UiTM Kota Kinabalu

Bachelor of Administrative Science (Hons)

Faculty of Administrative Science and Policy Studies
AM228 (e-PJJ)

ADM510
QUALITY MANAGEMENT
GROUP SAMA3A


(Nestle Malaysia)
UNDERSTAND CUSTOMER NEEDS


Prepared For:
AFIDA ARAPA

Prepared by:

NO. NAME NO. MATRIX
01 EDDY IRWANSYAH BIN DAHLAN 2011-608-726



1.Introduction
In this research work the company chosen by me is Nestle Malaysia. I have tried to cover the
brief history of the company, vision, mission and objectives of the company. This brief history
and other sub heading under company background is compulsory to be understood and
researched well as they form the basis for marketing plan of the company. We have also tried to
cover the internal and external micro and macro environments for the company and country for
its future growth and further marketing planning strategy. At the end we have proceeded to the 7
Ps of the marketing for Nestle.

2. Backgound
Today, Nestle is one of the leading Food and Nutrition Company in the world. Nestle has
headquarters in Vevey, Switzerland. The business of nestle is supported by its strong network in
more than 86 countries with more than 500 factories. Along with that the business also gets the
benefit of its international R&D network. The Nestle factories are operating in the different
countries of:
1. Asia
2. America
3. Africa
4. Europe
5. Oceania
As the company is in the sector of food and nutrition, it remains sensitive to being a company
dedicated to food from the beginning, Nestle remains sensitive to culinary and eating habits,
and responds to specific nutritional problems, whilst also setting and matching new trends such
as growing out-of-home consumption and caring about the well being of its consumers.



3. Objectives
Nestle aim is to become global leader in Food and Nutrition Company in the world and sustain
that position. This objective of the company signifies that they need to work hard to stay ahead
of Cadbury which is recently being acquired by Kraft food. Kraft is world leader in today's
chocolate business and food and nutrition business.

4. Vision
Nestl Norden's aim is to meet the various needs of the consumer every day by marketing and
selling food of a consistently high quality. To achieve this vision Nestle has two steps to follow,
first is High quality and collaboration, which is integral part of any food business to flourish and
second is Focus on e-business and websites. Nestle has started investing heavy in
development of e business and its promotion so as to capture clients in e business sphere also.

5. Mission
Nestle is dedicated to providing the best foods to people throughout their day, throughout their
lives, throughout the world. With our unique experience of anticipating consumers' needs and
creating solutions, Nestle contributes to your well-being and enhances your quality of life. The
mission statement of Nestle is well articulated and reflects the long term objective for doing the
business. It has mentioned in the mission statement that the company will provide consistently
the best food product with the best quality throughout the life of their customers, which will
ultimately enhance the quality of the life of its customers. The mission statement put the
emphasis on the presence of the company in nearly every country. It promises in its mission
statement that the company will understand the need of its customers and provide the best
products to fulfill the needs. The mission also shows the high quality which is maintained in the
wide range of products of Nestle. The company reassures that they provide the best range of
food products to remain the first preference of its consumers.



6. SWOT analysis of the organization

6.1 Strengths
I. The company has a big pool of loyal customers due to its long history in the food and
nutrition market
II. Big brand name maintain a high standard in its product consistently for more than 100
years of its business
III. Its product are economical, natural and nutritious, hence captures customers of all the
segments
IV. Strong network all over the world enable the company to provide its product to its
customers throughout the year.
V. Early mover advantage in the food and nutrition sector
VI. Consistently numbered as number one largest bottled water company in the world
VII. Advance setup facilities which provide the quality in the food products and the purity in
the bottled water in a consistent manner.

6.2 Weakness
I. Even though the company is in existence for more than 100 years, it is not able to
market its product to the extent of its near competitors, which reflects its weaker
communication to its customers.
II. The LC-1 division of the Nestle was not a success and shorter product life cycle was
termed as the reason behind it.
III. The company has increased the range of products, however it is lagging behind in
innovation as compared to other competitors.
IV. The Growth of the company in the organic food sales division was flat in the year 2008,
even though the industry has shown a jump of 8.9 per cent.



6.3 Opportunities
I. There has been an increase in the preference of the people towards dairy products. In
many of the countries people are becoming vegetarian from non-vegetarian. This has
opened up a new market for Nestle.
II. Nestle has the opportunity to enter into other smaller niche markets in the food and
yogurt market.
III. Nestle can increase the product line in the yogurt market till the time it is their main
source of income.

6.4 Threats
I. Many companies are diversifying and trying to gain the advantage of increasing yogurt
market which can eat up the market share of Nestle.
II. The decrease of cattle in many countries can impact the profit margin and the revenue
for the company.
III. Intense competition in the yogurt and food market in almost all the country
IV. New entrants and smaller companies and producing the similar product that of Nestle
which is again eating up the market shares of the company.
V. Changing customer trend which is the lesser spending on FMCG products is a building
threat for the company.








7. Analysis of data and findings
7.1 Why collect information from customers?
The main reason for collecting information from customers is to improve the quality of the
service you provide to them. In addition to improving the product or service itself, information
can help you to ; develop new products and services, improve delivery or promotion, or improve
other elements of how the organisation is run. Customer information can be used to help you
develop new products and services, but this information sheet does not address other aspects
of market research such as assessing new markets for your products and services.
The act of carrying out customer research can have other benefits, depending on the customer.
It can engage your customers in your activities, and as a result of increased contact and
communication, improve your relationship with your customers By focusing on your customers
needs and developing a culture of responsive customer service within the organisation, you can
enhance customer loyalty and ensure that customers continue to come back. This ensures your
survival as an organisation, whether your customers are paying themselves or a funder is
meeting the cost of your service to them.
In addition to using information to improve the quality of your products and services, customer
information can help you to report back to funders and to evaluate the impact and outcomes of
your activities. Lastly, information will help to monitor the health of the organisation. Information
about customer numbers, turnover and satisfaction act as good indicators for the organisations
overall health.

7.2 What do you need to know?
It is important to begin with the end in mind. Information should result in improvements or a
better relationship with your customers. A common mistake with customer research is to collect
information that appears to be interesting but does not have a clear purpose. It is important that
you ask how each piece of information can result in improvements. Another common mistake is
to collect information that is difficult to analyse. You need to think about how you are going to
analyse and use the information when deciding what you need to know. As a guiding principle,
your organisation should avoid wasting your staff and your customers time by collecting
information that is not going to result in improvements.

7.3 Principles of customer research
I. Customer research should begin with the end in mind. Information collected needs to
result in improvements or a better relationship with your customers.
II. Remember that you are doing the research primarily for the customer (i.e. to improve the
quality of the service for the customer). Information can be used to report to the funder
but improving the quality of the service is most important.
III. Research should feed into a customer service plan. It should be planned and regular.
Research should be forward looking, not retrospective.
IV. Research should allow you to identify trends, cause and effect and set targets.
V. Your research should be actionable. It should either result in improvements, or in
communication with clients.
VI. Your customer time is precious - do not waste it.
VII. Research should be planned as part of a wider performance improvement plan for the
organisation.

7.4 What are you going to do with the results?
Once you have measured how satisfied your customers are, make use of the results to improve
your organisation and the products and services you provide. Information from and about
customers should shape your products and services, and the way that you work to deliver them.
Your results should drive your organisation to continuously improve. Consider the following:
I. Set up a system for ensuring that your customer results influence plans and strategies.
Some information could be enshrined in a customer service plan, to set targets and
strive to improve the quality of your customer service.
II. Some of this information should be used as key performance indicators. These should
be regularly monitored and reported to your board or senior management team to
measure the overall success of the organisation..
III. Set targets each year within your plans and strategies to work towards improving your
customer results.
IV. Compare results from one consultation to the next so that you can measure trends over
time.
V. Review your performance to identify the cause and effect relationship between
interventions and improvements in customer satisfaction. For example, can you
establish whether the employment of a new caf manager contributed to the increased
satisfaction of customers in the cafe that your recent survey identified? Since you
redecorated your premises, has feedback been more positive?
VI. Report back to customers, staff and other stakeholders. Even if there doesnt seem to
be much to report, many of your customers and other stakeholders will be pleased to
see you making an effort. It can improve your customer service and your relationship
with your customers.


7.5 Nightmare scenario, or opportunity
So, youve asked your customers for their views on your service and how you can improve.
They have told you they want the impossible, for example, 24 hour opening for a community
centre, or a faster community bus service in the morning.
How do you deal with this? You might think you should not have asked in the first place. All
feedback is useful because it opens a dialogue with your customers. This now gives you an
opportunity to explain why things are as they are and what you are doing to improve the service.
There is probably a good explanation why the service is as it is, for example buses take longer
in rush hour because of the traffic.
Whilst the customers needs are important and organisations should strive to improve the
service as best as possible, the customer does not always understand the situation perfectly
and so therefore the customer is (not) always right. Opening a dialogue with your customers
allows you to manage expectations. This is why it is important to report back to your customers
after a survey to explain what you are doing to improve some things and explain why other
things are as they are.





7.6 Who are you going to collect information from?
Information can be collected from customers directly. It is also possible to monitor and collect
information internally within the organisation. See section 6 for more details. In larger
organisations customer-facing staff can provide a lot of information too. For now, well focus on
customers. It is likely that your organisation has many different customers. For example a
community centre might provide different services for different members of the community, rent
space to other organisations/public bodies and receive funds from a funding body to deliver a
community project.
These customer groups can be profiled in different ways in addition to the way they use the
service. This could be according to geography, age, gender, income, occupation, lifestyle traits,
personality or behaviour. it is worth thinking in more detail about the different ways that people
use the same service. Think of different times of use, different payment arrangements,
frequency of use etc.
Whilst you could get good information from surveying all customers together, it is also worth
considering using a different approach for each customer group. It is also worth considering how
they will view the research. Have they got time and inclination to participate in research? Do
they want to see that you have their interests at heart or do they not care? These kinds of
considerations will help to ensure that your approach is the most appropriate possible.

7.7 What information are you going to collect?
The key to a good survey/questionnaire is to ask the right questions. The right questions
should cover the facets, concerns and values of most importance to your customers. Clearly
identifying your different customer groups before you carry out the survey will help you select
questions that are most relevant to each customer.
You could consider a pilot survey of a sample of customers to identify what about your
organisation or service that is of most importance to them. Use this info to shape your full
survey. This could simply ask respondents to rank the importance of a number of different
dimensions (facets, concerns, values) of your organisation, product and services. This could be
done by interviewing a handful of customers or in a focus group.

The following list provides a quick overview of some of the dimensions you might want to
consider asking about.
Image - including first impressions, openness, reputation, positive values and physical
appearance of premises and people
Products and services - are products and services up to scratch, well priced/good value,
flexible enough, do they reflect the values of the organisation. How can they be improved? What
new products and services do customers want?
Delivery - the way you deliver your products/services and care for your customers, are they
provided in the right way or at the right time of day, does communication work well, is customer
service sufficient, do staff and volunteers provide a good service?
Loyalty and attachment - the willingness of customers to continue using your organisations
products and services, and recommend the organisation and its products or services to others.
These considerations are key to your organisations sustainability.

Customer loyalty and customer satisfaction are not the same. A customer may be happy with
your service or product but may not necessarily be loyal because he/she can gain a similar
quality of service from somewhere else. Customer loyalty is gained when customers are
exceptionally satisfied and when they have an emotional attachment to an organisation. This
attachment usually springs from the customers experience of the people within an
organisation.Customers will be loyal when they think that an organisations people are going out
of their way to help them. This means that results need to be understood at a micro level and
timely action should be taken in a way that customers notice that you are attentive to their
needs.
Outcomes and impact most organisations will evaluate the outcomes of their activities. This
might be stipulated by your stakeholders, particularly those that fund you, or by your users,
customers, or members. It is also good practice and helps you make sure that you are
performing well and meeting your key performance aims and objectives. Within the Business
Excellence Model, this information will be useful when measuring key performance results.


It is likely that your evaluation will benefit from information directly from your customers about
the impacts and the benefits of the services/products you offer. For this reason, you might want
to integrate your customer satisfaction survey and your impact evaluation of your organisation
and service.

7.8 Internal Performance information
In addition to asking information directly from customers you can also gather information that is
internal to the organisation will provide information about your customers. Information can
include, sales figures, complaints figures, trends in new customers and customer retention.

7.9 How are you going to ask?
There are two keys ways of collecting information about your customers
I. Request feedback directly from your customers
II. Monitor internal performance indicators that demonstrate either customer satisfaction or
the quality of your customer service.

7.9.1 Direct feedback from customers
To request feedback directly from customers you could consider one or a combination of the
following methods.
I. Suggestion box/Comments book
II. Questionnaires, could be conducted by post, face to face, phone, email or Internet
III. Feedback/evaluation sheets
IV. Focus group
V. Participative evaluation processes
VI. Interviews, phone or face to face, could be structured or unstructured
VII. Complaints procedure
VIII. Interactive wall in an office community centre providing information and inviting
feedback.
Some methods require a stronger involvement and commitment from your customers than
others. It is worth asking yourself how much feedback your customers want to give. Will they
feel empowered or burdened if asked for feedback?
7.9.2 Internal performance indicators
There is a wide range of indicators that you could choose to monitor that will either demonstrate
customer satisfaction or the quality of your customer service. These could include the following.
I. Numbers of customer complaints, numbers of these complaints resolved
II. Sales figures
III. informal feedback given spontaneously throughout the year
IV. Accolades and awards
V. Trends in new customers and customer retention
VI. Performance against targets for improving products and services, customer service and
product/service delivery
VII. Customer requests for new products and services or improvements to the way the
services are delivered
VIII. How customers found out about you
IX. Referrals from partners
X. Response times to enquiries from customers
XI. Surveying your staff to find out whether they think customers are satisfied or not. This
information can be compared with the customer perception to identify the differences.




8. When are you going to gather information?
It is possible to collect information at various points in time throughout your relationship with
customers. Some methods and timescales require more commitment from customers than
others so it is worth asking yourself what kind of involvement your customers want.
The following list suggests some of these different points in time. Consider using a combination
of these together.


I. When developing a new service, product or activity, make sure you consider customers
needs and opinions. This is a form of market research, and it has the benefit of
improving your relationship with your customers.
II. When you first meet your customers consider asking a few questions about how they
found out about your organisation and services, and why they came to you.
III. At regular intervals through a standard format survey or interview, this could be
monthly, quarterly or annually.
IV. Continuously comments books/suggestions box.
V. On completion of a project or activity or the end of a specific service such as a training
course or advice session feedback questionnaires/exit interviews with clients or
customers.
VI. Continuously monitoring internal internal performance indicators such as sales figures,
new customers figures, customer retention etc.



9. What types of information to collect?
Quantitative data, data that gives countable facts and figures. This can include information
about how many times people use a service and when they use it. It can also seek opinions by
using closed questions to ask people to give a score against a series of statements. For
example, how would you rate our customer service on a scale of 1 to 5, where one is poor and
five is excellent? These scores can then be quantified. Quantitative data is easier to analyse
from year to year.
Qualitative information, information that tells us what the stakeholders think about performance
and about the impact of your organisation. This will mainly come in the form of statements of
opinion from customers. Qualitative information is very useful as it can provide detailed
information about how to improve your services. For example, the question what improvements
would you like to see to the building? can elicit useful ideas for refurbishment. The drawback
with qualitative information is that it is difficult to analyse and compare from year to year.
Demographic and Geographic information, it is useful to gather details about the age, ethnicity,
gender, any special needs of customers, where customers live etc. This kind of information
helps to disaggregate your information and understand the views of different types of customers
better. Only ask for personal details if that is absolutely essential and make sure it is clear that
such information can be anonymous and untraceable to the individual if they want it to be.

10. How to write a customer survey questionnaire
I. Customer research planning table
II. Customer profiling sheet

Customer research planning table
What do you
need to know
Customer-who
do you need to
ask
How are you
going to use
the information
How are you
going to find
out the
information
When are
you going to
find out.
Who is going to
be responsible
for finding out


11. Customer profiling sheet
The following two sheets should help to identify your customers by type and then build up a
detailed picture about them.

Who are your customers?

Product or Service Customers

..

Divide up current product or service Divide up customer groups provision as
percentage of work as percentage of total carried out by the
organisation Customers






12. Customer Profile

Use this to consider more information about each of the customers identified above.

Type of customer: .

Key characteristics; demographics, income, lifestyle:


Key issues that will impact on collecting feedback:


Key characteristics of how they buy/use the product or service
..

Key things you want to find out from them:
..





13. Summary:
I. Most customers say they simply want polite and helpful service.
II. A good customer service strategy is to work with your customers as partners in the
quick, smooth, satisfactory completion of a transaction.
III. Some customers may need a little more attention to satisfy their particular needs.
IV. You may never know when you are being observed by a supervisor. The best practice
is to always give you top effort to create a satisfied customer.
V. A CSW must also help identify a customers needs, even if the customer is not able to
articulate what these needs are.
VI. Customer needs might include explanations on how a product or service works;
replacement of a product; and return or cancellation of a product or service.
VII. A good CSW assumes ownership of a customers issue until it is resolved.