Operations Management Principles-Phase 1 DB Essay

Operations Management Principles-Phase 1 DB - Essay Example This makes today’s customer more sophisticated in terms of tastes and preferences. Customers have come to demand the value of their money in relation to quality and other critical features of products or services. Recent research shows a massive growth in numbers of people complaining about poor services or faulty goods as well as being more assertive and willing to take action against companies (CIM, 2003). Customer complains may range from faulty goods or inadequate services. Thus there is the need to realize we are operating in a more competitive and litigious environment where our company must respond to customer complains. Research also indicates that it is far easier and cheaper to retain current customers than it is to cultivate new ones (Wilmshurst J. & Mackay A, 1999). Moreover, research shows that dissatisfied customers tend to spread the news of their bad experiences very quickly – something that will affect not only our company image, but also risk loosing sales in the long run. There need for the company to develop a strategy that must effectively deal with customer complains for us to achieve growth and sustainability in the industry and take market leadership. For the purpose of establishing practical steps in establishing a customer complaints program, I will use steps established by Wilmshurst, J. and Mackay, A 1999 in their book The Fundamentals of Advertising, which suggest identification of customer needs and perception as first step. Our company must clearly establish what these are and how our customer care department needs to be designed to meet them (Wilmshurst J. & Mackay A, 1999). Secondly, we need to establish a mission statement that is widely accepted for the approach of customer care. Thirdly, our company must clearly set standards and specifications, such as standard for courtesy, credibility, communication, responsiveness, empathy with customer and confidentiality. Fourthly, we