Customer satisfaction analysis with quality function deployment: An experimental application at third party logistic providers

Increasing competition force companies to restructure themselves in many aspects all over the world. Businesses started to focus on their supply chain when they could not create any difference on quality, product range or flexibility ability. Businesses in some sectors become competitive to each other on their supply chain operations. To provide flawless flow in a supply chain means providing right product, right quantity, right time andat reasonable price for customer. When businesses cannot focus on their core competencies, while managing this flawless flow, third part logistic firms importance has started to increase. In our country third party logistic services still is not so prevalent. Even it is expected to increase in time, in this study it is tried to answer "what can be done to improve existing relationships?" question. Application is done at a logistic company where a supermarkets chain which performs in retail sector get 3 PL services and method is selected as Quality Function Deployment. Method is developed on customer expectations, so it is important to collect and evaluate customer wants and needs in a correct way. In the study, customer group's fewness is used as an advantage and customer expectations is collected at first hand by depth interviews. In order to rank the defined expectations, one of the multi criteria decision making practices, AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) method is used. With interview form which is used to define customer expectations importance level and it is defined how firm will satisfy these needs. Accordingly Quality House is formed. Finally, in order to increase customer satisfaction arguments are mounted about how business can use its scare sources more productively.