Service operations management

Résumé du document

The service concept which will be analysed throughout this report concerns the after-sales service of the branch Alcatel's Enterprise Solution Division. This branch of the French company Alcatel provides worldwide companies with solutions of telecommunication that include phones and systems. Therefore this service is exclusively business-to-business. This service concept consists of ensuring the best after-sales service for unsatisfied customers who may have encountered some difficulties with the product. The service concept of Alacatel's Enterprise Solution Division also stresses the importance on the responsiveness and the quality of the advice given to the customer. These two objectives are enshrined in the customer satisfaction charter and quality policy. The after-sales service can deal either with a defect on the phone or a default system. Thus the hardware support has first to identify the main problem and then find the most appropriate solution.

Extraits

[...] Indeed there is a lot people involved in the service operation such as the suppliers or the logistics. A better transmission of some problems encountered would help to anticipate by finding other reliable suppliers for example and thus to inform on time the customer of any further delays. This measure could be all the more applicable by creating a better flow of information with an installation of specific software (SAP or ERP) which could inform all the actors involved in the process. [...]

[...] Therefore the customer will be at least fully satisfactory with the time with which the complaint had been managed. Histogram measuring the number of references out-of-stock per day between April 4th and September Chasing the out-of-stock However we need to look closely at the other variations by using the control chart method. In fact, the asymmetric shape of the histogram fosters to understand such a high frequency of days with a number of references out-of-stock. Thus the control method analyses in more details the other 49 days for which number of references were clearly identified. [...]

[...] Does a better capacity resources control generate a better customer satisfaction level? By this we refer to the quality of advice given to the customer. In fact a quick delivery of the item can be seen as a valuable service but what if it concerns the wrong reference? Consequently it would have been useful to collect qualitative data to ensure that the service operation has been delivered in the proper way. Thereby we could have confirmed whether or not if the reactiveness matches with the quality of service given. [...]

[...] Finally, the stratification has shown that the peak time for out-of-stock was during Mondays. Therefore a suggestion would be the creation of a week end team which could operate on a seven days basis. The lead times and the level of customer satisfaction could be again both considerably reduced. Here we adopt a chase capacity by adapting the demand surges to our staff Limitations All these measures suggested aim at implementing a mix of level capacity strategy and chase capacity in order to match demand with supply. [...]

[...] Indeed there is a huge number out-of-stock references during the week end whereas on Wednesdays we register the lowest number out-of-stock references. Thereby we can assume that if one customer needs a special reference during the weekend, the Hardware Support will be not able to answer to this request as it does not work during the weekend. Therefore the Hardware Support team will treat the demand on Monday and will face an out-of-stock problem. II. Recommendations for improvements and discussion of their limitations 1. [...]