Đề tài Evaluate effectiveness of customer service activities in increasing sales for Kichi-Kichi hot pot bar restaurant on 61 Ma May street

Products that are highly differentiated from those of the competition. Higher-end products where price is not the primary buying factor. Products with a high service component. Multiple products for the same customer. Reach Out To Your Customers! Contact . . . contact . . . contact with current customers is a good way to build their loyalty. The more the customer sees someone from your firm, the more likely you'll get the next order. Send Christmas cards, see them at trade shows, stop by to make sure everything's okay. Send a simple newsletter to your customers-tell them about the great things that are happening at your firm and include some useful information for them. Send them copies of any media clippings about your firm. Invite them to free seminars. The more they know about you, the more they see you as someone out to help them, the more they know about your accomplishments-the more loyal a customer they will be. Building customer loyalty will be a lot easier if you have a loyal workforce-not at all a given these days. It is especially important for you to retain those employees who interact with customers such as sales people, technical support, and customer-service people. Many companies give a lot of attention to retaining sales people but little to support people. I've been fortunate to have the same great people in customer service for years-and the compliments from customers make it clear that they really appreciate specific people in our service function. Employees who deal with customers' orders should be fully aware of current offers and keep customers informed. Sometimes brochures and other marketing materials are the best way of getting word out about a new customer incentive. Don't forget though that your customers' view of the overall service you provide will influence their loyalty much more than short-term rewards will. Attract new customer Loyal customers are so important to every business. However, to exist and develop in this competitive environment market, business must try its best to win new customers. The first step to attracting new customers in any economic climate is pleasing your regulars because the word-of-mouth buzz you gain from them will be a huge boon in attracting new business. Getting close to your regular customers in an economy that is tough for both of you may involve offering longer warranties and easier return policies on products, or special deals and discounts for your most valued patrons. Your customers have to bear with bad economic times just as much as you do. It is so clever to let them know you're in it together by reaching out to them and making your relationship as hassle-free as possible. Show some empathy and you'll receive it in return. Satisfactory customers will tell others about excellent service you provide that is more effective and trustworthy than anything you advertise or broadcast on public media. Next, you could reach your target groups by some direct means such as sales promotion, meeting, and free consultancy, etc. have function is to provide new customers with more information about company as well as product and service, along with gain sympathy and trust from potentials. To begin with, you have to let people know you exist – advertise yourself. If people don’t know where you are and what you do, they can’t buy from you and you will never make enough money to stay open. Advertising greatly increases your chances of success if you know who your customer is. Then you can tell them what they want to hear. However, good advertising techniques are useless without an effective message. An effective message gives people reasons to spend their money with your business. Explore various types of traditional advertising methods such as classified ads, yellow page ads, television and radio spots, and display ads in magazines and on other Web sites, go with what meets your budget and best reaches your target group. Whatever type you chose, you must make five important decisions when developing an advertising program: setting advertising objectives, budget, message, media, and finally, evaluate the result. Message decisions Message strategy Message execution Campaign evaluation Budget decisions Affordable approach Percent of sales Competitive parity Objecives and task Objective setting Communication objectives Sales objectives Communication impact Sales impact Media decisions Reach, frequency, impact Major media types Specific media vehicles Media timing Figure 3: Major advertising decisions Advertisers should set clear objectives as to whether the advertising budget is supposed to inform, persuade, or remind buyers. The advertising budget is based on what is affordable, on a percentage of sales, on competitors’ spending, or on the objectives and tasks. The message decision calls for defining reach, frequency, and impact goals; choosing major media types; selecting media vehicles and scheduling the media timing. Finally, advertising evaluation calls for measuring the communication effect and measuring the sales effects of advertising before, during, and after the advertising is placed. There are a number of free or nearly free ways to advertise your business or service. You could rely on word of mouth. Sure, that does not cost anything, but it might take a long time before word spreads. A second inexpensive method would be flyers. You could print out flyers at your local print shop and distribute them throughout your area by putting them on cars or in mailboxes. This method can be very effective for certain business, but the effect does not last long. Chances are the person will take one look and throw away the flyer. Hopefully, the flyer will be memorable enough that they remember your business' name. A third relatively inexpensive advertising method is newspaper advertisements. You could place a small ad that runs for a few weeks in a few local newspapers. This will give you great exposure to your selling area. However, the ads do not run forever unless you want to keep paying. An effective way to advertise that has a relatively low initial cost is with sales promotion. Sales promotion covers a wide variety of short-term incentive tools such as coupons, premiums, contents, buying allowances that are designed to stimulate consumers, the trade, and the company’s own sales force. Sales-promotion spending calls for setting sales-promotion objectives, selecting sales-promotion tools, developing, presenting, and implementing the sales-promotion programs, and evaluating the results. In the sales promotion strategy, promotion products are a difficult question to many businesses. What are promotional products? Promotional products are items as diverse as pens, golf balls, bags, key chains, shirts and coffee mugs that proudly display your company's name and information. Sure, the initial cost is more than using flyers or newspaper ads, but, unlike the other methods, the promotional product makes a lasting impression. Every time some uses your pen, drinks coffee from your mug or wears your polo shirt, they will immediate think of your company's name. Then when they are ready to make a purchase, your company's name is at the top of their mind. Not only are you helping people remember your company's name, but you're also giving your potential customers something they can actually use. With the right promotional product, a small business owner will see a great return on their investment. Reduce cost and increase sales Good customer service can help company reduce cost. It is true. When customers aren't happy with your business they will complain. They, however, usually won't complain to you - instead, they'll probably complain to just about everyone else they know and take their business to your competition next time. As a result, you have to find solution to solve the trouble, and that task costs your budget. On the other hand, as mentioning above, satisfactory customers easily become loyal customers, and so you will save budget for attracting new users. Customer care is a tool increases your sales promptly. Your existing customers are among the most important assets of your business - they have already chosen you instead of your competitors. Keeping their custom costs far less than attracting new business, so it's worth taking steps to make sure that they're satisfied with the service they receive. There are a number of techniques you can employ, including: providing a free customer helpline answering frequently asked questions on your website following up sales with a courtesy call providing free products that will help customers look after or make the most of their purchases sending reminders when services or check-ups are due offering preferential discounts to existing customers on further purchases Existing customer relationships are opportunities to increase sales because your customers will already have a degree of trust in your recommendations. Cross-selling and up-selling are ways of increasing either the range or the value of what you sell by pointing out new purchase possibilities to these customers. Alerting customers when new, upgraded or complimentary products become available – perhaps through regular emails or newsletters - is one way of increasing sales. To retain your customers' trust, however, never try to sell them something that clearly doesn't meet their needs. Remember, your aim is to build a solid long-term relationship with your customers rather than to make quick one-off profits. Satisfied customers will contribute to your business for years, through their purchases and through recommendations and referrals of your business. 3. Requirements on customer service. Customer service is the lifeblood of any business. You can offer promotions and slash prices to bring in as many new customers as you want, but if you cannot get some of those customers to come back, your business won’t be profitable for long. Good customer service is all about bringing customers back. And about sending them away happy, happy enough to pass positive feedback about your business along to others, who may then try the product or service you offer for themselves and in their turn become repeat customers. If you’re a good salesperson, you can sell anything to anyone once. But it will be your approach to customer service that determines whether or not you’ll ever be able to sell that person anything else. The essence of good customer service is forming a relationship with customers, a relationship that individual customer feels that he would like to pursue. For all these above reasons, a business’s top priority task is a good customer service. How to deliver a good customer service? Firstly, be up front, even bold, in stating how your goods or services make things better for your customers, so that they can make a decision about whether to ask for more information. This respects their time and attention by answering the question, "What can you do for me?" Secondly, be clear about what it takes for you to deliver consistent value. How much time? How much money? How much energy? What kind of commitment? What support? What resources? What else? When you know what you need in order to deliver good customer service, set your prices, policies, and procedures accordingly and make it easy for your customers to understand them. Moreover, you should show up in your business. Use language, imagery, colors that are consistent with the way you naturally serve your customers. It's almost certain that lots of people do what you do and do it as well or better. However, it is highly unlikely that anyone else relates to their customers and serves them quite like you do. Make it easy for prospective customers to tell how well you're likely to fit. Besides, offering a test drive is an important step. If you sell products, give samples. If you sell services, give samples. What does that look like? An eight-page special report, a newsletter, reprints of articles, audio of speeches or seminars. Keep your eyes and ears and mind open, and your samples may add up to a product and a new income stream. And finally, make it easy for clients and customers to pay for your work. When your just-right customer pays for a service, they are making a conscious commitment to getting their money's worth. This makes it a lot more likely that they will do what it takes to benefit from what you offer. Customers often have assumptions about a business through their first impression which usually come from advertising, company website, or even from staff habiliment. These assumptions can be right or not. Quality customer service begins with your employees. You need to care about staff’s attitude also because each staff is a representative of your company. Remember 95% of elements that decide your company reputation and sales depend on your sales people (Nguyen Thac Minh). There are maybe hundreds of employees in a company, which means that there are hundreds of representatives for it, and the problem is how it makes these employees a consistent image which can express company’s business manner, vision, and mission. Buyers can never meet company management; they often still score company through these representatives. To satisfy clients, you have to set them first. The first step is to set standards. Then, make certain everyone in the company understands them. Finally, reward employees for achieving your service goals. Seek out and solve any annoyances they might have that could lead to poor morale. An employee with a complaint cannot be completely effective in dealing with customers. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of your customers. Hiring the best people means trusting them. Your employees should be able to do what is necessary to make the customer happy without fear of reprisal. Policies and procedures are helpful only as guides toward an end result. When employees run out of possibilities to make the customer happy, they must have the latitude to improvise to make it right. Most employees operate in a state of fear that their own generosity with a customer will be viewed as foolishness by their boss. This situation can stifle flexible customer service. Staying close to customer is a decisive factor to quality of a business’s customer service. In the smartest companies, asking questions and listening carefully to the answers is an important part of customer service. These firms train their employees to focus on what the customer is saying, and then tailor products or services to meet customer needs. Says one corporate executive, "Knowing what's on the customer's mind is the smartest thing we can do." It is also cheaper than attracting new customers. According to the Customer Service Institute, 65% of a company's business comes from existing customers, and it costs five times as much to attract a new customer than to keep an existing one satisfied. Losing a customer is even more expensive. According to studies by the Technical Assistance Research Programs Institute, 91% of unhappy customers will never buy again from a company that has displeased them and will also voice their dissatisfaction to at least seven other people. This responsibility to be receptive does not lie solely with your employees, however. If you want your business to be successful, you must listen to and talk with customers as well. There is no substitute for getting out "where the action is" to learn from the customers themselves how you might serve them better. The best business owners are not only committed to staying close to their clientele, but also identify with them. They give their customers the level of service they themselves would expect to receive. Moreover, a good relationship with customers necessitates paying attention to every link in the distribution chain. That means listening to everyone who helps get your products to market and asking them for suggestions on improving your service. Be sure to take advantage of feedback from employees, especially those whose everyday job is dealing with customers. They can serve as tremendous reservoirs of information. You have also to pay attention to the details. Many owners search for a special touch that will make them stand out from the crowd. Discount coupons, longer hours, home delivery or free coffee, for example, all show customers you want to take that extra step to please them. Some of the most effective "extras" are really very basic adages of conducting good business, although customers are often surprised when they take place. These include answering the phone by the third ring; treating customers respectfully and courteously at all times; greeting them by name; promptly answering their questions and, if you can't, getting back to them with an answer as quickly as possible; and manufacturing high-quality goods that work the first time and keep working. Customer service is definitely worth pursuing. It's no longer the domain of a few clever companies that have made it synonymous with their names. No business, whatever its size, can afford to take customers for granted, because it's without question a buyer's market and becoming more so every day. To succeed, you must give your customers what they want, not what you think they want. And, as you never know who might eventually become a customer, that means providing courteous, friendly service to your suppliers and others with whom you come in contact, as well as current customers. Critical to keeping customers happy is to understand them and the way they think. For example, customers do business on the basis of emotional desire - they want what they want when they want it. Customers also tend to gravitate toward a company or group of people they like. And, most customers have a strong tendency to stick with businesses with which they are familiar, and are slow to change buying habits unless given a very good reason. An important key to serving customers well is this - don't try to change them. Here are five specific steps to help you take full advantage of the critical element of customer care: Conduct your own survey. Profit from the ideas, suggestions and complaints of your present and former customers. Talk and meet with your customers. Ask questions. Learn their attitudes, what they want and what they dislike. Check employees' telephone manners periodically. This link is particularly important for small businesses, as bad telephone handling can undermine other constructive efforts to build a profitable enterprise. Rules such as prompt answering and a cheerful attitude of helpfulness are of critical importance. Have someone whose voice is unfamiliar play the role of a customer or prospective customer, preferably a difficult one. Make customer service a team effort. Use group meetings, memos, posters and in-house publications to build customer consciousness throughout the organization. Continually drive home the crucial rule that getting and holding customers requires team play, and invite employee ideas. Extend your efforts after hours. It's the friendly feelings people have that draw them to you and your business. Take advantage of the relaxed atmosphere of social occasions or a neighborly chat over the back fence to turn friends into customers, or to reinforce the loyalty of existing ones. Monitor the quality of your services and products constantly. Satisfied customers who spread the word about your business are the best source of new customers. Pay attention to pricing, customer service, product availability and prompt delivery. An important task of customer care is dealing with complaint from customers. Every business has to deal with situations in which things go wrong from a customer's point of view. However you respond if this happens, don't be dismissive of your customer's problem, even if you're convinced you're not at fault. Although it might seem contradictory, a customer with a complaint represents a genuine opportunity for your business: if you handle the complaint successfully, your customer is likely to prove more loyal than if nothing had gone wrong people willing to complain are rare - your complaining customer may be alerting you to a problem experienced by many others who silently took their custom elsewhere Complaints should be handled courteously, sympathetically and - above all - swiftly. Make sure that your business has an established procedure for dealing with customer complaints and that it is known to all your employees. At the very least it should involve: listening sympathetically to establish the details of the complaint recording the details together with relevant material, such as a sales receipt or damaged goods offering rectification - whether by repair, replacement or refund appropriate follow-up action, such as a letter of apology or a phone call to make sure that the problem has been made good If you're proud of the way you rectify problems - by offering no-questions refunds, for example - make sure your customers know about it. Your method of dealing with customer problems is one more way to stay ahead of your competitors. Chapter 3: Analysis and Finding 1. Define position of Kichi-Kichi hotpot bar on market. The first Kichi-Kichi restaurant was opened in Feb, 2009 and there are 22 units over country up to now, and 11 units among them are placed in Hanoi. Target customer is class B people who live in city, for example, Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi and other potential cities in Vietnam: Danang, Cantho, Nhatrang, etc. at the age from 20 to 40. Company aims at administrative staff circle - accounts for about 20% population, mostly in HCMC and Hanoi – who has tendency to go eating outside, meeting with guest, colleague, friend, and family at lunch and dinner time; and who is interested in a restaurant with clean environment, that is good at food and service, that is convenient for their travelling, parking and the price is affordable. HCM C Population Ha Noi Population Total Class B (20%) 7,200,000 6,400,000 13,600,000 2,720,000 Source: Statistic of VN Economy, 2009 Figure4: Market size Quantity of Kichi-Kichi customer is about 100,000 people per month, accounts for 3.6% market size. Possibility of market penetration is still very high, as long as Kichi Kichi continues to open widely and guarantee to do what Kichi Kichi has committed to customer. Company also studied carefully major competitors: Cocaxuki in Ho Chi Minh City and F1 in Ha Noi, analyzed 4Ps element, strengths as well as weaknesses of both company and competitors, in order to from that point of view, marketers can give opportunities and threats for Kichi-Kichi development. You can see the result of that study in below tables. Product Price Place promotion Combine between fine dining and conveyor hotpot. But Cocaxuki does not follow all you can eat concept, but pay by color of plate average check is 130.000 VND/ person (included VAT and drink) located in big cities such as HCMC, Hanoi and Haiphong, mostly follow department store – Parkson. not have promotion program Strength: Combination between fine dining and conveyor can meet various demand of customer Can utilize fine dining to diversify food menu of conveyor Weakness: Not clear in brand positioning Short conveyor Food is not good at quality and diversification Depend on quantity of department store’s customer Source: Marketing Department Figure 5: Competitor analysis: Ho Chi Minh City - Cocaxuki Product Price Place Promotion Combine between fine dining and conveyor hotpot. Pay attention to all you can eat concept in conveyor hotpot average check 119,000 VND/ person (included VAT) good location for business and advertising, Hanoi city free 1 dish of New Zealand beef for a month of opening Strength: As a follower, F1 does not take time to open new market Not have to spend expense for R&D, marketing Weakness: Also as a follower, customer would notice that and brand F1 would be very hard to reach the leading position Brand identity is not clean, not elegant Source: Marketing Department Figure 6: Competitor analysis: Ha Noi – F1 Researcher made a research in order to understand more Kichi-Kichi major competitor in Hanoi – F1. After several times went eating at F1, researcher found that beside F1 has advantages of a follower, it does not take time to open new market and does not need budget for R&D and marketing as mentioning above, it attracts customer by lower price and cooler room. However, it is not as creative as Kichi-Kichi, everything made by Kichi-Kichi would be followed by F1 afterward. Furthermore, customer cannot find any handmade dish such as sushi, sausage, shrimp tempura, etc. In addition, waiters are unprofessional, just within ten minutes researcher was asked for drink three times. From all these features, researcher