Customers play a very essential part in every business. Managing the customer experience has become a serious organisational aim. This paper discusses about the customer services and the people at the electronic retailer, Currys PC world, a part of Dixons Carphone Company, which has served its customers for over 100 years with its wide range of products. The paper particularly focuses on the Currys PC world store at New Malden. The store has a long history in the high street, but have faced an increasing competition from other high street competitors, and the internet. This study exhibits the external and internal aspects of the customer services and people of the organization and the need for adopting new training methods to deliver better customer service. The analysis also emphasises on educating and motivating the people of the organization about the customer service and its benefits. This assessment began with a formal interview with the store manager, Mr Chris Shillingford at Currys PC world at the store located at Burlington Retail Park, Burlington road, New Malden. A questionnaire was prepared and survey was conducted to gather feedback about the customer service and the people of the store.

1. An Assessment on the People and Customer
Service of Currys PC World retail store, New
Malden
Presented to – Ben Laker
Course Name – Operation Management (BO7577)
Student ID – K1359395
Word count -2949
Date-11th
November 2014

2. 1
Table of Contents
Executive Summary--------------------------------------------------------------------2
Introduction-------------------------------------------------------------------------------2
External Aspect--------------------------------------------------------------------------3
Internal Aspect-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5
Problem Analysis------------------------------------------------------------------------6
Customer Service Delivery System-------------------------------------------------8
People and Services--------------------------------------------------------------------8
Customer and Products----------------------------------------------------------------8
Training Department at Currys-------------------------------------------------------9
Recommendations and implementation plans----------------------------------11
Critical analysis of recommendations and implementation plan------------ 16
Conclusion---------------------------------------------------------------------------------17
Appendix-1 -------------------------------------------------------------------18
Appendix-2--------------------------------------------------------------------19

3. 2
Executive Summary
Customers play a very essential part in every business. Managing the customer
experience has become a serious organisational aim. This paper discusses about
the customer services and the people at the electronic retailer, Currys PC world, a
part of Dixons Carphone Company, which has served its customers for over 100
years with its wide range of products. The paper particularly focuses on the Currys
PC world store at New Malden. The store has a long history in the high street, but
have faced an increasing competition from other high street competitors, and the
internet. This study exhibits the external and internal aspects of the customer
services and people of the organization and the need for adopting new training
methods to deliver better customer service. The analysis also emphasises on
educating and motivating the people of the organization about the customer service
and its benefits.
This assessment began with a formal interview with the store manager, Mr Chris
Shillingford at Currys PC world at the store located at Burlington Retail Park,
Burlington road, New Malden. A questionnaire was prepared and survey was
conducted to gather feedback about the customer service and the people of the
store. The survey was carried for a week and from the information gathered, an
analysis was developed. Please refer Appendix 1 for the questionnaire
Introduction
People are the main asset of any organisation. They are the vital element of
successful business. A high level of service is expected from the people of the store
to meet the industry standards and gain customers trust. Currys has been facing a
tough competition in the retail market. It holds a grip on its products but the survey
conducted, reveals a lack of proper customer services from the people of the
organization. Currys business is spread across internet for online shopping and also
to the retail stores

4. 3
This report will analyse the people at the Currys store and point out the areas of
improvements that are required for better customer service and the impact of this
improvements on customers and business.
External Aspect
Customers play a major role in any business and customer service are the key
factors for driving the business. The Currys PC World has varieties of customers
who prefers online shopping and also visits store. Let’s see why does a customer
visits the Currys store:
 To get a real-time experience of the product.
 To get a product demonstration by the people
 Learn about similar products available with better price and brand.
 Other offers and protection coverage plans
 Sales and discounts (at Currys the discounts are specific to stores and no
information is provided online about a the sales going on at any store)
All the above needs of a customer are to be taken care by the people of the organization.
Customer expects a great deal of value added services from the stores and it’s the sole
responsibility of the people to provide the same. Currys has a wide range of products and
services which are offered to all types of customers.
The external aspect of customer service and people was measured with few parameters
like range of products, price, people, discounts and offers which described the order
winners and qualifiers.
The data at table1 was calculated from the surveys carried out at the store. (Appendix 2).
The percentage has been correlated by summing up the responses from various customer
about their experience at the store.

5. 4
Order Winner and Order Qualifier
Other than the retail stores, the Currys also has online shopping website where the
customers can views the products and can order them online. It can be observed
that Currys has a wide range of products (77%) and the customers are pleased with
the price (77%) which makes both of them order winners. The survey shows that the
people (29%) of the organization are not up to the level and don’t provide proper
inputs about the products specifications and demos (38%). Though the website
displays a fair amount of information about the best deals, it doesn’t inform the users
about the special discounts and the clearance sales at the stores (50%) which
makes it an order qualifier.

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Internal Aspect
To analyse the impact of good customer service within the organization and to
identify its effective implementation, we look at the internal aspects of having a good
customer service and how it can be useful to the organization.
Currys has various products and are categorised into various sections. The newly
appointed people are trained for a particular department to serve the customers.
After a week training, they are provided with an on job training process where they
are supervised by their mentors, who are the specialist of that department. The
performance is tracked and monitored and are reported to the store manager.
Draw the training structure of the organization
Good customer service has huge impact on the internal aspect of the business:
 Increased sales and profits – customers would more likely to come back and
spread a word of recommendation
 Gains customer’s trust.
 Enhanced brand name – helps building a reputed brand name.
 Satisfied customers create effective workforce
A poor customer service equally has a negative impact on the business:
 Reduced sales and profit
 Loose customers
 Spoils the brand name
 Ineffective workforce
The benefits of any organization relies on the people and the customers should be
provided with the best of the service which leads the organization create a brand
value.

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Problem Analysis:
To analyse the problem with the Currys Store at New Malden, we will have to have a
look at different aspect of services which are inline with the customers and which can
impact the business to a greater extent.
Figure 1 identifies that as a business, Currys serves a huge volume of customers
online and also in retail stores. The online customers do not get much face-to-face
with the people at the store. They are at the minimum interaction level with the
employees whereas on the other hand the customers are the retail store has a major
interaction with the people but are provide with low customer service.
FIGURE 1

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Customer Service Delivery system:
Figure 2 analyses the customer service delivery system of Currys PC World. The
diagram will exhibit the different services that can create an impact in the business
and analyse how the customer service can be more effective and become an order
winner.
FIG- 2
The analysis is categorised as follows:

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People and Services:
Currys has a wide range of products and it serves huge volume of customers with
low customer service. As per the survey, customer services is not satisfactory and
thus is an order qualifier. Refer Appendix 2.
The following are the issues at the store derived from a customer’s perspective:
a) Lack of skilled Employees: The people at the store doesn’t provide enough
information about the products. They have least knowledge about the
product specification. Therefore customers are highly dissatisfied about
the services.
b) Customer leaves the store unattended: The store is huge having multiple
depart and many customers have complained about being not attended by
any employee at the store. People at the store are not trained to handle
multiple departments. Hence they tend to miss customers in absence of
other employees.
c) No advertisements about the ongoing sales. Advertisements play a major
role in creating awareness. There are no advertisements about the sales
unless a customer walks in to discover it. The people at the store don’t
communicate about the best deals and the value added services.
Customers and Products:
Currys serves variety of customers with variety of products ranging from homeware
to computing and games to television. The following are the issues analysed from
the survey conducted:
 Lack of product demonstration: Customers would love to see a prototype of
the product they are about to buy and this is a major reason why they come to
stores. They get an opportunity to play around the products and get a real-

10. 9
time experience. Unfortunately, the customers get disappointed when they
don’t get to have a product demo.
 Lack of multi-skilled employees: Customers who look for various range of
products often gets disappointed because they do not get all the necessary
information from one employee which tends to make the customer wait for a
longer period to get information about products from other domains. This goes
as a negative feedback.
TRAINING DEPARTMENT AT CURRYS
Training is one of the major areas in any organization which impacts the business
growth to a greater extent. The benefits of training could be are tangible or intangible
but investing in training departments could impact the growth and expansion of
business
The training department of Currys comprises of:
 A people Manager- Responsible for designing the training plans and manages
all the training sessions.
 A set of system /department managers- responsible for training and
supervising the new employees and provides feedback to the people manager
 Newly boarded employees- are assigned with a system manager to be trained
at a particular department.
The Existing training department structure at Currys:

11. 10
Training sessions are conducted in a 2 day induction programme where the newly
boarded employees are given a company overview including its sales and services
at various stores.
The trainees are then provided with a username and password to access the online
training systems. They need to go through some documents related to Currys
operations and business, and undergo tests.
During the discussion with the store manager, the following issues were gathered
with the existing training system:
 The newly boarded employees are not allotted with soft skills development
sessions like behaviour at workplace
 The system lacks in developing intangible skills like customer service.
 The current system emphasis more on products and sales rather than
customer service and people of the organization.
 The system doesn’t provide multi domain training.

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The people of the organization has to be provided with tangible and intangible
methods of training that can help the company to run successfully and also helps in
individual growth.
The existing framework for visually representing the level of internal strategic fit.
Proposals for workable recommendations and realistic implementation
plan:
Creating Multi-skilled labour force:
Multi-skilling A Win –Win effort

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Multi-skilling offers real productivity gains for any company and possess a potential
for a win-win situation. The people should be trained in multiple departments so that
not any customer should go unattended.
The new recommended training structure is as shown in table 3.
Draw the new training structure
Benefits of having multi-skilled people:
 Flexible Workforce: An organisation with multi-skilled people tend to develop a
flexible working environment which can help the company to arrange and
organise their people to suit their business needs and demands. Employees
can easily compensate for the absentees and can contribute in any domain of
business .This helps in increasing manpower at any time and duration.
 Reduces Labour cost: A company with multi-skilled labour can be operated
with a limited and only required number of employees. The people tend to
become proactive which results in lessening the idle hours, which further
reduces the cost to the business.
 Develops efficiency in planning: A company with effective planning and
scheduling employees can implement changes whenever and wherever
required to match the market demand without a loss of productivity.
 People Satisfaction: Multi-skilled employees are very open to learn new
technology and develop the required skillset to match the business needs.
They can easily adapt to any technology change in the market
Educating Staff:
Currys must create a working environment which would help the employees to
develop their full potential and transform into self-managed teams. The employees at
the Currys store must be taught the importance of customer service thereby
inculcating the soft skills through training sessions.

14. 13
The following are few steps that can adopted to train the employees on customer
service:
 Create the company’s customer service goals and state clearly what you want
your customer service to accomplish. For ex: a successful retailer has a policy
that states ‘’ Never say no’’. So the employees in that store is charged with
finding a way to say yes , to use creative problem –solving approach to make the
client satisfied.
 Meet the staff and describe how you expect the employees to treat their
customers.
 Create a training schedule for the customer service skills that is a part of the new
employee orientation schedule.
 Provide the examples of good and bad customer’s service techniques to show to
the new employees. Make the learning session bit interesting by having other
members get involved in acting out those scenarios.
Advertise the offers and discounts at the store
Currys provides greats deals and offers on various products throughout the year
which are detailed in their website. But other than that, Currys also runs a clearance
sale at their stores. This sale varies from store to store across the city. Unless a
customer drop in a store, he is not aware of any ongoing clearance sale.
 Promoting the sale online: They should advertise about all the ongoing sales and
also the upcoming sales in their website along with their store location.
 Promoting the sale at store: They must also advertise about the sale at their
stores. Customers should be able to view the offers and sales before they enter
the store. They can accomplish this by setting up billboards and giving away
hand-outs to customers.
 Talking to customers about the special sale: The employees can explain about
the ongoing sale to the customers visiting their stores. They must understand the

15. 14
customer needs and should provide them with required information to fulfil their
needs.
NEW TRAINING STRUCTURE
The new recommended training system introduces a soft skills development programme
for the trainees because
 They will get to know the gravity and importance of the customer service and the
people of the organization.
 They can have a question answer session with the expert to understand the depth
of it.
 Having a session can help sharing knowledge, views and experience which online
session doesn’t provide.
The system also exhibits that the training can be provided in a rotational basis so that all
the new joinees can have a basic training in every domain. This structure would help in
creating multi-skill employees which will be beneficial for the organization in a long run.
The rotation in domain can be shuffled in every 4 weeks. The employees can have a touch
of all domains and thereby reducing the monotonous working hours

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VISUAL REPRESENTING THE LEVEL OF INTERNAL
STRATEGIC FIT IN THE ORGANISATION
Critical Analysis of the recommendations and implementation plan
Analysing the above stated recommendations, the following table describes the potential
barriers to the implementation plan and the alternative solution that could be implemented
to deliver better customer service.
Recommendations Potential Barriers Alternative Solution
Creating Multi-skilled
labour force
This measure is bit critical
as not many employees
would be interested to
develop expertise in
Implementing a bonus structure would
motivate the employees to learn and
grow. This would give the employees a
sense of ownership towards delivering

17. 16
multiple domain. They
might find it hectic and
undergo performance
pressure
better service
Educating Staff This implementation plan
is a gradual process and
is slow. To measure the
potential of an individual
is also critical and needs
lots of discussion and
inputs.
An online supervision can be implemented
to monitor the learning curve of the
employees. It should be mandatory for an
employee to undergo an online test and
clear the level.
Advertise the offers and
discounts at the store
Managing the advertising
plan could cost a bit .If not
done efficiently, it could
mislead the customers as
well.
The advertisements can be created and
posted by the people of the organization
instead of approaching any ad agencies.
This help in managing cost. The people
should be encouraged to come up with
the best advertisement theme which
would help the organization to make good
sales thereby making the people more
creative and innovative.
New training methodology This measure would
extend the usual training
period of the company for
which the employees
need to work for extra
hours to accommodate
when training system
The newly boarded employees can be
trained on job which can help them to
understand the real time scenarios. They
can be assigned with mentors or
supervisors who can help them to gain
customer service techniques.

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Conclusion:
From the author’s point of view, there must be an immediate change in the training
structure of the organization that has been discussed in the paper. Further detailed
investigation is required to resolve conflicting training strategies.
The survey conducted on various customers also calls for a serious customer
service session that has to be mandatory for all the employees. They must be taught
the importance of behaviour and the need of the customers. They need to brush up
their skills and work towards the development and keeping up the brand name.
There could be various other techniques of training for inculcating the soft skills. The
company must start to look into it and prepare the people to grab the market

19. 18
APPENDIX 1

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APPENDIX 2

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References:
Hill, A .and Hill, T.2011.Essential Operations Management. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
CurrysPCworld (2014).Services and products.[Online].Available at
http://www.currys.co.uk/( Accessed 3rd
Novemberr 2014).