STRA60218 Knowledge Exchange Report: Customer Service at IKEA

This report delves into the significance of customer service within organizations, using IKEA as a case study. It explores the concept and importance of customer service, IKEA's strategies for customer retention, and the challenges the company faces in adapting to evolving customer service trends. The research employs both primary and secondary data collection methods, including questionnaires and literature reviews, to provide a comprehensive analysis of IKEA's customer service practices and their impact on the company's success in the global market. The report concludes by highlighting the critical role of customer satisfaction in achieving productivity and success, especially given the increasing complexity of customer purchasing decisions.

knowledge exchange

INTRODUCTION
The report aims to analyse about the importance of customer services in an organisation.
Customer service is become a crucial aspect to gain success and profitability for long term in the
organisation. Effective services helps in attracting customer and keep them retained and
approachable towards the company. Every business firm wants to attract large number of
customer and wants their satisfaction at any cost as these are the only one who would provide
benefit to the organisation. For that instance, the current research is all about the customer
service strategies and concept of Ikea. The company was established in 1943 and it is a Swedish
brand which has its headquarters in Netherlands. The company has surrounded its operations bin
many countries like Europe, Asia, south-east and northern parts of the world. It is highly popular
brand of selling designer furniture, kitchen appliances for all home furnishing. The company is
known for its quality, minimum pricing and great customer service. Therefore, the research is
going to analyse how the company Is serving their customer and what challenges they are facing.
MAIN BODY
TASK
Aim:
To analyse the importance of effective customer service in order to attract and retain
customer for long duration in the organisation. A case study on Ikea.
Objectives:
 To analyse the concept and importance of customer service in organisation.
 To identify the strategies adopted by Ikea in order to retain customer for long time.
 To examine challenges faced by the organisation in adopting customer service trends.
Questions:
 What is the concept and importance of customer service within the organisation.
 What are the crucial strategies adopted by Ikea in order to retain customer for long term
in the organisation.
 What challenges the company face in adopting customer service trends.
Literature review
To analyse the concept and importance of customer service in organisation

Customer service is an operation that includes direct interaction between consumer in
making purchase and be a representative of the company that is selling one to one. Most of the
retailers need this interaction to use it as advantage and ensure customer satisfaction with also
ensuring loyalty of customers. This is a service that is offered to customers in process of buying
before and after using the product or services. This helps in enjoy the experience without any
negative impact of it. The customer service can be engaged in companies such as IKEA with via
email, web, text message, and social media. Many organisation also gives support of self service.
The importance of customer service in organisation are:
It adds value to the product and service that is being provided as great service offered
includes customer service to the equation, the value of service increases with good customer
support. As of IKEA provides good support in furnishing the services and products. It increases
customer retention and recurring revenue as due to good customer service provides well
customer retention and attract customer to purchase products. It is much cheaper and cost
efficient than costly advertising and marketing to people who are unaware of the product. It
directly interacts wit target audience.
To identify the strategies adopted by Ikea in order to retain customer for long time.
IKEA is a good established brand of furnitures and kitchen or home appliances. For good
customer engagement and retaining customers the company has used many marketing and other
tactics such as, IKEA uses to hire a consistent and easily identifiable services, from its product
names to its colour designs this result in customer attraction and more targetting of customer.
IKEA allows customer to choose there preferences by giving Mixed-and-matched products
which are available to suit every customer’s in their unique style and needs. Product offerings of
IKEA is very effective as large number of stores and widespread countries are available for the
brand which results in mass-market affordability. The brand uses Sponsored content with
creative partners and channels to ensure promotion activities.
To examine challenges faced by the organisation in adopting customer service trends.
There are many challenges faced by the Ikea in order to provide great customer services
in the market. The company is selling at global level which shows that they have high customer
base and people expect something effective from the company. In today's market, customer
wants convenient deliveries, after sales services, 24 hours return and exchange and discounted

coupons and schemes. Therefore, the Ikea fails to represent proper service trends in the market
due to facing many obstacles and uncertainties. In the Covid-19, the company gain high demand
of their products which is a positive factor but along with that, Ikea is not able to serve
effectively due to having many restriction in trading to different countries. The company is
facing challenge of frequent change of customer preferences due to which, they are not bale to
innovate products as per their demands. Also, Ikea is facing issue of solving customers queries as
they do not operate within multilingual departments which creates language barriers.
Proposed methodology
Research methods are necessary to choose effectively in order to gather data and present
findings accurately.
Research philosophy: it is a way in which researcher thinks about how to conduct a
research and collects data. It is basically all about the beliefs and assumption of the researcher
which they put into their representation of thoughts and ideas. Therefore, it shows that there are
two philosophies which are positivism and interpretivisim which is based on different concept.
This research is based on interpretivsim philosophy in which the data is limited and completed
within a limited sample size. The positivism philosophy is not taken into consideration as it
require much time and efforts.
Research approach: It includes how the research is going to conduct and what methods
is going to use. This research is based inductive approach in which there is no use of making new
theory and research will be conduct on existing concepts.
Data collection: it shows that how a researcher collect data and information to fulfil the
aims and objectives of the research. There are various ways of collecting data which include
quantitative and qualitative. This research is based on both the methods to collect all the relevant
informations.
Primary: This method of data collection is all bout conducting data from accurate
sources. The researcher will use questionnaire in order to take the opinion of others and keep the
data informative and reliable.
Secondary: This method is all about collecting information from the viewpoint of many
authors in the form of literature review. This method is cost effective and widely used by
researchers to conduct appropriate analysis.

CONCLUSION
The report has concluded that, customer service is an effective concept for the
organisation. It shows that, there is requirement of customer satisfaction in order to gain
productivity and success in the market. Customer become complex in choosing products and
service which makes them critical while taking purchasing decisions. Therefore, their retention
matters the most. The report has shown the concept, importance and challenges faced by the
company. Also, the research has conducted through both primary and secondary research
methods in order to keep the information relevant and accurate.

REFERNCES:
Books and Journals:
Bouncken, and Aslam, 2019. Understanding knowledge exchange processes among diverse users
of coworking-spaces. Journal of Knowledge Management.
Singh, and et.al., 2019. A dual-pathway model of knowledge exchange: linking human and
psychosocial capital with prosocial knowledge effectiveness. Journal of Knowledge
Management.
Hayter, Rasmussen, and Rooksby, 2020. Beyond formal university technology transfer:
Innovative pathways for knowledge exchange. The Journal of Technology
Transfer, 45(1), pp.1-8.
Imran, and et.al., 2018. Does social media promote knowledge exchange? A qualitative
insight. Management Decision.