Gold Star Chili Case Study

1. What would be some moments of truth in Gold Star’s environment? Every time a customer contact or interact with Gold Star, is the moment of truth of Gold Star. Customers usually evaluate the products and compare their expectations with the actual outcomes. In Gold Star’s case, the moment of truth is reservation, ordering, dining services and drive-through services.

2. What implications would the segmentation of Gold Star’s customers have on their customer focused practices? Gold Star divides their customers into two categories: direct customers and indirect customers. The direct customers are those who use Gold Star’s products and services. The others who related to Gold Star’s business are indirect customers. Direct customers contributes the larger part of enterprise’s profits, therefore they are classified to a higher priority group. Gold Star is able to make different standards and strategies for different customer segments based on customer requirements. For example, the restaurant customers expect to have good service and delicious food, but the suppliers expect to sell more ingredients. They must be treat accordingly.

3. What types of approaches should Gold Star consider to listen and learn from different customer segments? For restaurant customers, the general approach of feedback gathering is from waiter/waitress. Service personnel is able to report back the customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction in time. Another approach is questionnaires. Gold Star may collect customer feedback by asking them to fill out their answers on a paper. Online questionnaires is also available for restaurant customers. For franchises and franchise applicants, a few sessions of meeting is necessary to help execute managers of Gold Star learning franchises performance and market statues. Some other general approach such as phone call and Email are also applicable for Gold Star to understand their customers.

4. How would you design customer satisfaction surveys for Gold Star consumers and for franchisee (who are customers of the corporation)? What types of questions would you ask? For restaurant consumers, normally a serious of general close-end question is suitable to collect customer feedback of satisfaction. The question can be asked by waiter/waitress or questionnaires such as: Do you like your food?

Do you like your dessert?
Was our restaurant clean? Please rate 1 to 5.
Please rate your overall dining experience (1 to 5).
For franchisee, the execute manager of Gold Star should adopt a more complex approach to understand their satisfaction and why. A mixed of open-ended and close-ended questionnaire is applicable. The questions could be: How would you rate your franchise business compared to local competitors? (1 to 5) How would you rate your long term potential for your franchise business? (1 to 5) What support do you expect for your franchise business to get better competitive advantage?