I\'ve asked the same question before but the answer is wrong so please post righ
ID: 448804 • Letter: I
Question
I've asked the same question before but the answer is wrong so please post right answer this time. Please answer if you know the subject well.
Small Business Management.
YMC situation 1:
Jay Goltz owns a Chicago-based decorative frame company, Artists Frame Service, and three other businesses. And in his mind, customer service today is more important than ever. “Smiling and being pleasant is not enough,” Goltz observes. He goes out of his way to hire great employees and trains them to handle even the most challenging questions and service requests. Then he goes a step or two further by making the following claims on his company’s website:
* Our framing consultants have art backgrounds with an average of nine years of experience.
* We offer an extraordinary selection of picture frames sourced personally and passionately from around the world so you get the perfect frame.
* We take framing seriously. It’s about details, higher standards and meeting our own expectations. You’ll see and feel the difference.
* We frame your art in one week—with a huge inventory and a large staff of artisans, we can deliver on this commitment.
To ensure that all goes as planned, Goltz keeps extensive documentation on every job. If complaints arise, he can figure out what happened and deal with the problem quickly. Taking this approach, he can tell if a customer’s dissatisfaction stems from, say, an employee’s carelessness, inadequate equipment, or some other problem. If the cause is an employee’s poor workmanship, Goltz will provide coaching to help improve that associate’s performance. After that, if the problem still is not solved, the employee is fired. As Goltz sees it, “The company’s first mission isn’t having employees, it’s staying in business. Customer service is the main advantage small businesses have over their big competitors, so you have to get that right—no matter what it takes.”
Question 1 As a long-run strategy, will Goltz’s approach to superior customer service quality be successful?
Question 2 Would you want to work for a company with such policies? What would be the pros and cons of working there?
Question 3 What suggestions would have you for Goltz? Can you see any ways to improve his system?
Explanation / Answer
Question 1 As a long-run strategy, will Goltz’s approach to superior customer service quality be successful?
Answer - The unilateral strategic focus thatGoltz has on customer service, even at the cost of firing his own employees can reap him customer loyalty and kudos in the short term, but is not sustainable in the long run. A successful enterprise is built more on having loyal and committed employees, than having customers. Goltz is following a strategy which do not incentivise the employees for doing good work which they do most of the time, but penalise them for doing bad work if they do on just one or two occasions. This is a negative motivation and disaster in the making. First and foremost, exceptional service quality comes from happy and motivated employees, who are driven by their passion for work, rather than fear of losing the job. So Goltz's approach will not be successful in the long run.
Question 2 Would you want to work for a company with such policies? What would be the pros and cons of working there?
Answer : I would never want to for a company with such policies. Cons are already discussed in the previous question, however there would still be an attraction to work for such a company, notwithstanding all the risks of job insecurity, which is training and learning under the guidance of someone who is an expert in his field. There would be learning about best practices of sourcing, workmanship and customer service.
Question 3 What suggestions would have you for Goltz? Can you see any ways to improve his system?
Answer - My suggestion for Goltz is to understand the importance of keeping employees happy and motivated by way of intrinsic means of motivation, rather than being stone-fisted. The amount of focus, that he has on customer service, supply chain, training and other operational aspects of his business, should be balanced by a more humanitarian and sympathetic approach towards employees. He needs to design and implement incentive structure to keep the employees motivated and happy, rather than using fear as a mean of doing so. This way he can improve the otherwise ignored, HR aspect of his system.