Supply Chain Management Essays Examples

Customer experience metrics for traditional retailers such as Target Corporation and internet commerce firms such as Amazon are divided into three key areas. These are customer satisfaction, customer engagement and customer loyalty (Sage, 2011). For Amazon, metrics that measure customer satisfaction through the Amazon website include online rating of products and online polls based on customer preference or satisfaction. As for Target, customer satisfaction metrics are based at the retail stores since that is where consumers interact with the products (Lewis, 2013). Primarily, metrics that measure customer engagement for Amazon include quality controls that monitor complaints or cases submitted through internet communication tools as well as frequency of cancellations of orders (Anders, 2012). As for Target, it can rely on surveys that are conducted by consumer insight firms. Customer loyalty is measured by data records of total lifetime purchases which are available for every Amazon account (Green, 2009). On the other hand, Target Corporation would widely rely on metrics that can measure number of customer referrals to gauge its customer base loyalty.
Front-of-the-house service operations are those operations that deal directly with the customer. They include operations such as customer service, sales, marketing product and promotions. On the other hand, back-of-the-house service operations are support services that include staff management, technology and production process. These include staff training, appraisals, purchases and stocking, automation and maintenance.
Both front-of-the-house operations and back-of-the-house operations lend themselves to rapid improvement in efficiency to enhance customer experience. For example, customer service which is a front-of-the-house operation can be improved by increasing response time for complaints. Building strong customer relations and providing avenues of customer feedback could also improve the marketing department. As for back-of-the-house operations such as appraisals; incentives and motivational tokens can be offered as pay perks or in trainings for employees. Automation and employing new technologies would improve production processes.

References

Anders, G. (2012). Inside Amazon's Idea Machine: How Bezos Decodes Customers. Forbes. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/georgeanders/2012/04/04/inside-amazon
Green, H. (2009). How Amazon Aims to Keep You Clicking. Bloomberg Business. Retrieved
Lewis, S. (2013). Target: A Good Role Model for Improving Customer Experience.
Integrated Solutions for Retailers. Retrieved from http://www.retailsolutionsonline.com/doc/target-a-good-role-model-for-improving- customer-experience-0001
Sage, A. (2011). What Are The Right Web Customer Experience Success Metrics?
I-Perceptions. Retrieved from http://www.iperceptions.com/~/media/files/knowledge/whitepapers/what-are-the- right-web-customer-experience-success-metrics.ashx