Gold Star Chili Case Study

1. What would be some moments of truth in Gold Star's environment?

Moments of truth mean every interaction between a customer and the organization, and customer satisfaction or dissatisfaction takes place during moments of truth (Boehme, Lecture Slides, 2012). The moments of truth in Gold Star's environment include：reserve seats, seating arrangements, ordering dishes, serve the dishes, drive-through service, pay the bill and so on.

2. What implications would the segmentation of Gold Star's customers have on their customer-focused practices?

Two key customer groups in Gold Star include direct customers and indirect customers. Direct customers use Gold Star products and service, which contain Restaurant customer, Franchisees applicants, Retail customers, Retail wholesalers and Mail-order customer. Indirect customers means with Gold Stat has other relationships, which contain Product suppliers, Service suppliers, Co-packers, Brokers/Consultant and Shareholders. The segmentation of Gold Star's customers helps them to identify the most important customer groups and markets, design the production and service systems to better meet those differing needs. It is also good for measure customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction and compares the results relative to competitors and industry benchmarks (Boehme, Lecture Slides, 2012). This information can help organization to improve their service and processes.

3. What types of approaches should Gold Star consider to listen and learn from these customer groups?

The mission of Gold Star is to “create lasting relationships based upon respect, trust, and support given to customer.” So, the company can listen and learn from these customer groups through customer listening posts. There are six major approaches that help the company to understand the customer's evaluation. They are comment cards and formal surveys; focus groups; direct customer contact; field intelligence; complaint analysis and Internet monitoring approaches...