Quality Management Assignment: Case Analysis of Procter & Gamble

Question

Task: Studies has shown that Fortune 500 business success depends on customer. Understanding customer’s needs has always been the core of quality system. Based on your company, department, industry or community, prepare a short report on quality management assignment that emphasizes aspects on quality on these 3 aspects:

• Methods used to understand Voice of Customers
• Quality System that translate quality in execution strategies
• Specific Customer Relationship strategies that deals with quality issues

Answer

Introduction
It is evident herein quality management assignment that customer service is one of the crucial cornerstones of a successful business. Procter & Gamble, a US based multinational company headquartered in Ohio is specialised in packaged consumer-based products among the consumers of the world (Procter and Gamble, n.d). The different customer service strategies of Procter & Gamble prove this where the smaller businesses possess the advantage of the personal touch. Further, successful businesses provide the customers what they require for the provision of trained and dedicated customer service as well as assistance accordingly (Hult et al., 2017). This study will highlight the methods used to analyse the voice of the customers, the quality system that assists in the translation of quality in the execution strategies as well as the specific customer relationship strategies to tackle the quality issues.

The method used to understand customer’s voice
The Voice of the Customer (VoC) is considered to be an analytical method that is used in the identification of the customer's expectations and desires. This assists in the collection of every aspect of what the customers say about Procter and Gamble business or product to present an overall picture. Procter and Gamble also assist in the investments in the Voice of customers to highlight the difference between the experience and the perceptions of the consumers using the information to refine and shape the products and services (Aguwa, Olya & Monplaisir, 2017).

Surveys can be considered to be an effective method to acquire the VoC. With the help of these surveys, the types of the problem faced by the customers as well as the understanding of the customer needs can be analysed accordingly. Further, to achieve the best results, it is important to keep the questionnaires ready. The questions must be easy to understand and thus there should be the provision of a straightforward response (Francis et al., 2017). On the other hand, with the help of surveys, there should be the categorization of persona-based surveys for the tailored outcomes.

Customer interviews are also a traditional method for the VOC collection. It is used to analyse the perspectives of the customers on the service issues, attributes of the product as well as the general impression of the brand. The business organizations must also carry out interviews for the customers or the entire group of customers that shares the same structure.

A Focus group is also an important method of understanding the customer’s voice. This involves gathering the customer's data and thus expressing the thoughts, opinions, and feelings following the goods and services. Further, the website behavioural analysis also assists in the extraction of the valuable information of the customers such as the scroll maps, the customer heat maps, and the even-eye tracking. Moreover, social listening is also one of the best mediums for collection of the VoC customer feedback (Mahajan, Misra & Mahajan, 2017). This provides the provision to interact and connect with the customers through the development of a two-way communication channel. Online reviews, e-mail, SMS, and recorded calls are also crucial ways to reach out to customers. All these methods assist in the exploration of the positive and the negative reviews as well as revealing the issues of the customers.

Quality system that translates quality in the execution strategies
The ISO 9001 is considered to be the internationally recognized standards for tackling Quality Management Systems of Procter and Gamble. This standard also certifies that there should be the development of the system in such a way that it becomes easier to manage the quality and thus ensures that there is consistency in the service quality (Demir et al., 2021). Further, this will also assist in improving the quality satisfaction and the customer experiences. On the other hand, Six Sigma is also a crucial QMS that assists Procter and Gamble to improve the products, processes, or services through elimination and discovery of defects. This method also assists in streamlining the quality control in the business or the manufacturing process to control the variance (Park, Dahlgaard-Park & Kim,2020). There will be an improved level of communication as well as training of the team members by adhering to the Six-Sigma methods. Moreover, the SEI-CMM of Procter and Gamble also assists Procter and Gamble to focus on the other levels of maturity so that the company can progress to the next level. It is also likely to improve the quality management process across different stages and thus all the stages are to be designed carefully (Qin, Crowston & Kirkland, 2017). Although the processes of SEI-CMM of Procter and Gamble are generally ad-hoc, it can be said that the higher authority of Procter and Gamble are provided with a stable environment to define, manage and optimize the entire process accordingly.

Specific customer relationship strategies to deal with the quality issues
It is the responsibility of the higher authority of Procter and Gamble to seek the feedback of the customers by understanding their pain points as well as the experiences. The customers can be asked to be provided with the feedback in different ways such as by carrying out surveys or the submission of the feedback form through e-mail (Anshari et al., 2019). Moreover, there should be careful attempts made to strengthen the customer service team such as training and hiring of the professionals using the correct skills, the use of patience and empathy, enhancement of knowledge, an improved level of communication. There should also be careful attempts made to track the performance of the customer service representatives who will be involved in dealing with the customer issues and complaints (Itani, Kassar & Loureiro, 2019). With the help of these experiences of the customer service representative, it will be easier for Procter and Gamble to understand how much of the customer complaints resolved and thus more adequate steps are are to be taken. The customers must not be provided with false promises by the customer service representatives and it is necessary to be sure that all the customer service representatives possess a specific idea of the products or the services offered by Procter and Gamble (Anshari et al., 2019). This is likely to improve the satisfaction of the customers to a great extent.

Conclusion
Thus, it can be said that there should be the use of appropriate methods to analyse the VoC in Procter and Gamble. As there are different types of quality systems, the companies must choose the system based on their needs and requirement so that it becomes easier for them to grow and develop within a short period.

References
Aguwa, C., Olya, M. H., & Monplaisir, L. (2017). Modeling of fuzzy-based voice of customer for business decision analytics. Knowledge-Based Systems, 125, 136-145.

Anshari, M., Almunawar, M. N., Lim, S. A., & Al-Mudimigh, A. (2019). Customer relationship management and big data enabled: Personalization & customization of services. Applied Computing and Informatics, 15(2), 94-101.

Demir, A., Budur, T., Omer, H. M., & Heshmati, A. (2021). Links between knowledge management and organisational sustainability: does the ISO 9001 certification have an effect?. Knowledge Management Research & Practice, 1-14.

Francis, D. O., Daniero, J. J., Hovis, K. L., Sathe, N., Jacobson, B., Penson, D. F., ... & McPheeters, M. L. (2017). Voice-related patient-reported outcome measures: a systematic review of instrument development and validation. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 60(1), 62-88.

Hult, G. T. M., Morgeson, F. V., Morgan, N. A., Mithas, S., & Fornell, C. (2017). Do managers know what their customers think and why?. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 45(1), 37-54.

Itani, O. S., Kassar, A. N., & Loureiro, S. M. C. (2019). Value get, value give: The relationships among perceived value, relationship quality, customer engagement, and value consciousness. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 80, 78-90.

Mahajan, V., Misra, R., & Mahajan, R. (2017). Review on factors affecting customer churn in telecom sector. International Journal of Data Analysis Techniques and Strategies, 9(2), 122-144.

Park, S. H., Dahlgaard-Park, S. M., & Kim, D. C. (2020). New Paradigm of Lean Six Sigma in the 4th industrial revolution era. Quality Innovation Prosperity, 24(1), 1-16.

Procter and Gamble. (n.d). P & G. Retrieved 22 February 2021, from https://in.pg.com/

Qin, J., Crowston, K., & Kirkland, A. (2017). Pursuing best performance in research data management by using the capability maturity model and rubrics. Journal of escience Librarianship, 6(2).