Question

home / study / / questions and answers / you just took a new job as general manager with a manufacturing company. they brought you in ... Question: You just took a new job as general manager with a manufacturing company. They brought you in beca... You just took a new job as general manager with a manufacturing company. They brought you in because sales and profits are declining. As you look into the company sales and profits issues during the first few weeks, you also observe that in addition to the declining sales, the company has complaints from customers about a variety of issues including late shipments, defective products and wrong invoices. Your sales and manufacturing groups blame each other and the customer for the issues including misleading information given to the customer by sales, incorrect information from the customer regarding specifications, and unrealistic ship dates. On Thursday morning of your third week a customer called with a complaint about defective product. The cost of the complaint could be significant. The department managers all have different opinions on how to handle the complaint. By Thursday afternoon you find that some of the required information to make the part was missing. It was a rush job. The information is normally requested from the customer by customer service. By late Thursday you have the following positions: You have two roles here. The first is how to handle the complaint from the customer. Secondly you must decide on the customer relations position you want for the company. Bob Yeader: Sales Manager Dori Lately: Operations Manager Jennifer Garland: CFO Monica Milton: Customer Service Representative Sam Spaniel: Customer "I need parts and I needed them last week. What are you going to do to get me parts today"? Given the scenario, your role and the information provided by the key players involved, it is time for you to make a decision.

Answer 1

There will be 2 action Items for a General Manager of the company:

1. Proper Communication with customer for missing information and assure the customer that company will take remedial action.

2. Take action on customer service executive for not following the SOP(Standard Operating Procedure)

Action 1:

Delivery of shipment to customer is not done on time because of some required information was missing during information gathering by customer service executive so first we need aplogies the customer and communicate him the reason why shipment was not delivered on time. Also request him to provide the required information so as we can ask our Operations Management team to complete this order on high priority and deliver this shipment to customer by today and if not today then communicate the new delivery date to customer and start manufacturing only after getting consent from customer on new delivery date. Give assurance to your customer that this problem will not happen infuture and your company will serve him with highest quality of service.

Action 2:

Corrective measures have to be taken in order to ensure this will not happen in future. Communicate the root cause of the issue to all the concerned departments. Ask the reason to the customer service executive why there was negligence in the job? Also ensure that the inter departmental communication becomes effective so that even such situation comes in future, proper communication will still help company to deliver the quality service to customers on desired time.