Logistics Essay: Supply Chain Management Of Customer Satisfaction

Question

Task:
Discuss how the logistical requirements of different customers in customer relationship strategies can be measured and improved by the balanced scorecard (BSC). Your logistics essay should include customers at three levels of commitment in customer relationship strategies; customer service, customer satisfaction and customer success.

Answer

Introduction
The present logistics essay sheds light on the concept of logistic management that has been a crucial part of supply chain management where the main focus is to control and manage the whole process of meeting the needs of the customers successfully. According to Atasever (2019), logistic management efficiently implements and reverse-flow and storage of good service and other related information from the point of origin till the point of consumption where the customers are the main prospects that get satisfied. According to any business organization, supplying value to customers is a vital element that would lead to business success (Hoe and Mansori. 2018). The study would focus on the discussion of logistic requirements of different customers concerning strategies that would be mentioned through the balanced scorecard. Focusing on the balanced scorecard is a specific measurement tool that lets the business know about the quality performance and service that the customer requires and how it has provided customer satisfaction after the completion of delivery of product or service. The study would however also focus on the three-level of commitment in customer relationship strategy mainly customer service, customer satisfaction, and customer success. Another important factor that has got its significance in this study is that providing customers satisfaction is better than the competition to business sustainability and long term success (Dmour et al. 2019).

Discussion
Valuing customers and fulfilling their demands requires the business to know about the expectations that the valued customers require when they are buying the product or service. Nevertheless, Madhani. (2017), stated that service includes five logistics that the organization has to follow accordingly and they are the order, cycle time, dependability, communication, and convenience. Having a customer-centric fulfillment strategy the organization has to meet the customers means building a strong relationship and valuing their loyal customers accordingly to make them rely on the product and the service provided by the organization.

Accordingly, besides providing value to the customers there are many logistic perspectives that the organization needs to follow for making a profit and following up the business (Sjödin et al. 2020). It could be said that customers need to be assessed for profitability and strategic planning for meeting the customer service requirement should be done through proper production and storage for inventory. Another important factor that needs to be focused on is the cost settlement that the service or the product would be having. The cost is also significantly required to be made to make the customer satisfied with the product as well as the cost they would have to pay to upgrade the business status. Customers nowadays in any business prospect is an important part as they are often expecting higher service values and at a lower price. According to Lakdawalla et al. (2018), value has been considered a difficult concept as it varies from people to people in different perspectives. Nevertheless, the key elements that have been regarded as an important factor for value proposition are quality, cost, flexibility, delivery, and innovation. For any organization, the level of customer service has to be considered in terms of the cost and its strategic goals. Emphasizing the customer’s value that comes surprise organization has to decide the price that the customers would accept and at the same time the organization would also get profited.

Emphasizing customer satisfaction the balanced scorecard customer perspective helps to comprehend the satisfaction level from the customer’s viewpoint. Customers are regarded as the asset of any organization. However, profit-making companies always rank the customer perspective on the second position of their balanced scorecard after the financial perspective which is the crucial one. The balanced scorecard customer perspective works under the following steps.

• Figuring out what the customers are demanding
  One of the challenges that organizations would face while working is the comprehension of customers' objectives and knowing the fact what they want before production of the products or the services (Kalhe et al. 2020). Simply planning to retain customers for a longer time is insufficient for an organization to be successful. Nevertheless, it would be of quality input for an organization to identify why the customers would be choosing them and what the customers are finding in the product or the service that they are asking for.
• Describing the objective from the customer's point of view
  For achieving the target the main implementation that the foundation required to do is to place themselves in the customer's shoes and understand the need they require (Watling et al. 2018). It has been observed that some foundations who understand the objectives from the customer’s viewpoint have always been successful. By valuing the customer’s needs and requirements have made any profit-making firms boost up their business status pragmatically.
• Comprehending the difference between what customers say and what they do
  To be successful the business organizations have to comprehend the difference between what customers say and what they do. Focusing on the survey information online feedback the foundation gets to understand the customer's opinion for the product or the service that has been delivered to them and how they are accepting it (Liu et al. 2020). On the other hand, to monitor the customer’s activity the business firm has to measure the action where the customer's purchasing behavior, the quantity of the purchase, and the speed of the purchase could be assessed.

  The balanced scorecard has been considered as a performance management framework used by the organization to make the right decisions for the up-gradation of the business pragmatically (Rashmi & Keerthi. 2018). This scorecard has been a method for monitoring the progress of the business focusing on the strategic goals and understanding the organization from internal and external perspectives. There have been four aspects that the balanced scorecard focuses on mainly the customers perspective, internal business process, the learning and the growth in the business, the financial status of the business.

  Bring into LimeLight the basic principles of the marketing concept that consider the customers need and requirement as the basic protocol then the products and services (Mylo.utas.edu.au. 2021). Moreover, different customers have diverse needs and requirements that allow the organization to focus accordingly by making customer segmentation according to the needs and the requirements of the customers. On the contrary, another fact has been very meaningful that describes products and services would be of proper demand only when it is placed according to the customer's needs and perspectives (Frank et al. 2019).

  There have been three levels of customer accommodation where each service makes can be configured to achieve one of the following levels of customers’ accommodation:

• Customer service
  Customer service provides the valued customers with the right amount of product or service that they require or demand. According to Bressanelli et al. (2018), the organization also focuses on providing the right product according to the necessity of the value to consumers. Time has also been considered as a crucial factor as delivering the right product at right time increases its values within the customers. Market segmentation and finding the potential customers accordingly have always helped the foundation to achieve success. Supplying with proper service and products in the right condition has served the customer with conventional service making them satisfied. Prices also have been a crucial factor as the right price for the product of the service provided to the customers would grow the interest of the customers for the organization and their product. On the other hand, proper information about the products and services to the customers have made them select the best products and services for them according to the right information provided to them (Felix. 2017). This in turn has uplifted the productivity level and the growth of the segment according to the customers’ requirement and demand.

  The fundamental elements of customer service consist of the availability of the product where the organization focuses on the stocks, the orders and rates at which they would provide the stocks. The operational performance focuses on the speed of the manufacturing, consistency e of the product and the flexibility of the product according to the change in the location of the sales promotion program and the distribution of the supply. On the contrary negative aspects like malfunctioning should also be focused into which would require recovery and the facility network provides the proper support by which the malfunction recovery is done in an organization (Blogs.sap.com. 2021).

  The customer service also focuses on the service reliability where the organisation promises they are reliable customers to get damage free products, error free invoices, conventional shipment match, proper delivery and so on. To maintain the demand in the market the organisation also focuses that the full function of customer service is done accordingly and with sustainable planning.

  Focusing on the perfect order the foundation monitors whether the order has been delivered properly maintaining a punctuality of time, delivered on the right place and in a right condition along with proper documentation that makes the customer satisfied to the fullest.

• Customer satisfaction
  The act of making the customer satisfied by meeting the needs and the demands and fulfilling the expectation is also a significant way by which a foundation grows and maintains its success.

  To successfully fill up the gaps and satisfy the customer the managers have to focus on few statistics and act accordingly.

  To fill up gap 1 proper knowledge about the customers demand and understand the requirements of the customer need to be monitored every now and then.

  Gap 2 focuses on the standards where internal performance standards that reflect the customers expectations are to be focused in to.

  Gap 3 focuses on the performance which denotes the differentiation between the actual and the standard performance of the supply chain.

  Gap 4 focuses the communication power which presents The performance that actually provides the customer satisfaction

  Gap 5 presents The perception when customers sometimes perceive performance to be higher or lower than they actually receive in the time of their buying.

  Gap 6 is the satisfaction level which exists within the perception of the customers and finally the performance of the organization has satisfied the customers or not.

  It has been recorded the customers having lower expectations have always been satisfied with the job of the organisation as they always have received products and services above their expectation (Module 1 service marketing. 2021).

• Customer success
  For achieving customer success an adequate knowledge of individual customers is required.

  The management has to work dedicatedly to understand the customer's requirement processes and the competitive environment through which the product or the services has to be delivered to the customers. Important factor is that all the customers do not require the same product or the service henceforth, the foundation has to divide their potential customer according to their needs and demands to produce the product and service accordingly. To hold on with the customers for a longer time, organization's have to evolve value added services for their premium customers like unique packaging, added discounts and many more.

  Evolution of customer accommodation strategy has also been a point by which foundation maintains the customer success rate (Linedatunatenivo.allianceimmobilier39.com. 2021). The supply chain logistics focuses on the customers demand and the service they meet by segmenting them according to their requirements. Moreover, proper implementation of a framework for choosing the appropriate customer specific strategies and programs for customer relationship management help the supply chain logistics to understand the needs of their customers.

Conclusion
The study focuses on the logistics management and the supply chain management of satisfying the customers and valuing their needs and demands. It also describes the strategies adopted by different foundations for creating value for the customers according to the perspective of their needs and requirements. Emphasizing customer satisfaction by balanced scorecard, the study also focused on the three levels of customer accommodation through which the services are configured according to the customer service, customer satisfaction, and customer success rate. It could be concluded that customers get satisfied focusing on a few aspects like the price of the product, quality of the product, punctuality maintained by the companies on delivering their product and how much the product or the service have met the expectation level of the customer.

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