This unit describes the performance outcomes, skills and knowledge required to develop strategies to manage organisational systems that ensure products and services are delivered and maintained to standards agreed by the organisation. Operators may have staff involved in delivering customer service and are responsible for the quality of their work. In many instances the work will occur within the organisation's policies and procedures framework. At this level, the exercise of considerable discretion and judgment, using a range of problem solving and decision making strategies, will be required.

Instructions:

Case Study - Pam's Attitude

Pam works in the production department of a food processing company. Her role involves preparing documents for the frozen fish finger boxes. Her responsibility is about printing the documents, binding them and preparing them ready for shipment to the customer. She has no direct contact with the customer and believes that she has no responsibility for quality management and customer service. A mistake was made in the print run, resulting in a customer complaint from the company's most important client. Pam would not take any responsibility for the error, claiming that there is no mention of supervision or quality control in her job description. Her responsibility is to take the printed materials, collate it, bind it and ship it.

The company incurred considerable costs as a result of this mistake, and has had to go into overdrive with regards to damage control trying to make sure that the client doesn't choose to take their business elsewhere Pam has reasonable communication and interpersonal skills. She is friendly and gets along with her co-workers.

Tasks:

1. Identify the issues within this case study and within the organisation system Pam claims no responsibility for quality management and customer service,

2. Identify and describe both the internal and external customers involved in this organisation, and how Pam's attitude may impact upon them.

The internal customers are the people who are making purchases of frozen fish fingers and the external customers are the employees working for the food processing company.

Pam's attitude on the internal customers may impact badly with her lack of responsibility for total quality management could see customers looking elsewhere to purchase their frozen fish fingers but her attitude towards external customers is positive because she is friendly and gets along with her external customers.

3. Outline the most effective strategies that could be implemented by the organisation in order to balance quality, time and cost? Include in your answer an efficient use of resources to provide quality products and services to customers.

The most effective strategies that could be implemented by the organisation small incremental changes

4. How would you monitor progress in achieving product and/or service targets and standards? Include in your answer three different strategies to obtain valuable customer feedback and how this could be utilized. Outline the types of documentation, policies and procedures and reporting systems that would be beneficial to this process

5. Draw up a "Plan-Do-Check-Act" cycle to show the proposed changes that you think  should be implemented as a result of Pam's behaviour.

6. As senior customer relations manager it is your role to ensure that you don't lose the business of the company's most valuable client. How would you best manage the situation in order to retain the customer's loyalty and ensure that the ongoing product and service quality will not be compromised in the future?

7. In order to perform your job effectively as customer relations' manager, it is essential that you keep up to date with certain key provisions of relevant legislation that may affect aspects of business operations. List three different legislation/acts and explain how they are relevant to the business and how you would keep up-to-date with any changes and amendments (this may include a web link to a specific website.)