Tip Top Market

Executive summary

Tip top market is a regional chain of supermarkets located in Southern, United States. The supermarkets have been running for a long time and known for its variety of goods as well as quality of customer service. However, when the manager checked the review of customers through email on the website of the company, many complaints still remained (especially in the last 8 weeks). The manager knew that the problems needed to be solved as soon as possible if the company wanted to reach a higher success. Therefore, she gathered all the problems that got the highest number of complaints and tried to find out the best solution for each one.

Analysis

The manager have gathered all the issues in last 8 weeks from the e-mail and got 194 complaints from the customers. Then she made the following table.

As we can see from the table, the number of customers that had complained about the issue out of stock is highest with 71 complaints. The number on long checkout waiting time is lowest. Other problems includes all the complaints such as unclean parking, lost their money, do not like the inside decoration and so on. The main problem with highest number of complaints needs to be solved as soon as possible, in this case it is out of stock with 71 votes. Base on the cause-and-effect diagram of William Stevenson, some reasons that lead to the out of stock issue were the company had not paid the suppliers the debt. Therefore, the suppliers did not deliver any trucks of goods. Another reason could be that the suppliers had run out of goods as the Tip Top markets’ demand was too high that they could not provide enough. The last reason could be the bad weather, for example flooding or earthquake thus that the good could not be transported. The recommendations for the issue is that the company should spend a specific fund each month or quarter only to pay the debt. This work can be done by managers or the director of the company. Second, the company might sign two or three contracts with different big suppliers and when one supplier run out of goods, the company can count on another one. Last recommendation for the issue is that the company should always get information of the weather through the weather forecast thus that they might be able to find the best solution in different situations. The second issue fish did not smell good had 35 complaints. The reason of this could be the freezer did not work right or the employees did not check the fish carefully. The solution is that the employees should check the machines regularly (once or twice a week) and check the fish carefully as the problem is serious. For the next issues, which are expired canned foods (16 complaints), wrong price (15 complaints) and the employees was not helpful (12 complaints), the managers of the markets need to give order for their employees to check and eliminate the expired canned. Moreover the employees should be taught to behave well to the customers, always be there to answer the questions of the customers and help them when they need. If the employees can not complete their work right as what they were told, a part of their wage will be deducted or they will be fired. The customers pay their money not just for the goods they need but also for the quality of the markets’ service. There are many supermarkets for the consumers to choose thus that if the Tip Top markets’ employees do not have a proper behavior, the company will lose all their customers. The next problem is poor maintenance with 10 complaints. When the electronic devices have some problems, the customers might not know who to contact with. Hence, the recommendation is to give them telephone number of the customer “aftercare”  service of the company. This department will be responsible for taking of the devices that the consumers have bought if they get issue. The department will talk to the buyers and after that send an employee to their home to fix the device. If it is not possible to fix, the company will change it for a new one. The issue that has the lowest number of complaints is long checkout waiting time. Regularly, in a day there will be some time when there are a lot of customers in the supermarket. The cashiers will have to operate at full capacity. However, when the number of customers are too big, they will have to wait for a pretty long time for their turn. The solution is that the managers on these times might help the cashiers by taking part in the checkout work when there are too many customers. The last issue is other problems such as lost wallet, ATM did not work, bad decoration and so on. The solution might be that the company will hire some employees in the security field, and inform the electronic device maintenance department to fix the ATM and will have a meeting with employees to find out a proper solution for the rest issue.