will eventually increase footfalls in the restaurants.

Hardcore brand loyal customers

There will be some hardcore brand-loyal customers who visit the restaurant frequently. In this segment, ‘refer a friend’ loyalty programme will be work perfectly. The characteristic of the customers is that they get excited about any new products or discount of the brand (Yom-Tov et al., 2017). Ollie’s Trolley needs to identify the customers and the restaurant can get special discounts to them. Ollie’s Trolley should be innovators to impress the certain customers. The hard core brand loyal customer usually visit the restaurant during the afternoon and Ollie’s Trolley can declare happy hours at that time giving special discounts.

Split loyal customers

Include Differentiation of Customers by Loyalty Segments

In the restaurant industry, there are several customers who like more than one brand and use to visit there. Ollie’s Trolley needs to make sure that the customers visit their restaurant frequently. In this case, ‘multi-visit loyalty rewards’ will be helpful as it can increase the visiting frequency to get discounts (Swimberge & Wooldridge, 2014). Offers advertisements on Facebook or Twitter page can increase the sales. For Ollie’s Trolley, these customers will be a perfect target and posting offer like lucky draw can increase the customers as most customers have multiple choices.

Shifting loyal customers:

As stated by Setia, Venkatesh & Joglekar  (2013), shifting loyal customers are a mix of split and hardcore customers as they purchase from one brand and shift to others as well. Ollie’s Trolley needs to recognise their preferences through staffs’ interaction and offering lower prices will work. In this case, ‘multi-brand reward’ will engage these customers as they may need to redeem the points what they have made through partnership brand. Shifting loyal customers are less loyal and Ollie’s Trolley needs to offer weekend discounts to return them back to their restaurant.

When a restaurant understands its customers, it can easily drive towards success. CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is used mainly to collect data, storing information and it can be integrated to sale system.

Zoho CRM

Zoho focuses mainly on leading conversation with the customers. Zoho tool can be extended to the mobile app that can be used by sales team on the road also. Zoho CRM provides sales force automation, account management and lead management. Moreover, Zoho supports effective follow up to the customers and Zoho CRM gives sales tracking. Zoho gives benefits of monitor sales, engage customers and it can be possible to get updates on mobile platforms also. Ollie’s Trolley can get profitability from Zoho as it helps to customise sales process. Zoho gives benefit to manage customer account and track the customers from the shared database (Zoho.com, 2017). Customers’ Facebook pages can be linked to the Zoho CRM as well. Zoho gives benefits to use apps like Docs, Calendar, E-mails and contacts.  

NetSuite CRM+

NetSuite CRM is powerful customer relationship management solution which can provide company 360-degree views of customers in real time. With the assistance of NetSuite, Ollie’s Trolley can provide exceptional customer experience and it can lead management in fulfilling post-sales support as well. NetSuite provides features of e-commerce, sale force automation, customer data management and marketing analytic support. Customers’ interaction can be saved in timeline conveniently and individuals can access this. NetSuite gives the firm to access all the activities of customers and visitors on firm’s websites and NetSuite helps to get visitor’s preferences. Marketing team use this data in future campaigning and it also helps the company to monitor the productivity of the employees.

PosIQ

PosIQ is a customer monitoring and analytic tool. PosIQ allows the organisation to track the customers from various perspectives. PosIQ provides an opportunity to have insights of discounts and advertisements of the firm which they provide to the customers. The firm can analyse if the marketing campaigns are working or not. PosIQ provides help to redeem points and rewards of the customers by making contact between customers and firm. PosIQ’s integrated system and intelligent data can help Ollie’s Trolley to make customer relationship management simple and it would be perfect for small business. Customers can sign up by using e-mail or phone number and PosIQ will promptly reveal more to customers. Customers’ information and interaction will increase once relationship will make. PosIQ will give 30 days’ trial period to the firm (Posiq.net, 2017). PosIQ is perfect for restaurant and it is an awesome mixture of big data solution. It helps the firm to understand the customers and firm become enabling to monitor and learn the customers. PosIQ helps to provide personalised service to the customers.

Evaluate Technology-Related Tools (CRM)

Problem resolution time

Ollie’s Trolley needs to be rapid and accurate in fixing the issues of customers on time. Having this clarity to the customers can be a big win for the organisation. In multi-brand programme reward, customers will ask about the rewards point through use of social media or website of the firm, customers’ queries are needed to solve quickly. Customer services team needs to be prompt in providing services and customers will not leave the firm.

Social Media

Ollie’s Trolley needs to track the customers on social media. Customers post their complaints and issues on social media. Ollie’s Trolley should resolve the issue before it gets viral. Complaints must get lesser and a number of satisfied customers should get higher on social media, this could be customer service metrics. Social media analytics can track customers’ referring and increasing the numbers of likes and follows should be followed.

Customer experience rating

CRM must have a section where people can provide their ratings on customer service. Ollie’s Trolley can measure the overall customer experience and prioritise customers’ preferences and values. Ratings show who are the loyal customers and it gives powerful opportunity to understand what the customers want (Dabholkar, 2015). It helps to retain customers.  

Ollie’s Trolley organisation has its fixed costs related to lease, staffs salaries, depreciation of assets and property taxes. The product is burgers and soft ice cream. The variable costs are related to raw materials, sales commissions, factory labour, social media advertisements and CRM tools. Using CRM tool of PosIQ can save the customers as almost 700 customers visit daily in outlet of Ollie’s Trolley and using CRM can increase this to 900 customers daily. The revenue of the firm will increase drastically.

Variable cost is calculated to be $3 per unit and the burger and soft ice cream are priced as $12 each.

Breakeven point:

Fixed costs / (price – variable costs) = Breakeven points in units

$60000 / ($12 – $3) = 15000 units

Ollie’s Trolley needs to produce and sell 15000 burgers and ice cream in order to cover their total expenditure, fixed and variables. In this point of sales, Ollie’s Trolley will make no profit; however, it will break even.

Conclusion 

Ollie’s Trolley is a small restaurant and it does not have any customer relationship management services. Ollie’s Trolley can change the customer relationship management in order to meet the marketing objectives and goals. Ollie’s Trolley is going to manage customer through interaction and data of the customers. Ollie’s Trolley can take customer loyalty programmes like ‘refer to a friend’ and ‘multi-brand reward’ and these programmes will increase customers’ services. CRM tool like PosIQ can help Ollie’s Trolley in retaining more customers and driving sales growth.  

Reference List 

Chuang, S. H., & Lin, H. N. (2013). The roles of infrastructure capability and customer orientation in enhancing customer-information quality in CRM systems: Empirical evidence from Taiwan. International Journal of Information Management, 33(2), 271-281.

Dabholkar, P. A. (2015). How to improve perceived service quality by increasing customer participation. In Proceedings of the 1990 academy of marketing science (AMS) annual conference. 483-487

Khodakarami, F., & Chan, Y. E. (2014). Exploring the role of customer relationship management (CRM) systems in customer knowledge creation. Information & Management, 51(1), 27-42.

Küpper, T., Wieneke, A., Wittkuhn, N., Lehmkuhl, T., & Jung, R. (2015). Assessment Schema for Social CRM Tools: An Empirical Investigation. In Bled eConference. 3(2), 17-34

Mithas, S., Krishnan, M. S., & Fornell, C. (2013). Why do customer relationship management applications affect customer satisfaction?. American Marketing Association. 1(2), 87-99

OLLIE’S TROLLEY Restaurant in Washington DC. (2017). Olliestrolleydc.com. Retrieved 9 October 2017, from https://www.olliestrolleydc.com/

PosIQ – Restaurant CRM and Big Data for Restaurants. (2017). Posiq.net. Retrieved 9 October 2017, from https://www.posiq.net/

Setia, P., Venkatesh, V., & Joglekar, S. (2013). Leveraging digital technologies: How information quality leads to localized capabilities and customer service performance. Mis Quarterly, 37(2).

Srinivasan, R., & Moorman, C. (2013). Strategic firm commitments and rewards for customer relationship management in online retailing. American Marketing Association. 2(1), 67-66

Swimberghe, K. R., & Wooldridge, B. R. (2014). Drivers of customer relationships in quick-service restaurants: The role of corporate social responsibility. Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, 55(4), 354-364.

Yom-Tov, G. B., Rafaeli, A., Altman, D., & Ashtar, S. (2017). Text-based customer service: Using big-data to connect customer emotion to service operations. International Journal of marketing, 98-102

Zhang, M., Hu, M., Guo, L., & Liu, W. (2017). Understanding relationships among customer experience, engagement, and word-of-mouth intention on online brand communities: The perspective of Service Ecosystem. Internet Research. 2(1), 99-133

 Zoho.com(2017). CRM software tool. Retrieved 9 October 2017, from https://www.zoho.com/login.htm

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