My Learning Objectives - Essay Example

?Part A Reflective self-evaluation My Learning Objectives for this Module With my aim of working in a oriented organisation one day and with an aim of being a very good employee to my customers, my personal objectives for this module was to gain basic skills and knowledge for measuring the term ‘service satisfaction’ as it is seen from the perspective of company workers and that of customers. It was also to draw a relation to find if how workers of a company see service satisfaction is different from how customers see service satisfaction. Based on the achievement this broader objective, I was also seeking to find out how customer satisfaction leads to customer loyalty, how customer loyalty leads to customer retention and how customer retention leads to growth of company. This objective of mine was built out of Adam’s (2009) relation, which he built between customer satisfaction and customer retention stating that “There exists an interaction between the desired results and customer satisfaction, customer loyalty and customer retention.” To the best of my knowledge, workers of a company should define their level of service satisfaction from the view point of customers since customers are the ultimate custodians of services and products from companies. ? How/if those Learning Objectives were accomplished My learning objectives were achieved mainly through the field works and small scale research projects that were organised. This is because these activities brought me closer to both workers of a given organisation and customers of the said organisation. Through the field research, I had the opportunity to interact with both the workers and customers to critically examine from them, factors they look out for to determine service satisfaction. On the part of the customers, I was priviledged to learn at first hand, what they expect from employees and from employees, what they sought to see in customers to know that customers were satisfied with the service they received. ? Objectives I did not meet. The only objective I did not meet was my expectation to see employees or workers see and define service satisfaction from the same perspectives as customers did. Rather, workers seemed to have totally different factors for measuring service satisfaction as compared to customers. What I learn from the failure to meet that objective is that there could have been research that I could have done as an individual in terms of understanding the basic reasons why workers would not at all times but the needs of customers first. If indeed I had taken up extra research and part time learning to understand why this phenomenon exists, I would have been in an excellent position of impacting my knowledge and gained skills to the people my group and I went to have personal interaction with during the small scale research. I have therefore learnt to take extra studies and learning outside the time of the module more seriously. ? What else I learnt that was not in my initial objective In my initial objective, I was more particular about undertaking a critique of professional practice in a chosen field rather than concentrating more on my personal strengths and weaknesses and how these could help me become an overall good worker in my future employment positions. However, this module has helped in helping me identify more qualities about myself including my weaknesses, which I need to master to help me become a very good customer-centered employee in the nearest future. Currently, I have come to learn about some basic qualities that should be seen and put to work in me if I want to achieve my future employment aims. Some of these qualities include interpersonal relationship, team work and team spirit, working under pressure, working with very little supervision and taking up challenging tasks. ? Review of my original learning objectives in the light of new experience Reviewing my original learning objective in the light of my new experiences, I can say that I have been put in a better position to realising my learning objectives. Now, I know that it is not all about the organisation and its structures when talking about service satisfaction. Rather, I have come to know that as someone who would eventually become a worker serving other customers, the kind of qualities I possess and the kind of attitude I build towards work would go a long way to determining how satisfactory the services I render would be. Especially through my field experience and in relation to my new experience acquired, I have come to realise that customers are the pillars around which the success of any company revolves. Customers are central to business growth; however, customer satisfaction varies person to person. For this reason, “the challenge for companies in recent years has been to measure these perceptions” (Customer Service Manager, 2010). This means that companies should continue to research into what makes their individual customers satisfied with the service they receive. Assessment of what growth I have achieved through this process I have gained a lot of growth through the process of going through this module. Some of these can be enumerated below: 1. I have gained well established employment aspirations for the future. 2. I have had the previledge of researching in organisations in different sectors of the economy thereby exposing me to bigger employment opportunities for the future. 3. Presently, I have gained a well coached knowledge in writing proposals for different purposes for different companies. 4. I have developed my personal skills for evaluating customer satisfaction. 5. I have gained an improved knowledge on how to conduct basic research in given organisations. Part 2 Title The Service Quality in Bunzl Limited from Customer Perspective Aim(s) How consumers perceive the service quality offered by Bunzl Vending Services? Objectives What is the level of service quality at Bunzl? Do Bunzl’s customers experience inadequate service quality? Does the service quality need improvement? Introduction to the Research Topic In this section you should provide some background to the research topic and describe why you consider your research to be important. The research topic is in the area of customer satisfaction, which is a very important topical issue in organisational development and growth. In this research, customer satisfaction shall be viewed from the point of the level of service quality they receive from their chosen organisation, which in this case is Bunzl Limited. According to Lewis and Booms (1983), “service quality is a measure of how well a delivered service matches the customer’s expectations.” This way, it becomes logical to argue that once a customer gets the service delivered to him or her matching his or her expectations, he or she becomes satisfaction. Service quality therefore has a lot of relation with customer satisfaction. The closeness of relation between service quality and customer satisfaction is given by Cacioppo (2000) who states that “customer satisfaction is the state of mind that customers have about a company when their expectations have been met or exceeded over the lifetime of the product or service.” From this definition, we see that customer satisfaction has the same factors of meeting customer’s expectations as service quality. The need for this research has resulted for a number of reasons. In the first place, many a company have neglected the need and importance of service quality to the development of their companies and therefore look to other menial efforts to ensure company growth and development. In the view of Cacioppo (2000), customer satisfaction has become a relatively new concept to most companies. This research would therefore be an avenue for companies, more especially Bunzl Limited to understand into its latter, what service quality is, the importance of service to the company’s growth and development, how service quality should be achieved, how service quality should be measured and above all, how service quality should be sustained. It is the believe of the researcher that the single achievement of this aim for Bunzl Limited would go a very long way to not just benefiting the company but society as a whole as each and every member of the society is a potential customer of the company some day. Literature Review In this section you should discuss what academic research and debates have gone on in this area and what conclusions and comments were made by those. Service Quality explained Of course service quality is such a broad concept that there cannot be just one definition to it. In works of literature, especially in business management, different writers have given different means and explanations to what service quality means. From a careful consideration of various literatures available, it can be concluded that, writers and reviewers define and explain service quality based on the models and perspectives from which they take the term. Bitner and Hubbert (1994) for instance defined service quality as “the consumer’s overall impression of the relative inferiority/superiority of the organization and its services” (p. 77). From this definition, service quality has been viewed from a perspective where average matters. This is because the customer is made to compare or base his or her judgment of service quality to a self created yardstick of inferiority or superiority so that the customer’s relative (average) impression becomes the standard by which service quality is measured. Parasuraman, Zeithaml, and Berry (1985) on the other hand viewed service quality as “the degree and direction of discrepancy between customers’ service perception and expectations.” From this definition, we see a new model that has been introduced. This model is such that the customer is made to have two levels, which are perception and expectation. This way, the customer goes into the organisation or company with a perception of how service should be delivered to him or her. At the end of the day, the customer comes out of the organisation or company with expectations of the perception either met or denied. The degree of achievement of denial of expectation becomes what the customer uses to measure service quality. Importance of Service Quality Service quality has existed among businesses since time immemorial. This is because of its immense contribution in organisational growth and development. In the first place, service quality has taken over the competition for winning customers to doing business with one’s organisation. Today, it is hardly about whose products are cheap or most attractive but then who gives the best of service quality. To this effect, The Free Management Library notes in literature that “increasing competition (whether for-profit or nonprofit) is forcing businesses to pay much more attention to satisfying customers.” This means that the need for servoce quality is not even for profit making organisations alone but every organisation that is concerned with its growth and development. Secondly, service quality is important to organisations in that it has the potential of ensuring customer retention. This is because as Parasuraman, Zeithaml, and Berry (1985) notes, every customer approaches an organisation with some degree of perception of the level of quality of service that he or she should receive. Certainly if this perception or hope is met, the customer becomes satisfied and would hardly have reasons to leave the organisation in question for another organisation. It is therefore not out of place that Adams (2009) states in literature that “there exists an interaction between the desired results and customer satisfaction, customer loyalty and customer retention.” Finally, service quality is important in getting the customer play personal roles in promoting the growth and well-being of the organisation. This is achieved when customers trumpet or testify of the quality service they received from the organisaton to other people so that the customer indirectly becomes an advertiser. A customer who was satisfied with quality of service would also be in a position to freely bring on board any suggestions and ideas he or she has toward the growth of the organisation. Factors that lead to improved Service Quality Service quality is such an important component of every organisation but achieving it does not come on silver platter. Of course nothing good comes easily. It therefore leaves a lot of responsibility on business owners to seeking which factors would have to be put in place to satisfy their customers. Apparently, looking through literature, it becomes clear that different customers express service quality in different ways. The kind of factors that need to be put in place to ensure service quality in a particular organisation also depends on what the organisation is into. There are however certain basic factors and steps that seem to run in almost every area that researchers and reviewers write about ways of ensuring improved service quality. In a systematic and step-by-step approach, Cacioppo (2000) outlines some general factors that owners and workers of organisations can use to ensuring improved service quality. These steps can best be summed as follows: Marketing and sales employees are primarily responsible for designing (with customer input) customer satisfaction surveying programs, questionnaires and focus groups. Top management and marketing divisions champion the programs. Corporate evaluations include not only their own customer satisfaction ratings but also those of their competitors. Satisfaction results are made available to all employees. Customers are informed about changes brought about as the direct result of listening to their needs. Internal and external quality measures are often tied together. Customer satisfaction is incorporated into the strategic focus of the company via the mission statement. Stakeholder compensation is tied directly to the customer satisfaction surveying program. A concentrated effort is made to relate the customer satisfaction measurement results to internal process metrics.” Research Design and Research Management Research methods used and why it was selected The research method used for this research work was a survey. This was done by sampling respondents from the given organisation, thus Bunzl Limited and asking them pertinent questions relating to service quality they receive from the company. Through the survey, the representative views of the respondents sampled was used to represent the wider views of customers and workers of the company. This is to say that among the reasons for choosing survey was the fact that it makes the researcher handy; whereby the researcher does not have to deal with a very large number of people at a go. This is of course suitable for a mini academic research of this nature. Next, survey was used because it helps the researcher to gather different forms of data from respondents. In this direction Cherry (2011) notes that “a survey may focus on factual information about individuals, or it might aim to collect the opinions of the survey takers.” Finally, survey is a very useful research method that allows for quantitative representation and analysis of data. The researcher saw this as a major advantage in drawing useful conclusions about data gathered. How Data was Collected In the survey, the group collected data by first building a sample sise. The sample size was built among twenty customers of the company. The sampling technique used was a random sampling technique whereby the researchers set a particular hour of the day and selected the first twenty customers who came to the company and where ready to take part in the survey. After the sample size was built, the researchers distributed questionnaires that had been prepared on issues relating to the hot beverages machines used by the company, vendering space available at the company and confectionery machine used at the company. In the view of the researchers, these were areas of the company that had a lot to do with the service that customers received from the company. Making customers give their views on these areas therefore was keen to getting information on their level of service quality that they perceived was in place at the company. Respondents were given much time to read through the questionnaire, understand them and then answer the questions. Most of the questions were close ended questions requiring the customers to select among answers that were provided by the researchers on the questionnaire. This facilitated the speeding of data collection exercise. Generally, because the respondents were answering the questions at a go, it also served the researchers a lot of time. Ethical issues involved in the research Ethics is an important issue in every research work. This is because researchers have always needed to fall on third party respondents such as customers to get data for research. To this effect, it is important that the respondents are treated with highest respect and premium. Such levels of respect was not absent in conducting this research. In the first place, customers were made part of the sample size out of their own will. Under no circumstance did the researchers pressurize any body to take part in the survey. Secondly, the researchers ensured that there was confidentiality and anonymity with the answering of questions from the questionnaire. This was to ensure that the personal views of customers were not leaked out to the public. Finally, the researchers were very ethical showing virtues like respect, manners and obedience to instructions given by the authorities of the company. Outcome of the Research and Discussion Findings Data was collected from respondents in three major areas. In the first area, the researchers wanted customers of the company give their general impression on the service quality they received via the use of the hot beverages machine. The pie chart below represents responses that were gathered from the customers. From the pie chart, it can be seen that 40% of customers interviewed were of the opinion that the quality of service they received from the hot beverages machine of the company was poor. Another 40% of customers rated the service as satisfactory where as 20% on the other side said the service quality from the hot beverages machine was good. Next, respondents were asked of their view on their level of satisfaction with respect to the design of the vendering space. The pie chart below represents answers received from the customers. From the pie chart, it can be seen that 60% of the customers were satisfied with the design and space available at the vendering space. 20% percent rated the design and space as good as another 20% saw the design and space as poor. Finally, the researchers sought the views of customers on the confectionery machine. As before, the researchers wanted to find from respondents how they would rate the service quality they received from this end. The views of the respondents are presented in the chart below. The pie chart displays a customer view of 60% of customers saying the service quality was good. 40% on the other hand rated the service quality from the confectionery machine as satisfactory. Analysis of the findings Giving a quantitative analysis to the data collected, it can be said that an average of (20 + 20 + 0) / 3 = 13.33% of customers who answered the questionnaires were not satisfied with the service quality of the company and so rated it as poor. Numerically, 13.33% of twenty (20) people interviewed are 2.66 which can be approximated to 3 people. As a matter of fact, this is not a very large figure though it is not neglegible. It can therefore be said that on the whole, a lot of customers at Bunzl Limited are satisfied with service quality rendered at the company. Even among the percentage of customer who did not express disatisfaction, (40 + 60 + 40) / 3 = 46.66 rated the service quality as good. Comparing these results to views sampled from the literature review, it can be said that Bunzl Limited is on the verge taking advantage of its service quality to be a competitive advantage for the company. This is of course a situation that can lead to company growth. The company should however not loss sight of the need to better her efforts. Conclusion & Evaluation To a large extent, this was a very useful and successful research work. With an initial objective of the customer to knowing the relationship that exists bewteen customer satisfaction and company growth, the research has gone a long way to helping the researcher realise this objective. Specifically, the objective was realised in two major ways. First through the review of related literature, the researcher came to learn about what service quality is, how it relates to customer satisfaction, how cutomer satisfaction can be improved and the role of customer satisfaction in company growth and development. Again, the researcher achieved this aim through field work when there was personal interaction with customers of Bunzl Limited. These customers brought the customers up to speed with their expectations out of company and how well the company is meeting those expectations of customers. Personally, this gained knowledge is going to be translated into my work place in the nearest future when I take up duty at work. Bibliography Adams C.W, 2009, ‘Customer Satisfaction, Customer Loyalty, Customer Retention’, retrieved May 12, 2011 Adams C.W, 2009, ‘Customer Satisfaction, Customer Loyalty, Customer Retention’, retrieved May 12, 2011 Bitner, M. J., & Hubbert, A. R. 1994, Encounter Satisfaction versus Overall Satisfaction versus Quality: The Customer's Voice. In Rust, R.T., & Oliver, R.L. (Eds.). Service Quality: New Directions in Theory and Practice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 72-94. Cacioppo K. 2000, ‘Measuring and Managing Customer Satisfaction’, retrieved May 14, 2011 Cherry K, 2011, ‘What is a Survey?’ retrieved May 14, 2011 Customer Service Manager, 2010, ‘What is Customer Satisfaction?’ retrieved May 13, 2011 Lewis. R. C., & Booms, B. H. 1983, The Marketing Aspects of Service Quality. In Berry, L., Shostack, G., & Upah, G. (Eds.). Emerging Perspectives on Service Marketing. Chicago, IL: American Marketing, 99-107. Parasuraman, A., Zeithaml, V. A., & Berry, L. L. 1985, A conceptual model of service quality and its implications for future research, Journal of Marketing, 49(Fall), 41-50. The Free Management Library, 2011, ‘Customer Satisfaction’, retrieved May, 12, 2011 Read More