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• Case | HBS Case Collection | July 2016

  Cataumet Boats, Inc.

  W. Earl Sasser and Mark Davis

  Jaime Giancola, an MBA student, has recently completed an operations management course in which aggregate production planning (APP) was one of the topics. She believes that her family's business, Cataumet Boats, which her grandparents started and which her mother and uncle now own, might benefit from applying APP concepts to identify the different ways they might schedule workers, which could be especially valuable during the peak demand seasons of fall and spring. The goal of using APP is to reduce labor costs without sacrificing the high level of customer service that Cataumet Boats is known for providing.

  Keywords: Business or Company Management; Family Business; Production; Cost Management; Transportation; Customer Satisfaction;

  Citation:

  Sasser, W. Earl, and Mark Davis. "Cataumet Boats, Inc." Harvard Business School Brief Case 917-509, July 2016.  View Details

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• Teaching Note | HBS Case Collection | July 2016

  Cataumet Boats, Inc. (Brief Case)

  W. Earl Sasser and Mark Davis

  Citation:

  Sasser, W. Earl, and Mark Davis. "Cataumet Boats, Inc. (Brief Case)." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 917-510, July 2016.  View Details

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• Case | HBS Case Collection | November 2015 (Revised February 2016)

  Allianz Turkey: Focus on the Customer (A)

  W. Earl Sasser and Gamze Yucaoglu

  At the age of 39, Solmaz Altın took over the helm at Allianz Turkey. Solmaz quickly realized that, although the insurance market was thinly penetrated in Turkey, the company was operating in a very competitive environment with pressure on prices and, hence, cost control. Consequently, customer satisfaction was suffering. Despite the growing Turkish economy and a favorable regulatory environment, Solmaz was struggling to grow the company without further sacrificing customer satisfaction or profitability.
  Used as part of a course on service excellence, the case provides an insurance context in which to explore the link between customer satisfaction and competitive performance and challenges the students to ponder the extent of the relationship between customer satisfaction and financial performance.
  
  In the (A) case, the Allianz Turkey executives focus their initial efforts on the claims process of the automobile insurance business—a lowly rated segment of the insurance industry by their policyholders. They begin by creating a map of the customer experience and then doing extensive consumer research to determine what really matters to the policyholder. The insights gleaned from the detailed consumer analysis are quite different than the original beliefs of the management team. Students must devise a new customer service model for the claims process based upon the customer analysis.
  
  The (B) case describes the new customer service model for the claims process and the resulting increase in customer satisfaction as measured by the Net Promoter Score (NPS) metric. Students must first decide whether the initial effort is a success and then develop a plan for the future.

  Keywords: service excellence; customer experience; customer service; insurance industry; emerging market; customer focus; leading change; customer satisfaction; Net Promoter Score; competition; Customer Relationship Management; Competition; Leading Change; Service Operations; Emerging Markets; Customer Satisfaction; Insurance Industry; Turkey;

  Citation:

  Sasser, W. Earl, and Gamze Yucaoglu. "Allianz Turkey: Focus on the Customer (A)." Harvard Business School Case 316-093, November 2015. (Revised February 2016.)  View Details

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