To Offer Better Customer Service by Implementing Local Test.doc

to offer better customer service by implementing local test中文摘要global公司是一家专门为零配件、家用电器、灯饰类产品、信息及视听设备、机械设备等产品提供测试和认证服务的第三方公证机构。除了在挪威的总部，global在全球的主要国家和地区都有属于自己的实验室为当地客户提供测试认证服务，在中国却没有属于自己的实验室从而无法进行本地化测试。自99年global走入中国，一直以代表处的身份为客户提供联络工作。然而，随着这些产品在市场上的生命周期越来越短，企业竞争性不断加剧，不能提供本地化测试成了global在中国市场上业务拓展的瓶颈。面对客户的抱怨以及来自竞争对手的压力，实行本地测试对global来说是势在必行的。本论文明确了需要解决的问题是要尽快建立一套切实可行的本地化测试方案。我们找到了解决问题的理论依据让客户满意。通过列举了现有客户资源、人力、财力、环境资源、社会政策等一系列因素，并对这一系列的因素进行swot分析，初步从理论上确立了实施本地化测试的必要性和可行性。然后规划并开展了一个具体的租用本地实验室进行测试的项目。在项目实施的过程中，对目标客户进行了问卷调查；在工作会议中，集思广益、互通有无。项目开展完成后，我们对参与本地测试项目的客户进行满意度调查，同时分析对比了本地化测试的收支预算和实际收支。从客户满意度和global经济效益方面的总结表明项目开展的结果实现了预期的目标，最后我们紧扣解决问题的理论依据，进一步证实了实施本地化测试的可操作性。因此，在中国建立属于自己的实验室，为客户提供本地化测试，应列入global在中国长期发展的计划之中。关键词：产品认证 当地测试 客户满意abstractthis dissertation presents a detailed discussion on the project about offering better customer service by implementing local test. global is a world-wide third-party testing and certification body. it offers testing and certification services to manufacturers who produce electrical appliances, installation materials，it&av appliances and machineries. under current practice, our clients should send their testing samples abroad for testing. recently more and more clients complain about the high international sample express cost, long certification delivery time and no face to face effective communication when the product fail testing. global is facing the problem of losing clients to our competitors who can offer local testing service. as the office manager of global china, i am appointed to solve this problem in reason. it is hypothesized that by implementing local test, global china can satisfy the customers and has more chance to keep our old clients and in the mean time gains more new clients.the project is stated in following procedure: project rationale and project hypothesis, problem analysis, project design, project implementation, monitoring and evaluation. scientific research methods of customer survey are used such as by face to face interview, by phone call and by questionnaire. swot analysis and brainstorming are used in the stage of problem analysis and implementation stage. a few of flow chart were showed in the appendix to simplify the illustration.as a result of project implementation, we see that global satisfies the clients and achieves the financial target. so through evaluation, we can conclude that the project result is consistent with our initial hypothesis. table of contentspagesi. introduction 7ii. project rationale and hypothesis 8 2.1 project rationale 8 2.2 project hypothesis .9iii. problem analysis 9 3.1 current situation 9 3.1.1 customer profile 10 3.1.2 human resources 10 3.2 customer needs and wants analysis 10 3.3 a swot analysis of the situation 11iv. project design 12 4.1 problem objectives 13 4.2 plan of activities 13 4.2.1 activities planned to take place . 13 4.2.2 people involved in the activities and their responsibilities . 14 4.3 risk analysis 15 4.3.1 risk potential analysis 15 4.3.2 protective actions 15v. project implementation and evaluation 16 5.1 project implementation 16 5.2 project monitoring 17 5.3 project summary 17 5.4 project finding and discussion 19 5.5 project evaluation 19vi. conclusion 21bibliography 22appendix i flowchart of activities 23appendix ii time-scale of the activities 24appendix iii customer survey of questionnaire 25appendix iv information of labs 27appendix v project progressive checklist 28appendix vi survey of customer satisfaction 30 to offer better customer service by implementing local testi. introductionto protect the human life and social property, every country has its own product safety control scheme. for european market, the basic scheme is: the electrical manufacture shall make sure that his product is safe under normal or certain abnormal operation before the product is placed into the eu market. normally the manufacturer needs to use third party lab or certification body to perform test, issue test report and certificate. global is an international testing and certification body who offers product testing & certification services concerning various types of electrical equipments and machineries etc. with the headquarters located in oslo norway, global has branch companies and offices in all main countries around the world. since it was built in 1933, global had already become a famous brand in the area of product safety testing and approval. globa china office has been operating as a representative office since its set up in year 1998. the staff in this office only act as a communication bridge between manufactures and global testing lab in norway or other countries. all manufactures are required to send samples to overseas lab for testing, which is obviously both cost and time consuming. since 1990s, more and more factories are built in china and more foreign manufactures move their production site to china. globals main competitors have already been providing local testing service for many years. as the product lifecycle is getting shorter and shorter, also cost-down is always the pressure to manufactures. it is difficult for global to keep the old clients or develop more new clients under the old operation mode. however, under the current chinese policy, it is not feasible for global to build or to purchase a laboratory in china. as the manager of the global china office, i have commitment to solve this problem. in our opinion, it is an ineluctable trend to offer the manufacturers with local testing service because it wont work anymore to ask them to send so many testing samples abroad, which is both time and cost wasting. when our main competitors keep enlarging their china market share by having the stabilized local testing system, it is a feasible way for us to rent local competent laboratories instead of building a new one for the time being.it is hypothesized that if global offers our clients with better service by implementing local test, we could satisfy our old clients by reducing their product certification time and cost, in the mean time, we have better chance to develop new clients.there are several positive outputs and benefits from this project. our old clients will keep on using globals services because we can offer them better service such as face to face consulting, shorter lead time and saving of international express charge. at the same time they will bring new manufactures to global. from globals side, global ass laboratories will have more capability for testing products from other markets. during the local testing, global china staff will get technical training and thus they can provide more experienced consulting service to clients, in the mean time, globals staff training cost will be saved. ii. project rationale and hypothesis2.1 project rationale to get well prepared for the project aimed at reducing customer complaints and improving customer services both theoretically and methodically so as to keep the old target clients and gain more new clients, this paper has reviewed amount of relevant literature. 1)the paper has reviewed the book on customer service and finds that unit 2, module 8 on the customer of world class english for business book ii (business english course editing team, 2001) is very helpful.on this module, it is pointed out that complaints can actually be a good thing for a company that takes customer service seriously. “complainers are the best friends a business can have”. technical assistance research programs (tarp), a company that specializes in consumers with a complaint, has determined that only 4% of consumers with a complaint with mention it to the offending business. the other 96% suffer in silence. it gives us an opportunity to increase our customer service system if they complain. base on above theoretical study, the paper believed that an organization should take a positive approach to solve the customers complaints and follow up complaints. it indicated the importance of customer service system to an organization. 2)the paper has also reviewed the book on customer needs and wants analysis of unit 3, practical business project and proposal design (china central radio & television university press).a good customer service policy depends on knowing what customers want and how they feel about the services we offer. we did three things as its guidance a. an analysis of unsatisfied customer requests; b. focus groups according to the different products they produce; c. customer surveys by questionnaire. 3) the book world class english for business book i (business english course editing team, 2001) mentioned that there are three ways of getting feedback from customers in face-to-face interviews, on the telephone and through a written questionnaire. the paper showed the above three ways were used in the customer survey for local testing.4) the book world class english for business book i (business english course editing team, 2001) also mentioned that total quality management is an approach to the management which involves a complete dedication to the idea of quality.the paper indicated who were involved and how tqm was managed.2.2 project hypothesis it is hypothesized that if global offers the clients better service by implementing local test, global will reduce the complaints, satisfy the old clients and gain more new potential clients.iii. problem analysis 3.1 current situationthere are more than 100 local clients who are using globals testing and certification service. every time the clients have new product seeking for globals testing and certification, they are required to send samples to global lab in norway or other countries for testing. the building of global china has greatly reduced the communication obstruction between foreign engineers and clients engineers. however, once the testing samples failed in the first test, they should modify the products and send abroad again for retesting, this might have to be done several times until the products finally comply with all test standards. then the testing cost will be increased and lead time will be delayed. some of our main competitors, such as tuv and its have already been providing local test in their own laboratory or by using rented local lab. some others are preparing to build up the system. thus, global is receiving more complaints from our existing client and it is getting more and more difficult for global to catch new clients. the current situation is further explained: 3.1.1 customer profileglobals existing and potential clients are those manufactures who are producing and exporting electrical products like it equipments, household appliances, installation materials and lamps & accessories, so our target customers are as follows:1) manufacturers who are looking for local test.2) manufacturers who apply for certificates for a set of products simultaneously instead of only one model.3) manufacturers whose products are voluminous, heavy or fragile to post.4) manufacturers whose products are updated by seasonal periodicity.5) manufacturers whose products are easy to fail and need face to face consulting.3.1.2 human resourcesall the four coordinators in global china prefer to work with the foreign engineers in the same office rather than communicate by phones or emails. global headquarters have commitment to support china development, they are eager to find better solution to satisfy china clients need. the foreign testing engineers also prefer to travel to china for business. for the engineers in the sub-contracted local competent testing labs, testing is their business.3.2 customer needs and wants analysiswe are often asked by our clients: whether we have own lab in china or not, can we do test locally. what is globals advantage? in order to get the clear understanding of the clients requirements, in year 2004, we had sent questionnaires to manufacturers of different electrical product category. the questions include:1) how often do you r&d a new product?2) how long do you need to prepare for a certification approval?3) do you need training from global engineer?4) how do you want to get certification knowledge from global?5) what kind of value added service do you want from global?6) do your buyers accept the global brand?7) what is the ideal cost and lead time for your product testing and approval?8) do you have communication problem if global send engineers to test in your lab?the following suggestions are summarized from the clients feedback1) provide face to face consulting during the testing.2) hold seminar about certification knowledge termly. 3) provide information on the trend of the international market.4) inform them the updated testing standard by periodically newsletter. 5) train their engineers about what to take care during the design period.6) favorable price compared with other certification bodies. 7) help them establish their own testing laboratories.3. 3 a swot analysis of the situationto further organize the understanding of the current situation in order to make plans for resolving the problem described above, we carried out swot analysis.3.3.1 strength1) global has gained high reputation in testing and certification field by having good quality control. 2) our engineers have good experiences in performing testing and they are willing to travel to china for local testing.3) global has the good relationship with chinese government cqc (china quality certification centre). 4) local testing labs have rich resources and they prefer global for renting.5) engineers in local labs feel like to work with global foreign engineers. 6) manufacturers can modify the samples in a short time by having face to face consulting with global engineers.7) manufactures want to reduce the possibility of price increasing and time delay due to repeated resting.3.3.2 weaknesses1) global does not have own test lab in china.2) the number of global testing engineers is not enough to be appointed.3) there are may be culture shock between global foreign engineers and local engineers.4) the local testing schedule depends on both global engineer available time for travel and the local labs testing schedule.5) global china staff need to spend time to make arrangement for foreign engineers visit. 3.3.3 opportunities1) it is not possible to offer face to face consulting to the manufactures before.2) get more cases from other manufacturers when we are doing the test in local labs.3) manufacturers get to know more about globals service by face to face communication with global engineer and coordinator. 4) global china engineer and coordinator get chance for more technical training.5) by frequent working with local labs, it is possible to find some mutual benefit projects, e.g. local labs can introduce their clients to global for the services that are not available in their labs.3.3.4 threats1) there are not enough cases for testing at a period of time in china.2) affect the normal schedule for testing work in global as.3) in short term, global cost are greatly increased. base on the above review of current situation and swot analysis, basically, we can see that the local test by renting labs is a feasible solution. we will take a 2-3 months time to carry out an actual local project to approval this opinion.iv. project design4.1 project objectivethe project of my research is to reduce our customers complaints by implementing local test and make them satisfied. the target outputs are evaluated from the following aspects:1) 95% of clients who join the local test project are satisfied.2) attract more new clients interest in globals service.3) build up deeper cooperative relationship with local labs.4) train 2 local engineers;5) local test cost not exceeding 30% of the total project net income.4.2 plan of activities 4.2.1 activities planned to take placewhat i need to do is to think of all the things we need to do in order to realize the project objectives. i designed a list of all stages to go through and further outlined all the main things that need to be done. the project is going to be carried out in four stages as below (please see appendix i flowchart of activities).stage 1: contact the target clients to summarize the possibility of projects during the project planned timewe contact the target clients who producing households and lighting luminaries to present global local test plan and ask for projects to do in the planned time. in the mean time, we ask for the clients expected price and delivery time comparing to the previous system. we ask for clients preliminary application forms and summarize according to different products. once we get the confirmation from other two stages, clients will contract the formal contract, prepare the testing samples and documents, and settle the deposit.stage 2: cont