Customer Service Improvement At McDonald’s

Question: 1. Describe the issue that will be the subject of your presentation.2. List the objectives of your presentation.3. Indicate who might be the likely audience for your presentation and their role in the organisation.4. Describe the organisations processes and policies that relate to how the organisation performs on the selected issue.5. Document any current limitations the organisation has in meeting the full requirements of its customers in relation to the selected issue.6. Organisations can always improve their performance. There will be activities your organisation can do better. Nominate at least one area of improvement that could be made in relation to your nominated issue.7. Briefly describe a plan of action to implement the improvement using the following questions to shape the outline of your plan: a) What are the financial implications of implementing the improvement plan?b) Who might champion the improvement?c) How will the improvement change the customer service practices of the organisation?d) How will you determine whether the implementation of the improvement has been successful in providing a higher level of service to your customers? Answer: Mc Donalds is a leading fast food retailer of the world, who is known for its highest levels of quality, cleanliness and service. This fast food giant offers standardized quality services, across multiple of its retail outlets and restaurants across the globe. The Key to the success of its business is continuously monitoring and acting on the customer feedback, collected by the franchise outlets of the business. Assignment 3 presents one such area of customer service improvement that the organization McDonalds Corporation can take up, for better customer service management of its operations. (1)Lack of interaction and friendly gestures shown by McDonalds employees with the customers at stores or its drive thru restaurants is one major areas of customer service improvement that the Organization may look forward to (QSR Magazine, 2013). The discussion on this issue or area of improvement would be the subject of presentation for this assignment. (2)The Objectives of this presentation are in accordance with the SMART objectives that have specific goals that are measurable and attainable; and yet are absolutely realistic and time bound. The Following are the key objectives of the Presentation: Including Friendly Interaction of Employees/Staff as new criteria in the existing annual customer feedback template of the corporation (Wohl Jessica, 2014). Providing necessary Training and development to the Front end Staff of the Corporation, in order to work towards the suggested service gaps. Attaining above 80% score for friendly employee interaction criteria, in the annual customer feedback of McDonalds Corporation in the financial year 2015-2016. (3)The representatives from the board members, senior management team of the organization and the representatives from the customer service department would be the audience to this presentation. The Likely audience for the presentation on strategic improvement of customer service levels would necessarily be the strategy builders and policy makers of the organization. (4)Providing efficient and timely delivery of the customer orders, with adherence to utmost quality and hygiene are the current policies and procedures relating to customer satisfaction at McDonalds. This area of service improvement is neither related to the core product offerings of the organization, nor with the supply chain operations of the organization. The objective of effectively improving the staff interaction with the store customers in a friendly manner would be a partial responsibility of the Human resource management team, along with the customer relations team of the organization. The Organization may likely go for job role enrichment of the front end staff, by providing them the necessary training to work on the desired gap in the on the job service offered to the customers. The Organization may also have to upgrade the current compensation provided to its front end staff, to attract better employees, capable of giving friendly services to the customers (Verrill Ashley, 2014). (5)Emotional Engagement of the customers is the next evolving concept that is playing an important role in the entire retail sector, including the food retailing industry (Schneider and Bowen, 1995). The Organization McDonalds thus, shows to make it a practice to invest in the right kind of front end employees, who have the right temperament and emotional balance to display friendly gestures while at work in stores. The recruitment process of the organization has to incorporate this necessary change to absorb employees that can emotionally engage the customers (Derose, 2013). Lack of adequate compensation package offered to the front end staff, may be a reason that could limit the desired friendly interaction expected from the staff. Another possible reason to aggravate the mentioned issue could be the lack of right customer relationship training given to the front end employees, which interact with the store customers. (6)Usage of technology in terms of recording the details of their regular customers, along with their previous orders can help McDonalds a lot in improving its interactive customer service (Establish Management consultants, 2013). The store staff may greet the customers in their respective native languages, and thus display an affectionate and friendly gesture towards the store customers, which may be directed at foreigners. Further potential improvement can also be achieved through initiatives such as online ordering systems, shorter time for customer to wait in store, getting customer preference details by tracking previous orders etc. (7) a) The Implementation of the discussed plan of improvement of offering friendly customer interactions would definitely help in attracting more numbers of customers to the outlets of McDonalds in the long run. The initial financial implications would be an increased overhead cost in relation to increasing the wage of front end employees in order to attract a wider selection of candidates, further to that, more stringent hiring practices would require a more thorough interview / selection process which would cost more. Finally, additional training required for the desired outcome would incur further costs. However, after an initial negative impact, over time the gains in revenue due to more customers / greater customer loyalty would cover these overheads and generate greater revenue for McDonalds. b) The Human resources development team of the Organization would be championing this improvement because they will be responsible for training the existing staff for effective employee interaction. c) The Customer Service practices of the Organization McDonalds are well known for its service quality, order efficiency and maintenance of adequate hygiene while handling the food offerings. The service improvement in terms of friendly interactions with the customers would be a further add-on in the efficient customer service practices of the organization. This change in terms of the overall customer service practice is minor, however it would serve to further augment the customer service practices by changing the way employees interact with customers. d) The Annual customer feedback exercise and gradual improvement in the revenues would help in determining the successful implementation by adequately increasing the quality of customer interaction. The customer satisfaction rating would be expected to increase from 75% to 85% in a span of two years. References Schneider and Bowen, 1995, Winning the Service Game (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, pp 3 Derose Chris, 2013, How McDonalds can finally fix its abysmal customer service, Business Insider, Retrieved from https://www.businessinsider.com/how-mcdonalds-can-fix-customer-service-2013-5?IR=T Establish Management consultants, 2013, Customer Service Improvement Case studies, Retrieved from https://www.establishinc.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Memo-706-v2013.pdf McDonalds Corporation, 2013, Annual Report, Retrieved from https://www.aboutmcdonalds.com/content/dam/AboutMcDonalds/Investors/McDs2013AnnualReport.pdf QSR Magazine, 2013, How Mc Donalds can improve customer service, retrieved from https://www.qsrmagazine.com/news/how-mcdonalds-can-improve-customer-service Rodrigo A. Padilla, 1996, Literature Review on Consumer Satisfaction in Modern Marketing, Seminar in Consumer Research, Faculty of Commerce and Administration, Concordia University. Ron Zemke and Dick Schaaf, 1989, The Service Edge: 101Companies that Profit from Customer Care, New York: New American Library, pp 31 Verrill Ashley, 2014, Why McDonalds is focusing on speed of service over service with a smile, Retrieved from https://csi.softwareadvice.com/why-mcdonalds-is-focusing-on-speed-of-service-0113/ Wohl Jessica, 2014, McDonalds tries to build better customer service, Portland Press Herald, Retrieved from https://www.pressherald.com/2014/10/25/mcdonalds-tries-to-build-better-customer-service/