Systems Thinking Analysis

Essay by leshhhhUniversity, Master's September 2007

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Customer satisfaction is one aspect that almost all organizations capitalize on. A satisfied customer equates to good profits and higher chances of repeat sales. The failure to address customer needs is bad news for the business. In the article by Flanders, he identifies five common customer service failures. Of the five, let us look into two of them: failure to communicate with customer and failure to fix a problem quickly.

Goodman et al. identify the importance of systems thinking as a way to avoid solutions that will only spawn more difficulties given a business problem. It is all about asking the right questions. From there, you will be able to single out the root cause of a problem and then map its consequences as well as the consequences of the possible solutions that are available.

We now pose this question for analysis: What are the actions that need to be taken to resolve customer service failures and minimize the recurrence of the same customer complaints that will result to favorable sales and customer retention (customer satisfaction)?

In the behavior over time graphs below, we identify the variables that we will be using for our analysis.

Effective Customer

Customer Satisfaction

Service

Years Years

Looking at these graphs, we see that Customer Satisfaction, which as we identified earlier equates to repeat sales, grows with effective customer service. Initially, we see that we have customer satisfaction at a higher level because the customer is satisfied with the product/service that he has acquired. However, over a period of time, say years, when he encounters problems with the product/service, he will need to contact a representative from the company for a defect or a possible mistake. It is here that the effects of effective customer service can be seen. Dwindling customer service directly causes...