Role Play Analysis: CoffeeVille Customer Service and Stock Issues

This assignment presents a role-play scenario centered around CoffeeVille, a coffee shop facing stock-out issues affecting customer satisfaction. The assignment focuses on customer service strategies to address customer grievances and improve their experience. The solution covers key steps like recording customer complaints, informing customers about stock-out problems, offering alternative services, and providing value-added services such as notifying customers when products are back in stock. It highlights the importance of transparency, effective communication, and proactive problem-solving in maintaining customer loyalty and driving future sales. The assignment also includes customer feedback analysis and references relevant academic sources to support the proposed strategies, demonstrating a comprehensive approach to customer relationship management within the context of a retail environment. The primary focus is on how to handle customer complaints effectively and how to manage customer expectations to ensure satisfaction.

Running Head: Role Play
1
ROLE PLAY

Role Play
2
Role-Play
The current scenario indicates that the CoffeeVille is currently facing stock-out issues
and unavailability of the products is affecting the satisfaction of the customers. As
evident from the current scenario, a new customer of CoffeeVille is upset because of
the unavailability of the products in the online store. Due to increased dissatisfaction
among the customers, an organization can lose potential business opportunities. In the
current case also, lack of satisfaction among the customers can be damaging for the
future business growth of CoffeeVille. The role of customer service and customer
grievance handling is important in this case. With the help of quality customer service
and handling the grievances, the satisfaction among the customer can be increased
(Hill & Alexander, 2017). As an effect, the chance of retaining the customers also
increases. In the present scenario also, the manager aimed at offering the customer
with quality services and handling the grievances in an appropriate manner.
The following strategies would be used to address the customer’s grievance and
offering him appropriate services—
1. Collecting the complaint— As the customer is facing issues due to ordering problems
and unavailability of the products at first, the complaints need to be recorded. Recording
the complaint helps an organization to identify the exact issues faced by the customer
and offer him an appropriate solution.
2. Informing the customer about stock-out issues-- At the next stage, the customer
should be informed about the stock-out problem. Information sharing with the customers
helps an organization to maintain transparency. Enhancing transparency in information
sharing is effective to create a trusted relationship between the organization and the
customers.
3. Sharing information on available alternatives— When the desired product of the
customer is not available, the organization can maintain a relationship by offering
alternative services. Offering alternative products and services can create new business
opportunities for the organization. In the current case, the customer needs to be

Role Play
3
informed regarding the manual ordering system. Taking the order of the customer
manually can help the organization to resolve the issue.
4. Offering value-added services-- The satisfaction of customers increases when their
experience with the organization exceeds their expectation (Sengupta et al., 2015).
Offering value-added services is an effective technique to improve the experience of the
customers. So, the value added services are effective to improve customer satisfaction.
In the current case, the customer can be e-mailed when the desired products and
services are back. Informing customers about the product availability can be effective to
increase the sale in future.
Complaint Notes
The key complaints of the customer are—
1. Unavailability of online ordering for gourmet coffee
2. Lack of information on the manual ordering and next availability of the product
Customer Feedback
The feedback of the customer is obtained while recording the complaint. As evident
from the feedback, the customer is unhappy due to lack of product availability and
online ordering system.

Role Play
4
Reference
Hill, N., & Alexander, J. (2017). The handbook of customer satisfaction and loyalty
measurement. Routledge.
Sengupta, A. S., Balaji, M. S., & Krishnan, B. C. (2015). How customers cope with
service failure? A study of brand reputation and customer satisfaction. Journal of
Business Research, 68(3), 665-674.