Customer Management Plan

Customer Management Plan Contents Page

1. Our Brand Page 3

2. The Market Page 3

3. The Shop Page 3

• Servicescape Page 4

4. Service

• Service Quality Page 5
• Measuring Service Quality Page 5
• Service Recovery Service Plan Page 6

5. Customers

• Loyalty Page 7
• Total Customer Experience Page 7
• Customer Feedback Page 8
• Customer Use of Service Blueprint Page 10

6. ReferencesPage 11

1. Our Brand

Rubia Coffee are a new chain of coffee shops that will offer more value per drink than any other chain coffee shop. The way that Rubia Coffee will do this is by offering a large variety of coffee beans for completely different flavours even for those classic orders, happy and enthusiastic staff, a relaxing environment in each shop, and also offer a large range of high quality foods to complement our drinks. Each coffee will be made by a highly trained employee to guarantee a high quality drink. We’ll also offer multiple counters to order at to make sure each customers wait is kept to a minimum. This is rarely offered at other chain coffee shops. The name Rubia comes from the word Rubiaceae which is the name is the all coffee plants fall under as all different strains of coffee plants are in the Rubiaceae family (Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden. 2013)

2. The Market

The UK coffee shop market now has a net worth of A£1.401 (Helena Spicer. 2013). This is predicted to continue rising until at least 2018 according to a Mintel report [1]. The market leader is Costa Coffee with 1656 outlets which is a 27% increase from 2011-2013 whereas Starbucks has 730 units which has decreased from 739 in the same time period. This may be because Costa Coffee has dominated the market and has taken many of the most convenient places for high footfall. In an Infographic report done by Helena Spicer about customers of coffee shops she found that 44% of people enjoyed something that they’ve drank before, 38% said they like something they can’t have at home, and 33% of those interviewed buy their drinks based on low prices. However according to this report 27% of customers find the branded coffee shops are not good value for money and 65% of customers go to coffee shops due it it’s convenience (Spicer, H. 2013). Our Target market is those customers whose gross annual household income is above A£25,000 whilst still catering for those that do not meet this by offering a saver menu. The reason this is our target market as 44% of those in this segment go to at least 1 chain coffee shop on a regular basis (Mintel. 2013).

3. The Shop

Our shops shall be around the average size of 202 sqm (Edinburgh Council. 2011). This is because these shop are usually placed in easy to access areas. Within these shops there shall be at least 20 seats for customers and 15 tables. This is so the customer can sit with their order and consume it on site if they wish even though many customers take their drinks and/or food off site. Fig 1 - Rubia Coffee Layout The design of the average outlet for Rubia Coffee caters for multiple different customers. The stooled area caters for customers that may be by themselves but would like to sit down. The tabled eating area is for customers that are with either a group of friends or a spouse. The Waiting Area is also near the door for those customers that wish to consume their order off site. The arrows in Fig 1 show the flow of customers around the shop. This flow of customers will keep the shop from getting crowded. The design of the average outlet is also beneficial for the employees as well. This is due Servicescape Servicescaping now has a higher significance in the design of any outlet whether it be for retail or service. This is because the servicescape can have a direct and indirect effect of the customer view on the quality of the service (Reimer, A. Kuehn, R. 2005). When designing a shop layout Rubia Coffee find that it is very important to create an atmosphere that the customer find relaxing but also feel like the place they are in has a quality feel to it. This is why in our shops there are relaxing colours such as greens and blues as well as relaxing music in the background.

4. Service

Service Quality When looking at service quality you need to look at what impacts service quality. According to Parasuraman, Zeithaml, And Berry there are 5 determinants to service quality. These are tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy (Parasuraman, A., Berry, L., Zeithaml, V. 1991) The reliability of the service is the ability to perform the service dependably and accurately. This aspect is when employee training and proper planning is need to make sure that the service is carried out the way it should be. Tangibles for the service quality are the physical appearance of the facilities (Buttle, F. 2009). This includes equipment using for making and preparing the foods and drinks. The staff also come under the tangibles for the service quality. This will ensure that employees are well dressed in the correct Rubia Coffee attire which shows a smart yet friendly persona of the staff. Responsiveness shows the willingness for the employees and managers to help customers and provide the efficient service. This will be achieved by high quality training and also the caring personalities of the employees. Assurance is the ability of the employees in ensure trust and confidence in their role shop to the customers with their knowledge. This is also achieve via high quality training and as well as their enthusiasm in their job role. The last part of the SERVQUAL Model is Empathy. This is the individualised attention to customers that Rubia Coffee employee will give to each customer. This could be assisting a person in a wheelchair or if a customer is a regular, acknowledging them when they enter the cafe.

These determinants will be used to keep high levels of service quality. As these determinants are easily understandable. Each manager shall be able to implement new procedures that will keep the standard of each determinant high. Measuring Service Quality Service quality shall be measured by looking at the number of repeat customers an outlet has. As this indicates that the quality of the service that you are providing is satisfactory for that customer to keep returning back to the same outlet rather than finding an alternative. Another method of measure the service quality would be by giving customers a small form with an incentive of a money off voucher for their next purchase. These forms will contain a small amount of questions regarding the determinants of service quality/the SERVQUAL instruments (Berry, L. Zeithaml, V. Parasuraman, A. 1994). These questions shall be a rating system of 1 to 5, with 1 being very bad and 5 being excellent. They will also have spaces for comments in which to improve certain areas of the SERVQUAL determinants.

Service Recovery Plan A service recovery plan can be defined as ‘all the actions taken by a company to resolve a service failure’ (Buttle, F. 2009). To be able to make a Service Recovery Plan we first need to know what the service failure is. When there is a service failure the root cause needs to be identified. As services can fail in multiple of different ways the failure can be from a technical side or functional service quality meaning the service isn’t up to standard. Therefore the locus of the failure needs to be found. This will be achieved via customer complaints. After the locus is found the stability of the failure needs to be calculated. Was it just a one off? Or does this happen on a frequent basic? After the stability is calculated it needs to be checked to see how controllable the failure is. Is the failure because of employees not being able to perform correctly or is it due to something that is out of Rubia Coffee’s control. This negative impacts of service failure can be a decline in customer confidence, loss of revenue, and even a decrease in employee moral which may lead to a reduction in employee performance (Komunda, M. Osarenkhoe, A. 2012) To be able to find the locus of the service failure customers need to be able to easily complain about the issue. This process needs to be a well thought-out and planned process to satisfy aggrieved customers (Komunda, M. Osarenkhoe, A. 2012). A customer can complain in two different ways. The first way being the first being public action, and the second being private action. Public action is when a customer send their complaint/s -

• To the firm that the service failure occurred at,
• Or by complaining to a third party which could a reviewing website
• Or by taking legal action to seek compensation for the dissatisfactory service.

Private action is when a customer either -

• Switches provider of the service.
• Or by talking about the company with a negative word of mouth.

Many customers do not complain about a service failure (Komunda, M. Osarenkhoe, A. 2012) which not only negatively impacts them with receiving a dissatisfactory service but this dissatisfactory service can happen to many other customers as well. This is why is important to make the complaints procedure as easy as possible for the customers not only for their benefit but for Rubia Coffee’s benefit. There will be three different way in which Rubia Coffee shall deal with complaints. This will be by distributive justice, procedural justice, and interactional justice (Buttle, F. 2009). Distributive justice shall be achieved if the customer want a material good for their compliant. This may be another coffee for free or what they ordered or for a discount on their next purchase.

They customers may also be satisfied with just a complaint however a free replacement will always be offered. Procedural justice is when the customer’s evaluation of the service failure and the attempt to fix this failure is used to try and to fix as well as improve the service failure. However most customer do not wish to fill in a long form or to write letters to the company. A formal letter of apology and a material compensation should be given to the customer if they wish to gain procedural justice. Interaction justice should always be used with customer complaints as interactional justice is when the customer is satisfied with the empathy, politeness, courtesy, and effort that either the employee or manager gives them in order to correct the service failure. The procedure that should be followed when receiving a complaint would be -

1. Apologise for the inconvenience of the issue.
2. Offer to replace their order and/or offering a discount on their next order if needed.
3. If the customer still isn’t satisfied contact manager for a formal apology from that outlet. The manager should offer more discount if needed.
4. If the customer is still not satisfied the manager should ask them to step to one side to write down what happened from the customer’s point of view. Then ask for their personal address for the head office to send them a formal apology on behalf of the company as well as an acceptable level of compensation.

5. Customers

Loyalty Many happy customers that are actively buying from one company may feel that the company doesn’t value them from the volume of goods that they purchase not being recognised (Peel, J. 2002). There are two different types of loyalty to a company. There is behavioural loyalty and attitudinal loyalty. Both of these types of loyalty are critical to a business’s operation. Behavioural loyalty is when a customer intends to repurchase the same brand to maintain the relationship with that brand. Customers to do possibly for peace of mind due to not having to find alternatives to that brand. The way the Rubia Coffee intend to increase behavioural loyalty is by offering a reliable, efficient, cost effective, and high value for money service that’s second to none. This way more people should intend to repurchase from our brand. As linking back to the views the market has “27% of customers find the branded coffee shops are not good value for money”. If we reduce this number significantly more potential customers will buy from our brand by increasing the possible demand for those looking for good value for money. Attitudinal loyalty is when a customer identifies themselves with a brand. This may be due to their business ethics or this may be due to that the brand is in fashion. The way we will do this is by keeping good business ethics buying our supplies at a fair price for small coffee bean farmers and larger corporations. Rubia Coffee also intend to be proactive in future changes in government policies rather than reactive. Being proactive from policy changes shows that our company is able to change for the better without being forced too. The way that Rubia Coffee will reward customers will be by those that are in our loyalty scheme. This scheme will be run by our loyalty cards, our emailing list, and to those that have our smartphone app.

Those that are in this scheme will benefit by getting a free singular purchase after a number of paid purchases and by receiving discounts to certain produce at random time intervals. This way customer will have to monitor our offers to receive the discount when it is released. Total Customer Experience The definition of total customer experience or TCE is a ‘totally positive, engaging, enduring, and socially physical and emotional customer experience across all major levels of one’s consumption chain and one that is brought about by a distinct market offering that calls for active interaction between consumers and providers’ (Bernacchi, M. Kesavan, R. Mascarenhas, O. 2006). This means that the customer is fully satisfied with the whole experience that the service provides as they feel like the business truly cares about them and their experience. Total customer experience can be used to increase the amount lasting customer loyalty. As throughout the whole interaction from the customer consuming our service, TCE is always there. The customer consuming our service is shown in the customer blueprint on page 10. The way that Rubia Coffee capture TCE is by providing the best experience a customer can receive for buying from a coffee shop.

The way this is done is by a high standard of training for our staff, by employee kind and friendly staff that are also highly productive, an optimal level of technology to make the experience for the customer easier without too much technology being used which could put certain customers off, and also by serving you in an environment that is clean, relaxing and perfect ambiance. Customer Feedback There are a multiple of different ways in which customer feedback can be collected each have their own benefit also the most common demographic of the outlet can determine with method of getting customer feedback is use. Customers can give their feedback through filling out a small simple form which shall be placed in a small display case next to each till. This way customers that want to leave feedback can pick up the form and customers won’t feel forced into leaving possible false positive feedback. We wish to reward these people that leave us feedback so random forms will have a mark of them that only appears under UV light which will give the customer a single free drink. Another way in which customers can give feedback is by leaving feedback for a specific outlet on our website.

This feedback shall be more in-depth than the form in each Rubia Coffee outlet. If the customer wishes to put their email address on the feedback form they will receive an email thanking them for their feedback and will contain a QR code which they can print off or show on their smartphone to take in any Rubia Coffee outlet and receive a 25% an order. This method of feedback can be more open to false data however the information that is needed to be inputted into the form limits the amount of false data as a whole new false identity would have to be made and they will also be a limit on how many times a single person can leave feedback per year. This will not stop the customer’s ability to complain about an issue in an outlet. Fig 2 – Coffee with beans Customer Use of Service Blueprint

Cite this page