In the required article, Customer Obsession and the Platinum Rule (Reid, 2016), the author refers to the “Platinum Rule” for developing outstanding customer relationships and discusses the importance of customer service. Your textbook emphasizes the idea that customer service is a strong competitive weapon, which is difficult for competition to imitate. In logistics, the four dimensions of customer service are time, dependability, communication, and convenience. Advanced transportation and technology are the main drivers of globalization that contribute to these four dimensions. See Table 7.2 on page 124 of your text (Murphy & Knemeyer, 2015). For this assignment, you will research a large global transportation company, write a paper that discusses how customer service supports logistics and supply chain management, and then analyze how this relationship contributes to a company’s competitive advantage in the global marketplace. In your paper, • Select one transportation company from the list of the World’s Largest Transportations Companies published by Forbes. • Explain how your chosen company’s current logistics and/or supply chain management practices supports each of the four dimensions of customer service. (The company’s website and annual report are often good starting points for your research.) • Assess how the company can strengthen the contribution of each dimension to future gains in profitability and/or customer service with at least two of the four dimensions. Provide two to three examples of how other companies have already done so to support your assessment.
