BUSINESS RESEARCH METHODS

Introduction

In an increasingly competitive business world, businesses often find the need to optimize their operational processes in order to remain competitive and relevant. The harsh economic climate further puts a strain on this delicate balancing act of operating a profitable business. Declining consumer-spending power means that businesses must find ways of cutting operating costs in order to remain competitive and profitable. Business operation processes optimization and cost cutting initiatives imply that businesses need to research on their operations and business models. These researches are often required in order to develop new products, improve business processes or devise cost-cutting initiatives.

In their quest to chart new ways for their businesses, business executives will use different research methodologies such as qualitative, quantitative or mixed model research methodologies. In their research, business executives may decide to conduct surveys in which they use questionnaires to get the required data. There are two types of question structures used in questionnaires. The two types are open-ended questions and close- ended questions in which the former produce qualitative data and the latter quantitative data. For the purposes of illustrating these concepts, a short questionnaire was constructed of which a copy is attached in the appendix of this report. A customer service practitioner in the banking industry constructed the questionnaire. The aim of the questionnaire was to study the customer’s perception of customer service and the factors affecting customer service in the banking industry. The questionnaire consisted of part A with close-ended questions and part B with open-ended questions.

The population target consisted of various bank’s customers. In drawing a sample, which is a subset of the population, the customer service practitioner used convenience-sampling technique. In deriving a working sample, the researcher repeatedly chose the nth most convenient customer as a member of the sample set. In this method of sampling, the researcher chose every successive fifth customer resulting in a sample size of sixty respondents. Thus the 5th, 10th, 15th, 20th, etc customers were selected as respondents.

Results and analysis of results

A response rate of eighty-three percent was recorded in which fifty out of the sixty distributed questionnaires were returned for analyzing. A further ten questionnaires were spoilt on the basis that they were partially filled, or the respondents did not follow the stipulated instructions. Forty questionnaires representing a percentage of sixty-seven of the distributed questionnaires were analyzed.

Part A of the questionnaire consisted of the close-ended questions in which customers were guided on their choice of answers. The first question asked the respondents to state whether they thought the counters were always fully manned. Out of the forty analyzed questionnaires, nineteen customers felt that the counters were fully manned while twenty-one customers did not agree. This means that while forty-eight of the respondents felt the counters were adequately manned, a majority of fifty-two percent of the respondents felt the counters were inadequately manned. Fully manned counters make a huge difference in the provision of excellent customer service in the banking industry. These results have a huge implication on the quality of customer service in the banking hall. Customers need to be served quickly and efficiently. In order to serve the customers quickly and avoid long queues in the banking halls, then the counters must be manned at all times. In this context, customer facing staff must leave their desks only on need-to-basis and even in such circumstances, they must ensure they have replacements or there are adequate CFS remaining to serve the remaining customer traffic at reasonable speed.

The researcher was also interested in finding the perception of quality of customer service using several indicators. The indicators used were the competence of the customer facing staff (CFS) in meeting customer’s banking needs and CFS’s friendliness to the customer. The other indicator that used was the speed of service. In each of the three indicators, the respondents were to use a four-tier system to gauge the quality of customer service. The four tiers consisted of ‘excellent’, ‘good’, ‘average’ and ‘poor’. The results were as follows.

On customer’s perception on the competence of the customer facing staff, eighteen and fifteen respondents rated the competence of staff as ‘excellent’ and ‘good’ respectively. This consisted of forty five percent and thirty eight percent respectively. Seven respondents or seventeen percent of the respondents viewed the competence of staff to be below acceptable level. Seven percent of this seventeen percent rated the competence of the staff as ‘poor’.

The respondent’s perception on the CFS’s friendliness improved marginally in comparison to their perception of the competence of staff. Up to 90 percent of the respondents felt they were treated in a friendly way in the bank. Twenty-two respondents or fifty five percent of the respondents rated the friendliness indicator as ‘excellent’. A further thirty five percent of the respondents rated this indicator as ‘good’. It is only a partly seven percent and three percent who rated the level of friendliness as ‘fairly good’ and ‘poor’ respectively.

The perception of the ‘speed of service’ indicator performed poorly in comparison to the other two indicators. A substantial percentage of thirty-five percent rated this indicator as being of average excellence. Up to fifteen percent of the respondents rated the indicator as ‘poor’. Thirty five percent, thirty percent and twenty percent of the respondents rated the indicator as ‘excellent’, ‘good’ and ‘fairly good’ respectively.

Banking industry is a service industry where customers expect excellent service by friendly competent staff in an efficient manner. It is worth noting that the research study found that seven percent of the staff to be incompetent .This is a substantial percentage that affects the quality of customer service in banking industry in a negative way. Incompetent customer facing staffs mean that they cannot execute their functionalities and work expectations in an optimal way. This may lead to unnecessary long queues and dissatisfied customers. Banking service as any other service needs to be provided in a timely manner. Customers are usually busy people who have a lot on their minds and have other issues to attend. It is shocking that up to fifteen percent felt that the speed of service in the banking hall to be wanting.

The researcher was interested in understanding the length of time that the customers waited to access baking service. Fifty five percent of the respondents indicated they waited for more than an hour to access service, with a further thirty seven percent indicated they waited for between forty-five minutes to an hour.  Three percent of the respondents waited for less than thirty minutes to access service. On the level of interference of the customer facing staff by the back office staff, forty-five percent of the respondents felt that it was only in very rare occasion that there was interference. A further thirty seven percent of the respondents felt that only on rare occasion was there interference from back office. Seventy seven percent of the respondents felt the ratio of customers per CFS as large while sixteen percent described the ratio as medium.

The length of waiting time to access banking service can be tied to several other indicators in this study; competency, speed of service, manning of counters and the interference of the front office staff by the back office staff. All these variables have a common denominator in that they result in customers having to wait longer to be served. Improving these variables to an optimal level would result in shorter queues as the customers get served quicker and ultimately more satisfied customers.

Part B of the questionnaire provided the respondents an opportunity to answer the questions in their own words. There are several factors cited as affecting the customer service in the banking industry. Among the factors cited included ATM downtimes, inadequately manned counters, and poorly trained CFS who did not adequately solve the customer’s queries amongst others. Some of the proposed solutions to issues affecting customer service quality included employment of more CFS and introduction of backup systems. The respondents felt that technology played a critical role in the level of customer service quality. In instances where the bank system was not user friendly or the system kept on going down, then inevitably it led to long queues in the banking halls. The respondents also felt that customers sometimes contributed to poor customer service in the banking hall through picking of cell phones while accessing banking services or failure to adhere to the laid down instructions.  The respondents felt that the customer service in the banking industry generally compared to those in other service industries.

The reliability and validity of any study and its results is dependent on several factors. One of the factors that hugely affect the validity of the results is the method of drawing a sample. In our case, convenience sampling was used. This can affect the quality of the results by failing to get a representative sample. For example, the sample was drawn by picking every fifth customer to act as a respondent, how was this representative in terms of distribution of corporate and retail customers? To what level can we say that the chosen sample represented a typical bank customer? In this context, it becomes difficult to generalize the results of this study to the whole banking sector.

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“Paediatrics Specialization plan”

                                             “Paediatrics Specialization plan”
Paediatrics is an area within medicine which deals with the development, health and diseases of children. It too examines the treatment and prevention of diseases; it focuses upon normal growth, children growth and behavioral aspects of children’s health. It imposes study categorically, that is, by involving gathered theory and practical held in different fields of interest. Out of the practices carried out as a way of study, evidence have been gathered that shows solutions and they real work.  This study focuses from the health issues within a child body to physical outlay. Any disorder realized is taken into account and a study of the same is induced to provide reliable solution of that disorder.
The investigation to be carried mainly will consider infants and merely children. The results will be analyzed and possible outcome discussed in detail. The evidences to be discussed are; managing deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), managing Nocturnal Enuresis and managing childhood obesity respectively. Areas where investigation will be carried out are schools and residential areas. I shall focus on taking young children as my evidence in presenting the listed disorders.
One of the well elaborate evidence was outlined from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) which is the common neurodevelopmental disorder in children. Some 7% of children in school age have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and boys are affected three times as frequently as girls. Between 18%and 35% of affected children have an additional psychiatric disorder. Stimulants and tricyclic antidepressants are effective treatment for the attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in children. With time the symptoms diminishes, in up to half of the children the disorder still remain up to adolescence or adulthood. Its signs are impulsiveness, hyperactivity and inattention beyond the normal age of the child. There should be a regular diagnosis of this disorder in children with behavioral problems. Although the diagnosis will only be reliable with a standardized approach, takes care about the disorder often arise (Stein, 24 Nov 2004). Green outdoor activities reduce symptoms significantly more than did activities conducted in other settings, even when activities were matched across settings. Green outdoor settings reduce ADHD symptoms in children across a wide range of individuals (Health, 2004).
The other evidence is based on Nocturnal Enuresis. A ten year old boy is brought with an issue of bedwetting. He is dry during the day. Earlier treatment has been desmopressin once he was out in the camp for two nights and proved to be dry but slept too little. So the parents are not sure whether desmopressin was responsible for his dry. The wetting now starts to upset and the parents are seeking for help. Day time urinary symptoms in bedwetting child suggest an understanding bladder dysfunction rather than nocturarnal enuresis. Enuresis alarms are effective and safe treatment but require several moths of continuous use and are unstable for some people. Desmopressin and impramine both improve bedwetting. Bedwetting has got many causes: nocturnal enuresis is the most frequency cause and it is recognized by the absence of other urinary diseases. Most children presenting with nocturnal enursis have never been dry. If day time bedwetting occurs, the child is most likely had urge syndrome. Either or not urge incontinence as well as disturbances resulting to incontinence (Evans, 2001).  From a clinical investigation carried out to study the treatment of nocturnal enuresis showed that Enuresis Alarm reduces the number of wet nights during treatment and increases treatment success rates. (Makari, 2006)
Evidence based on childhood obesity with a child has too provided some good material. A patient of a ten year old boy is very overweight and brought by his mother with normal weight but the father is overweight. And he is the only son. The boy’s behavior is reported to be deteriorating and become isolated from the peer. The mother has tried different diet but has not helped instead adding up weight. Young obese child should be maintain or gain weight slowly rather than lose weight. Healthy eating habits are better than restricting diet and sustainable lifestyle practices should be encouraged. Psychosocial problems are the major causes of overweight. Out of the world health report in 1998, the societal and environmental factors promote weight gain. (Elliot, 2001). Childhood obesity can cause social problems, psychological and health problems and later linked to poor adult health. Becoming obese is strongly linked to in appropriate diet and nutrition and poor physical activity.
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) treatment still not yet fully brought to conclusion. Still studies and research are being held to ensure there are measures to this disorder. But physical measures have been strongly involved as a way of treating this disorder. This is because the causes of this disorder are majorly arising from the physical perspective of the child out of the research based on physical exercises, it showed that ADHD reduces significantly. Nocturnal Enuresis is another disorder that has also taken much of time in order all researches to come to a uniform conclusion. Nocturnal enuresis is the major cause of bedwetting and is triggered by other bladder diseases. Enuresis alarm reduces bedwetting nights and eventually the disorder treatment achieved. Obesity has majorly caused by psychological and health problems. Proper diet, physical activity and good health care should basically take into consideration in order to avoid obesity in the growing child. Once a child has become obese, proper diet should be observed as well as physical activities increased compared to initially. This will altogether enable the child achieve normal body size.
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