Introduction to Management: Sports Direct Customer Service Analysis

This report analyzes the customer service challenges faced by Sports Direct, a UK-based retail company. The study identifies poor customer service quality in the South East region, linked to incompetent staff, weak store operations, and low employee morale. It reviews relevant management theories, including behavioral, scientific, and contingency theories, to understand the root causes of the problems. The analysis highlights issues like rude staff behavior, inefficient operational procedures, and high employee turnover. The report proposes solutions such as implementing total quality management, building staff morale through behavioral management, improving operational efficiency with scientific management, and enhancing productivity through a combination of management approaches. The report aims to improve customer satisfaction and operational efficiency at Sports Direct.

Introduction to
Management

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
ANALYSIS OF INDIVIDUAL PROBLEM ..................................................................................1
Review of management theory....................................................................................................1
Analysis of one specific problem ...............................................................................................3
A justification of key proposals for the resolution of the problem in the organisation..............4
CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
It is easy to define management as an universal process and activity of getting desired
strategical goals of business by using effectively using resources and peoples. Therefore one can
define management as the human activity of getting specific task done through by other. Sports
Direct is a retail fashion and sports wear company in the UK owned by the Fraser Group, the
company founded on 1982 and till emerge as renowned brand name in sportswear, footwear
and other sports equipments all around the world (Zhao, 2021). However, the sports retail and
fashion industry in this contemporary market of extensive competition and with striking emerge
of the online fashion sales, the sales revenue of many retail store like Sports Direct fallen down
as many customer are switching to the online shopping trend. Therefore, it is becoming difficult
for a retail company like Sports Direct to respond competition from the online retailers and the
novel COVID-19 pandemic crises have subsequently failed business and reap out organisational
profitability status. After resuming trading under shadow of COVID-19, Sports Direct is facing
management and operations issue regarding poor customer service quality in the South East
region that is also including London, major revenue region of Sports Direct. The ultimate region
of the poor customer service quality is incompetent staff and weak store operations. Therefore,
following study aim to evaluate and analyse operational problem of poor customer service
quality and justify the measure for improvement management and operations by using
management theory and management practices (Eskerod and Larsen, 2018).
ANALYSIS OF INDIVIDUAL PROBLEM
Review of management theory
As per the view point of (), it has been evaluated that delivering quality of service is core
competitive edge of many retail store to respond market competition from various online
retailers. However, from the dynamics of various research it has been found that the relationship
between service quality and profitability has begun to roll up and many retail store like Sports
Direct have not been well understood this concept in its operational management. However, it
has been found that to described knotty relationship between service quality and its impact on
business, regional manager must understand the crucial concept of behavioural relationship
concept to provide better quality service. Employees are the first representative whom potential
customer of Sports Direct will interact, therefore their behavioural assessment will truly have
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impact on customer service (Schachter, 2018). This is because result of the many research have
identified that employees behaviour in customer service can leverage both negative and positive
impact on customer perception and overall satisfaction. Behavioural theory of management
illuminates the manager practice of analysing and anticipating with human behaviour to boost
employer employee relationship. It has been found behavioural theory of management at Sports
Direct is being illustrated as identification of the motives, interest, need and conflict of
employees to boost productivity in the customer service. Regional manager of Sports Direct
taking specific attention in behavioural management theory practice for harnessing customer
service by understand employee and customer behavioural assessment. Theorem behavioural
theory of management can be ideal tool for manager to staff morale (Nonaka, Nishihara and
Kawada, 2018).
According to the ideology of (), it has been found that behavioural theory ramp with
scientific management theory that was being given by the Fredrick Taylor that illuminates that a
manager should use scientific management theory in retail store in order to boost customer
service by identifying the most efficient way to do particular task that is related to customer
service. Scientific management theory can be useful to being operational efficiency in the Sports
Direct to improve respond regarding product and purchase queries. In Scientific management
theory, Sports Direct hire the latent candidate and provide necessary skills, training to work with
more efficiency. Customer service theory is an additional managerial tool which a business can
put in its management operations to improve customer service and improve business productivity
by delivering customer service in a such a manner that exceeds customer expectations.
Contingency theory of management outlines that there are no perfect and suitable way to a solve
particular operational issue, but it depends on interaction of the application of management
behaviour and situation subsequently (Pirson, 2019). Contingency theory of management
illuminates that different practices require different managerial style therefore, best managerial
style is contingent on situational assessment. Moreover, contingency theory of management
provides a manager border range of ways to respond to the operational problem by accessing the
situations favourably by the three ways i.e. leader member relationship, task structure and
position and power for pushing reward and punishments. Research have pointed out the
importance of the contingency theory in a retail store allows Sports Direct to view macro view
of organisational decisions and its consequences on operational working and customer dealing.
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 Analysis of one specific problem
The Fraser Group, belongings company Sports Direct, has bring the trend in the
decrement in sportswear retail by expanding in acquiring the Game retail business and
continuously performing well in all areas of its business. However, in retail industry customer
service is core competitive edge for many business, but Sports Direct is experiencing poor
customer service in the South Eastern region of London that is also included London, the
primary revenue income hub of Sports Direct. The problem identify with benchmarking
technique followed by every regional manager in their respective zone. As per benchmarking of
the customer feedback from a Mystery Shopper research, there was key complaints regarding
poor customer service by the staff, staff not handling customer well because sometime staff get
rude and abrupt because of lack of job commitment and job satisfaction (Ho, 2018).The
operational efficiency is also not up to the mark because of poor representation of clothes and
other sports wear product. There is lack of organisational efficiency in supply chain because
many times clothes and other products are unavailable in suitable price, size and quantity, staff
were not skilled because many times customer complaints about the error in billing. The
particular reason behind this inefficiently in customer service is lack of employee employer
relationship and lack of employee commitment and morale to provide better customer service
because of low job satisfaction and poor customer understanding. Moreover, there is weak store
operations because Sports Direct is have adopted aggressive managements style in these regions
which impact in poor or negative work culture that subsequently affect the organisational
efficiency and meeting sustainability of performance (De Camargo Fiorini and et. al, 2018).
Major bandwidth of incompetent and rude staff is error in staffing this is because, high
street sports retailer like Sports Direct experience lots of challenges in hiring and retaining goog
quality store manager, supervisor and customer support executive under the shadow of novel
COVID-19 pandemic. Due to pandemic crisis company is fail to provide adequate salary that is
why there is low attraction of new manager on job search site of Sports Direct. Therefore, due to
lack of experience and job satisfaction, Sports Direct have registering consistently lower rating in
benchmarking in South Eastern area where other stores are achieving average quality of 66% .
moreover, modern customer do many market research before any purchase and checking review
of store is one of the best method to identify the opinion of other people regarding particular
store, although Sports Direct have 1.3/5 low customer service rating on Trust Pilot rating. This
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not affect the sales of Sports Direct but can shake interest of various stakeholder of the company.
However, it has found that there is low wages paid to woman in compare to the man and also
there are low median bonus for woman in compare , therefore there is no sustainability in
operational functions of the Sports Direct. Furthermore, organisation is observing that many
new employees left jobs within 6 months because there is lack of retention approach by the
management to attract and retain the talented employees who are outstanding in customer
service. Due to this store is experiencing high labour turnover which would decrease firms
productivity and profitability (Araújo e S and Pinto, 2020). However, Sports Direct overseeing
these problem due to lack of effective operational management practices, this is because in
managing different activities there is lack of work commitment by the employees and no proper
training is provided to employees this result in high labour turnover and poor customer service.
Operational procedure is poor because of negative workplace and lack of retention of the
potential customer
A justification of key proposals for the resolution of the problem in the organisation.
The final theoretical aim of this assessment is to propose and justify the key resolution
regarding the problem of poor customer service of Sports Direct in the South Eastern area of the
UK. The resolution is improvement in 4 different aspects which are as follows- Improving quality of service-
Regional manager of the South Eastern region can adopted total quality approach of the
management for consistent quality improvement practices. In adopting TQM, regional manager
identified the required skilled labour that need to perform customer service and provide
necessary training to employees so that they can provide better customer service. Other than
TQM operational approach, Sports Direct can use KPI to measure the effectiveness of the new
developed strategy. Contingency theory of management is an armoury tool for Sports Direct
regional manager to adopt different managerial approach to enhance customer service quality in
the South Eastern regions. With improved quality of service, Sports Direct can responds to the
customer queries about purchase and complaints about staff quickly to provide better customer
service (Curuksu, 2018).
 Building staff morale-
Customer of Sports Direct often complaints about the rude and abrupt behaviour of its
staff sometimes, the main reason behind this is lack of job commitment, negative workplace due
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to aggressive management and lack of staff morale. Behavioural theory of management and
human relation theory is most suitable managerial approach in this applications because when
Sports Direct has healthy and strong relationship with its employees it developed essence of staff
morale because employee feel valuable and they sees there future growth and prosperity while
working. Hence, while building staff morale by establishing strong relationship there is better
employee retention which boost profit margin and organisation can ensure ethically sustainable. Operational efficiency- Operational performance cab be utilised by using scientistic
management theory of F. Taylor that suggest that provide necessary incentive, reward
and training to employees and optimising and simplifying of job of worker can enhance
the operational efficiency. Moreover, developing a positive and engaging workplace
culture also tends to bring organisational efficiency, because store manager have
complete insight about the store outlet so proper availability of the product can be there
with more eye appealing appearance (Cameron and Rössler, 2018).
 Productivity- Scientific management theory and contingency theory of management
would Sports Direct to enhance productivity of the employees. Moreover behavioural
theory of employee relation tends to develop more employee commitment this would also
harness the operational and employees productivity.
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CONCLUSION
As per the dynamics of carried out study it has been found that Sports Direct is
experiencing issue in the customer service in the South Eastern regions of UK. Moreover,
customer feedback and review from various site and under Mystery Shopper research has
presented there the staff of Sports direct are rude and abrupt, the only reason behind is lack of
staff morale and low job commitment. However, presented research has justified that staff
morale can be build by using behavioural and scientific theory of management. The present
report presented there is abrupt and weak operational procedure within the store, no proper
allocation of the clothings items and disruptive supply of the necessary product within range and
size especially during promotional seasons. However in order to bring organisational efficiency
especially in customer service, Sports Direct need to hire and retain its experience employee and
develop a sound workplace that promote harmony and staff morale. Moreover, scientific
management theory and contingencies theory of management can be used in the context to
improve operation procedure. Sports direct is getting low rating in regards to customer service in
Trust Pilot which is 1.3 out of 5, this creates bad image of the business therefore, in this context,
charismatic managerial style of CEO Mike Ashley is more useful in order to drive motivation at
the workplace and coordinating with stakeholder of business to obtain sustainability ethics.
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