Student Name: Paweena Saethao

Student ID: 17ACM05010

Course Code & Name: Diploma of Business BSB50215

Unit Code: BSBMGT403

Unit Name: Implement continuous improvement

Assessment Task 1

3. Procedure

2. With a focus on customer service, identify where there is room for improvement in the systems
and processes (e.g. where would a policy and procedures document on continuous improvement
[CI] belong?).

Arears of Improvement:

1. We need to develop policy and procedure manual on continuous improvement focusing on

customer service, as there is no specific customer service policy charter available in Business
Plan or in any other document.
2. Develop customer service and product quality standards and incorporate it into Employee
handbook as well.

3. Draft questions about implementing CI systems that you will ask at the collaboration workshop
to encourage others to participate in decision-making, taking responsibility and exercising
initiative (e.g. HR procedures on staff skills, recruitment strategies, training needs in light of
customer service focus, and the need for a policy of continuous improvement).

Following questions can be asked to provide opportunity to team members to participate in CI

implementation.

1. HR procedure on staff skills:

a. What HR standards or procedures will help us improve our quality of staff recruitment?
b. What staff skills do you think are important to provide best customer services?
2. Recruitment Strategies:
a. What recruitment strategies do you think most appropriate for hiring customer service
staff?
b. Suggest some of the best practices in recruitment.
3. Training needs in light of customer service focus:
a. What are the Customer Service procedures we would require customer service staff to
follow?
b. What kind of product knowledge do Australian Hardware sales consultants/customer
service staff need?
c. What kind of training should we provide to improve customer service standards?
4. Need for policy of continuous improvement:
a. Do you think there is a need for policy of continuous improvement?
b. Suggest some points and guidelines that could be outlined in such policy.
c. When would this policy consulted?

4. As part of a collaboration workshop, create and deliver a presentation (Duration: maximum 15

minutes, group size limit: 3 to 5 members group) that:
What systems and data for benchmarking and monitoring performance for CI would you suggest?

Cost:

 For cost reduction import from countries which give you cheaper price e.g. China, Taiwan,
Japan, South Korea.
 Apart from importing, also focus on local supplier. Establish strong and long-term
relationship with your suppliers to ger best rates.
 Purchase directly from the manufacturer or producer instead of retailers.

Employee feedback on Collaborative workshop:

 Joseph (Head of Sales): We must get the result with in one or two years. Instead of focusing
on five years strategy, we must implement a robust strategy to generate results in 1-2 years’
time.
 Joseph suggests to hire more floor staff to work in second shift because we are planning to
extend the business hours. He also suggests to reduce working hours of employees from 12
to 6 hours to improve their performance.
 Dorry (Head of Human Resource): Suggests increasing employee happiness, engagement,
and productivity through job related trainings, sales incentives, high expectations and full
job support from employers.

No other issues were identified by participants and they all agreed with the recommendations.

Assessment Task 2

3. Procedure

Implementation of Continuous Improvement System at Wollongong Store

1. a) Review the scenarios and simulated business in formation attached to this task

Scenarios:

Consider the following scenarios (or prepare your own) and complete the template. These may be
dramatized by candidates for demonstration purposes (urgency, phones ringing, loud noise
interference, frequency of incidents, etc.):

January 2012 Problem Policy Item Recommended action

Joe has been - Staff was unable to - Customer service - Staff must be
wandering around the understand the policy. observing customers
store for 20 minutes. customer expectation and ready to give
of being served within them required
5 to 10 minutes. information.
- Staff may not be fully - After five minutes
trained in customer staff must attend the
service policy on customers.
attending new clients.

Helen submits a sales - Staff may be new - Refund Policy item. - Provide training to
receipt along with a and was not trained in - Customer service new staff on return
returned item that return items policy policy. policy and checking
 seems unfamiliar to and use of scanner. billing details (invoice
you (different details/merchant
CRM/POS system?) details).
- Use scanner to
further check the
item.

Mena asks for a 10% - 10% discount is not - Customer service - Ask the manager to
discount on her paint valid anymore, but policy. give customer 10%
purchase and says she customer did not - Promotional Policy. discount and collect
completed a feedback know now about it. - Record Management the details of the
questionnaire some - May be customer Policy. customer.
time ago. feedback is not in your - Clearly mention
record anymore. timeline for the
promotional offer.

Marco rings the store - Customer complaint - Customer complaint - Do not argue with
to say he has rung was not resolved. handling. customer, listen
three times this week carefully and give him
to make a complaint access to the
and now wishes to Manager, after
speak to the manager. explaining the
situation to the
Manager.

Adam would like - Customer is losing - Return Policy. - Tell him about the
comparative trust and faith over return policy if he is
information about the the store. not satisfied with the
quality of an outdoor product.
setting recently
purchased at the
store.

Result of Performance To-Date at The Wollongong Store

Following results have been recorded at the Wollongong store:

Customer data sheet (for January 2012)

January Complaints Refunds Feedback Enquiries Enquiries Enquiries Enquiries

2012 questionnaires phone email online in-store

Week 1 15 5 0 30 2 1 15
Week 2 20 4 0 35 3 2 20
Week 3 25 3 0 40 2 2 25
Week 4 30 2 0 40 1 2 30
 Staff KPIs and Actuals
Sales Safety Training Record Coachi Compl Sales Staff CI Team
Staff member

number checks hours keeping ng CI aints leads leads imple support

>8 >3 >1 >3 >2 >1 >5 >1 ment >3
>1
E A E A E A E A E A E A E A E A E A E A
st ct st ct st ct st ct st ct st ct st ct st ct st ct st ct
Alan Brown 9 15 3 - 2 2 5 5 2 - 5 6 10 11 2 2 1 - 5 7
(Timber)
Janet Jones 20 25 3 3 2 2 5 3 2 2 3 - 10 15 2 1 1 - 5 6
(Plumbing and
Electricals)

Xian Wang 15 25 3 2 2 4 5 6 2 - 2 - 5 - 1 1 1 1 3 -
(Garden and
Products

Van Tring 10 3 3 3 2 4 5 3 3 6 1 2 4 - 1 1 1 3 3 -
(Hardware and
Home)

Poppy Queen 30 31 3 - 2 1 5 4 3 - 1 - 10 15 2 2 1 3 5 4
(General sales)

1. b) Obtain feedback (from your simulated operational teams) on the following:

i. Performance of Wollongong store in terms of quantity and quality.

Customer datasheet

 Complaint are increasing every week.

 Refunds are decreasing. One reason could be our staff is not properly trained in refund
handing.
 We received zero feedback. May be feedback questionnaire is too long or difficult to
access.
 There is increase in overall enquiries.

Staff KPIs and actuals

Alan Brown: He should focus on complains, safety checks, CI coaching, and implementation.

Janet Jones: Janet should develop good habit of record keeping, and also focus on staff
leads, CI implements.

Xian Wang: Xian needs to be careful about safety checks, training hours, record keeping,
coaching CI, sales leads, and team support.

Van Tring: Van should improve sales numbers, training hours, record keeping, coaching CI,
complains, sales lead, CI implement, and team support, Van implemented more CI than
estimated, which may be overwhelming for the staff.
 Poppy Queen: Poppy should focus safety checks, training hours, record keeping, coaching CI,
and team support. Poppy implement more CI than estimated.

ii. The key areas for future improvement.

 Customer services: Skilled staff to improve customer care, complain handing, refunds
dealing.
 Record keeping.
 Safety checks.
 Product quality in home and hardware category.
 Sales: Sales training to develop sales skills.

iii. Suggestions for improving processes.

 Provide training to sales and customer service staff.

 Hire and retain highly skilled staff.
 Improve database management including POS/CRM systems.

2. Prepare to implement the continuous improvement (CI) policy you developed with your team in
Assessment Task 1, by coaching or mentoring another candidate in customer service techniques or
processes:

a) Analyse the data.

We must focus on following areas
 Customer service: Skilled staff to improve customer care, complain handing, refunds
dealing.
 Record keeping.
 Safety checks.
 Product quality.
 Sales.
 CI implements and Coaching.
b) Consider your notes from the previous task, including team discussions and decisions taken.
Employees provided following feedback and recommendations in the collaborative
workshop.
 Staff expertise in product knowledge is required.
 To increase employee satisfaction and retention: workers safety, safe working
environment, employee feedback is crucial.
 Customer feedback is essential to know business performance.
 We should continue to offer low price and best quality.
c) Make notes on how you will conduct the coaching or mentoring session.

1. Goal.
 How to deal with the sales enquiry.
2. Reality (current).
 Staff is new in this category (home and hardware) and she does not have
expertise in product knowledge. She often feels less confident when
handling sales enquiry.
3. Options.
 Product and sales training and coaching.
4. Will.
  Providing her coaching and have more open discussion with her to know about
her strengths and weaknesses.
 Setting and communicating clear goals.
 Staff performance monitoring and evaluation.
 Providing feedback to her.

d) Arrange with our assessor who will be playing the role of the coachee and make
arrangements for the assessor to observe the role-play.

Email
To: binish@atlantis.edu.au
Subject: coaching session
Message: ………………………………………………

3. Conduct the coaching or mentoring session.

Note: Submit coaching or mentoring notes.

Coaching or Mentoring Notes

Coach: Yao Staff being coached: Assessor Venue: Hardware and Home
Date: 05/03/19 played the role of meeting room
Time: 2 pm
Discussions
Coachee: How I can convert sales leads
in to actual sales. Most of the time
customers collect so much information
about the product and they seem
satisfied as well with the product but
they did not buy at the end.
Coach: Most of the time they just want
comparative information about the
product, and they may find something
better in same product category next
store.
Coachee: But I do not feel good when
they did not buy from our store.
Coach: Its normal, no need to worry
about it. Your task is to provide them as
much information as requested from
them and give them best services.
Conclusion
Provide best service to the customer by
following our customer service policy
manual.
4. Develop a list of recommendations for changes to operations to improve customer services in
order to achieve the goals of the Wollongong store of Australian Hardware, from its business plan:

a. Increase sales revenue and gross profit.

b. Maintain or increase market share.
c. Control direct and indirect operational costs.
d. Maintain superior product and service quality standards.
e. Establish Australian Hardware’s reputation as a socially and environmentally responsible
company.

Strategic directions action plans.

1. Increase sales revenue and gross profit.

Activity/Strategy Dates/Timelines Person responsible
Offer more promotion e.g.
paid advertising, sales
promotion.
Offer more innovative
products.
Minimise cost by reducing
wastes.
Train sales and customer
service staff. Hire and retain
highly skilled staff.
Provide performance-based
incentives to sales staffs.

2. Maintain or increase market share

Activity/Strategy Dates/Timelines Person responsible
Create awareness about the
brand.
Offer loyalty benefits.
Collect customer feedback
and implement a mechanism
of managing the feedback.
Understand competitors
through benchmarking
techniques.

3. Control direct and indirect operational costs

Activity/Strategy Dates/Timelines Person responsible
Review suppliers to obtain
best pricing and quality.
Improve human resource cost
with better staff planning and
employee rostering.
Implement JIT (Just in time
inventory management)
 system to save inventory
storage cost.

4. Maintain superior product and service quality standards

Activity/Strategy Dates/Timelines Person responsible
Develop and implement
product and service quality
standards.
Follow quality control
systems and procedures for
suppliers and products.
Conduct quality audit
regularly.
Take help from customer
feedback on quality control.

5. Establish reputation of Australian Hardware as socially and environmentally responsible

company.
Conduct and create
awareness about social
activities.
Source product from
environmentally responsible
suppliers.
Work efficiently to reduce
material wastes.
Avoid using plastic bags.
Conduct environmental
audit.
Conduct social audit.
Conclusion

Australian Hardware’s Wollongong store looks forward to achieving its business goals with the
implementation of new recommendations to continuous improvement system.

Assessment Task 3

3. Procedure

1. Review your collaborative workshop planning (from Assessment Task 1) and your
coaching/mentoring session, together with your recommendations (from Assessment Task 2) on
Australian Hardware’s continuous improvement process.

Review of collaborative workshop planning:

Planning of collaborative workshop helped us to focus on some key areas of improvements and
identifying critical questions to ask from workshop participants.
Review of coaching/mentoring session:

Coaching session was conducted on converting sales leads to actual sales. The conclusion of the
coaching was with the help of expert product knowledge and best customer service a sales staff can
convert leads in to actual sales.

Review of Recommendations:

Our recommendations on achieving goals can be categorized as following;

a. Cost saving.
b. Human Resource Development.
c. Customer acquisition, retention, and growth by providing best service and product.
d. Quality standards.
e. Social and environmental sustainability.

2. Write answers to the four knowledge questions (in Appendix 1 below), as preparation for your
continuous improvement (CI) report.

Question 1

a. Define continuous improvement as implemented by your team at Australian Hardware Ltd.

We have implemented following continuous improvements strategies at Australian
Hardware Ltd.
 Methods to maintain and increase customers’ preference and loyalty.
 Training to staff.
 Socially sustainable and environmentally friendly practices.
b. Name four or more elements of continuous improvement implemented by your team at
Australian Hardware Ltd.
1. Team members.
a. Active participation.
b. Completing individual tasks.
c. Following standards.
2. Interaction with stakeholders.
a. Communication.
b. Obtaining feedback.
3. Management.
a. Providing effective mentoring, coaching and training.
b. Active Monitoring.
c. Who was involved in the process (which stakeholders)?
Employees, Management team, and Customers.
d. What did you do as part of the Australian Hardware team to enable the continuous
improvement implementation to succeed?
We have recommended a following performance monitoring and evaluation system:
 Set expectations by defining standards and policies.
 Communicate new policies and standards to relevant stakeholders.
 Provide training and support to employees.
 Collect feedback from employees, customers, and other stakeholders.
 Monitor and evaluate the performance.
 Provide feedback.
 Take corrective actions if required.
Question 2

Describe how the vision and goals of Australian Hardware helped develop the culture of
continuous improvement (what drives a continuous improvement culture)?

https://www.youtue.com/watch?v=sWi9MowzDV0 (Will, Skill, Authority and Guidance to

develop CI culture).

High expectations from the top management as outlined in vision statement to become
leader in next five years in hardware and home – improvement market in Australia is one of
the drivers of continuous improvement (Will). Apart from this, active participation from
team members in decision making (Authority), continuous support and training from
management (Skill), and strong emphasis on obtaining feedback from stakeholders
(Guidance) plays a significant role in continuous improvement.

Question 3

How will achieving its KPIs help Australian Hardware improve customer satisfaction (what do
customers of Australian Hardware want)?

KPIs such as sales, safety checks, training hours, complains, record keeping, coaching CI,
sales leads, staff leads, CI implement, team support are directly related to customer services.
For example, if staff knows how to handle complains well, they may be able to retain the
customer, if staff is trained well in record keeping, then they will be able to maintain
database and satisfy the customers by meeting their needs, by matching customer
expectations with the products.

Question 4

What tools did you sue to undertake the analysis you carried out at Australian Hardware?
Why were these tools appropriate?

We used Brainstorming to analyse the Australian Hardware customer service policy.

Brainstorming is a tried and tested way to come up with ideas in a group. We might use
brainstorming to analyse problems or to generate solutions to problems.

3. Prepare a written report on the outcomes of the continuous improvement process at Australian
Hardware:

Report on the outcomes of the continuous improvement process at Australian Hardware

a. Discussion of feedback from workshop and coaching participants:

Employees Feedback on Collaborative Workshop
We must get the result with in one or two years. Instead of focusing on five years
strategy, we must implement a robust strategy to generate results in 1-2 years’ time.
Joseph suggests to hire more floor staff to work in second shift because we are planning
to extend the business hours. He also suggests to reduce working hours of employees
from 12 to 6 hours to improve their performance.
Dorry (Head of Human Resource): Suggests increasing employee happiness,
engagement, and productivity through job related trainings, sales incentives, high
expectations and full job support from employers.
No other issues were identified by participants and they all agreed with the
recommendations.
 Feedback from coaching participant
Coaching session was useful and directly related with my job. I learned that with the
help of expert product knowledge and best customer service a sales staff can convert
leads in to an actual sale.
b. A list of typical areas of need for coaching and mentoring to support continuous
improvement:
Based on assessment task 1 recommendations and scenario analysis and data analysis in
assessment task 2 we have identified following areas for coaching and mentoring to
support continuous improvement.
 Safety checks.
 Customer feedback and complains handling.
 CI implementation and CI Coaching.
 Attending customers in stores, on phone, and online as well.
 Database Management.
 Refunds handling.
c. Recommendations (from Assessment Task 2) for further service and productivity
improvements, including the procedure for recordkeeping:
Take help from Q4 + Procedure for recordkeeping

1. Increase sales revenue and gross profit.

Activity/Strategy
Offer more promotion e.g. paid advertising, sales promotion.
Offer more innovative products.
Minimise cost by reducing wastes.
Train sales and customer service staff. Hire and retain highly skilled staff.
Provide performance-based incentives to sales staffs.

2. Maintain or increase market share

Activity/Strategy
Create awareness about the brand.
Offer loyalty benefits.
Collect customer feedback and implement a mechanism of managing the feedback.
Understand competitors through benchmarking techniques.

3. Control direct and indirect operational costs

Activity/Strategy
Review suppliers to obtain best pricing and quality.
Improve human resource cost with better staff planning and employee rostering.
Implement JIT (Just in time inventory management) system to save inventory storage cost.

4. Maintain superior product and service quality standards

Activity/Strategy
Develop and implement product and service quality standards.
Follow quality control systems and procedures for suppliers and products.
Conduct quality audit regularly.
Take help from customer feedback on quality control.
5. Establish reputation of Australian Hardware as socially and environmentally responsible
company.
Conduct and create awareness about social activities.
Source product from environmentally responsible suppliers.
Work efficiently to reduce material wastes.
Avoid using plastic bags.
Conduct environmental audit.
Conduct social audit.

Procedure for recordkeeping

Electronic record keeping is the best option available for Australian Hardware.

Basic records

To meet basic legal requirements, you must keep the following:

 A cash book or financial accounting program – that records cash receipts and cash
payments.
 Bank accounts – cheque books, deposit books and bank statements.
 Employment records – hours of work, overtime, remuneration or other benefits, leave,
superannuation benefits, termination of employment, type of employment, personal
details of workers, employee personal contact and employment details.
 Occupational training records – for both you and employees to comply with work, health
and safety laws including evacuation and emergency training attendance.
 Sales records – invoice books, receipt books, cash register tapes, credit card
documentation, credit notes for goods retuned and a record of goods used by the
business owner personally.
 Proof of purchases – cheque butts (larger purchases), petty cash system (smaller cash
purchases), receipts, credit card statements, invoices, any other documents relating to
purchases including copies of agreements or leases.
 Work, health and safety (WHS) records – workplace incidents, risk register and
management plan, names of key WHS people (e.g. WHS representative, Trained safety
Advisor (TSA), first aid attendant), chemical storage records, first aid incident register,
workplace assessments, Material safety Data sheets (MSDS).
https://www.business.qld.gov.au/running-business/finances-cash-flow/records/
requirements

https://www.business.qld.gov.au/running-business/finances-cash-flow/records/
electronic-manual

http://www.broadleys.com.au/downloads/goodrecordkeeping.PDF

https://www.business.gov.au/new-to-business-essentials/series-one/keep-the-right-
records

d. Database report or spreadsheet:

 We must maintain two separate databases,
1. Employee performance management.
2. Customer relationship management.

For employee performance management we can use the same spread sheet from AT2

For customer relationship management: Please prepare a spreadsheet as discussed in

class.

Customer Database/Spreadsheet

Serials No. Customers Name email Details Purchase Purchase Date of Purchase Payment
ID Item Quality Purchase Method Method

e. An explanation of how change management techniques can support continuous

improvement and initiative:
Change some useful information provided in link below
https://www.tinypulse.com/blog/sk-strategies-for-change-management

4. Read the ACME Steel case study (Appendix 3 below) and write your answers to the four
questions on continuous improvement at ACME Steel (Appendix 2 below).

Question 1

a. Define continuous improvement as implemented by ACME.

It is culture change project that help ACME meet increasingly customer demand and
differentiate from competitors. Changes started from top management to set goal to
improve then invest in training of CI coaches. CI coaches become change agents that help
each department improve their performance.

b. Name four of more elements of continuous improvement ACME implemented.

Training & coaching on eliminate wastes, Create vision, Set target & KPI, Value steam
mapping.

c. Who was involved in the process (which stakeholders)?

Everybody involved in CI process. CI is top down support and bottom up action. With CI
coaches, operation team can identify improvement opportunities and top management
support those changes.

d. What did ACME do to enable the continuous improvement implementation to succeed?

ACME invests money and time to improve knowledge of people. Training full time 40 CI
coaches and training every department make it possible to involve everyone. This ensures
success of implementation.

Question 2
 Describe how the vision and goals of ACME Steel helped develop the culture of continuous
improvement (what drives a continuous improvement culture?)

CI culture promotes involvement from everyone. We need vision to drive everyone into the
same direction to keep them motivated to be in new culture. Moreover, there are a lot of
projects that should be done with limited time and resources. Vision helps define priority of
those projects to allocate resources to ensure that important issues will be managed first.

Question 3

How will achieving its KPIs help ACME improve customer satisfaction (what do ACME’s
customers want)?

Your customer satisfaction KPI is like a vital sign for your business; improve it and you
improve the overall health of your venture. Basically, NPS is a measure of how many of your
customers like your brand enough to recommend (or promote) it to others.

Question 4

What tools were used to undertake the analysis carried out by ACME described in the case
study? Why were these tools appropriate?

Process mapping is the tool that was used in this case study. Any continuous improvement
effort has to be with an accurate understanding of the process that has been identified for
improvement. This is a flowcharting method that is used to visualise the steps in a process.
ACME used visual management techniques, such as flow charts and wall charts to make
clear what resource are necessary and who is responsible for each part of the process. This
tool is appropriate because it help the organization providing continuous improvement. It
defines the scope of the process, the interface with other processes, and a starting point
from which improvement can be measured against.