Improving Customer Experience: A Report on Big W's Performance

This report focuses on the customer service issues faced by Big W departmental stores, highlighting the decline in customer satisfaction and the need for improvement. The analysis emphasizes the integral role of customer service in retail, discussing the importance of effectiveness, ease, and emotion in customer interactions. It explores the significance of customer trust and the impact of social media on brand image. The report recommends strategic planning, including the implementation of models like OKRs, situational leadership, and enhanced customer relationship management (CRM). It suggests improvements in customer service standards and the use of CRM platforms to provide personalized experiences, improve interaction, and build lifelong customer relationships. The conclusion stresses the importance of addressing customer service issues to regain market position and enhance brand loyalty.

Running head: MANEGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS
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Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Executive Summary
This report will focus on the customer service and its issues related to the organization of Big
W, who are facing issues with the customers coming to their departmental stores, and what
could be done to reduce this issue.

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Table of Contents
Summary of the Analysis...........................................................................................................3
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................5
References..................................................................................................................................7

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Summary of the Analysis
Customer service plays an integral part in the sectors like retail and hospitality. It can
be termed as taking care of the needs and requirements of the customers and providing
helpful, professional as well as high quality service and assistance to them. In the context of
Big W, the same things are missing from their services and all these has increased the number
of complaints in the recent years, which has lead them to one of the lowest performers
according to the survey performed by Forrester Survey. It has also been found that customer
experience was not present on the strategic priorities of the organization of Big W, and they
were not at all focused on the customer services and customer experiences. The three E’s,
which are essential in providing the customer services by the organizations who are directly
engaged with the customer relationship management. They are effectiveness, ease and
emotion. The organization need to effectively handle the grievances of the customers and
they get value from the experiences they would face in the departmental stores of Big W. The
organization also need to assure that the customer services should be provided with ease and
without facing much difficulties. The customers also need to have a good feeling towards the
shopping experience in the visit to the stores of Big W. The trust of the customers need to be
regained in order to enjoy the competitive advantage in the market place against the rivals of
them. It has also been found that most of the Australian brands do not value the emotional
leverage to the extent which they are required to do, and instead they are focusing on the
providing of effective or easy experience to customers (Hassan et al 2015).
Customer trust is more important for the organizations or brands to survive in this
competitive market. And trust can be built if the customers are provided with the services
properly and solving their complaints efficiently. There a number of competitors present in
the market places, and they have the full authority to shift from one brand to the other if they

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are not satisfied with the previous brand. Trust towards a brand acts as an insurance policy
against the future issues, and the trust of the customers towards a brand can help to make a
business or destroy it, and on the other hand, can assure about the survival from a problem in
future. It is very much important in today’s competitive global market. If they are not getting
satisfied with the organization of Big W, they can switch over to the rival brands of the
organizations. Negativity towards a brand would get distributed among the people of a
particular region like a flash with the help of the advent of social media in modern world.
Social media would help to aware the customers about the type of customer services they are
getting in visit to those departmental stores, and improper customer service would result in
hampering of the brand image of Big W, mainly in the Australian market place (Trainor et al
2014). The organization need to follow the customer relationship management properly in
order to regain the faith of the customers and increase the brand loyalty in the market places
where they are performing their business operations (Higgs and Dulewicz 2016).
A proper strategic planning need to be designed by Big W, which must include the
customer experiences. The right model need to be selected by the organization in order to
face the customer grievances properly. Models like OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) need
to be followed and implemented within the organizational culture, so that the outcomes can
be set and achieved in a planned or structured way (Stein, Smith and Lancioni 2013). Coming
from the retail background, Big W need to prioritize their goal which should be focused
around their customers, who are the main revenue generators of the organization. Following
the situational leadership would also help to act and take decisions according to the situations
arising from the viewpoint of the customers. It is the leadership which focuses on two
continuums. They are supervision or directing and arousal or supporting. Senior level
management or the departmental managers need to supervise the employees who are engaged
to face the issues of the customers, as well as supporting them so that they can solve the

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issues or grievances of the customers. Proper information about the customer grievance
management need to be provided in the website of the organization, so that some issues can
be solved by the FAQ section in the website (Antonakis and House 2013).
The customer service standards also need to be improved, so that the customer can be
satisfied with different innovative strategies. Proper identification of the customer grievances
and solving them professionally would help the organization of Big W to attract new people
and retention of the old people, along with sustaining in the highly competitive market place
globally. Usage of the Customer Relationship Management would help the organization to
provide valuable insights about the customers to understand their problems and providing a
personalized experience to every customer who would visit their stores (Wolf and Floyd
2017). It would help to improve the interaction as well as engagement level of the customers
and the employees of Big W, which would enable to build lifelong customer relationships.
The sales and the service team can work closely, which would reduce the chances of any
confusion among the customers, and they would get access to what would be promised to
them. As the platforms of customer relationship management platforms are accessible from
various devices like laptops, desktops and mobile devices, it would be easier to help the
customers from anywhere and anytime around the world (Çifci et al 2016).
Conclusion
From all the above discussions, it can be concluded that customer service forms an
integral part in the business industries like retail. Customer satisfaction helps to improve the
brand loyalty in the market places along with the increase of the customer trust. Customer
retention depends on a huge level on the customer service level provided by the organizations
like Big W. As it has been found as one of the lowest performed organization in Australia, it
is important for them to start afresh and frame the strategic plans according to the issues

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which they are unable to solve. This would help Big W to regain their lost place in the market
place of Australia.

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References
Antonakis, J. and House, R.J., 2013. The full-range leadership theory: The way forward.
In Transformational and Charismatic Leadership: The Road Ahead 10th Anniversary
Edition (pp. 3-33). Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
Çifci, S., Ekinci, Y., Whyatt, G., Japutra, A., Molinillo, S. and Siala, H., 2016. A cross
validation of Consumer-Based Brand Equity models: Driving customer equity in retail
brands. Journal of Business Research, 69(9), pp.3740-3747.
Hassan, R.S., Nawaz, A., Lashari, M.N. and Zafar, F., 2015. Effect of customer relationship
management on customer satisfaction. Procedia economics and finance, 23, pp.563-567.
Higgs, M. and Dulewicz, V., 2016. Developments in leadership thinking. In Leading with
emotional intelligence (pp. 75-103). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
Stein, A.D., Smith, M.F. and Lancioni, R.A., 2013. The development and diffusion of
customer relationship management (CRM) intelligence in business-to-business
environments. Industrial Marketing Management, 42(6), pp.855-861.
Trainor, K.J., Andzulis, J.M., Rapp, A. and Agnihotri, R., 2014. Social media technology
usage and customer relationship performance: A capabilities-based examination of social
CRM. Journal of Business Research, 67(6), pp.1201-1208.
Wolf, C. and Floyd, S.W., 2017. Strategic planning research: Toward a theory-driven
agenda. Journal of Management, 43(6), pp.1754-1788.