RESOLVING CUSTOMER COMPLAINTS

Resolving customer complaints at Gemtree Vineyards

[Instructor name]

Introduction

The Gemtree Vineyards is owned by a single family and prepares top quality wines in its vineyards located at MacLaren Vale. The company has been operating as a biodynamically producing company with certification for fully organic farming. The company is dedicated to protecting the environment and promoting sustainable agriculture and innovation. It aims to ensure biodynamic operations in both its vineyards and at the winery.

The vineyards and winery were bought by Paul and Jill Buttery in 1980. They started the company with their ownership of only a single vineyard. Now, their daughter, Melissa, who has an associate degree in business, is managing the winery. They had also bought other lands where they started cultivating their vines.

Gemtree is a truly green company and it has planted more than 50,000 trees and has created more than six dams. It is also farming only biodynamically to provide a sustainable environment. The winery is a closely-held business and the entire family is running the business. Melissa, the daughter, is the viticulturist.

Their wine products include bloodstone Shiraz, the phantom petit verdot, the phantom red blend 2, uncut Shiraz, moonstone Savagnin, whiteless Shiraz, and obsidian Shiraz. Now, they have two full-fledged vineyards which are Tatachilla road vineyard and Gemtree vineyard. These are located in the MacLaren Vale wine region. The other important wines in Australia include Penfold, Rosemount Estate, Wynns Connowarra Estate, Lindemans, Devil's Lair, and Coldstream Hills (AWD, 2004).

The company operates through direct sales (over the web), distributors, and through stockists. The important and pertinent staffs of the company include the winemaker, viticulturist, managing director, cellar door manager, marketing assistant, production and logistics coordinator, and the directors of golf (Gemtree Vineyards, 2012).

The customers can either put their complaints online through the available email address or they may want to talk directly with any of the above staff members through email or phone (Gemtree Vineyards, 2012). In addition, the stockists and distributors are not considered as customers as they are not the end users and only represent strategic partnership and downstream supply chain agents.

Resolving customer complaints at Gemtree Vineyards

Customer complaints policy

Background

The company has a policy of serving and servicing the customers to the fullest. The company is fully customer-focused and customer-centric in its operations. It engages in proactive customer complaint resolution that includes customer feedback, complaints and suggestions in its future processes and products (Reeher, n.d.). Mostly, Gemtree does not receive too many customer complaints. However, it has found that these complaints could arise in the areas of advertising or sales issues, billing or collection issues, problems with product or service, delivery issues, or guarantee or warranty issues (Rosen, 2012).

Complaints policy

The complaints policy of Gemtree aims to address all customer complaints in an efficient and certain manner such that the customers should not bring about the same complaint again. The policy regards that our customers are the most important stakeholders of our business. Thus, customer complaints must be heard and documented in an objective manner ...