As mentioned above, several interviews had been done with focus groups in order to get as much as the researchers could from the problems that confront the café while providing their services to the customers. The first interview took place virtually on Wednesday, February 23, 2022, and was moderated by the researchers. The participants involved in the study were: the Executive Manager, Finance and Product Development, Project Manager, and Operations Manager. The focus group lasted around 100 minutes. The discussion was mainly about issues associated with business growth and product development, ultimately leading to customer satisfaction.

The second focus group took place on-site on Thursday, March 17, 2022, and was moderated by the researchers. The research team was divided, and each member visits a branch of the three café branches. The participants involved in the study were: two Branch Managers, four waiters, and several customers. The focus group lasted around 85 minutes. The discussion was mainly about issues associated with menu development, customer complaints, suggestions, and issues with the work regarding the café ultimately leading to customer and employees’ satisfaction. From these different interviews, the most critical problems and issues that confront the café and prevent customers’ satisfaction are:

As stated before, three online questionnaires were conducted to identify customer complaints and suggestions, and issues regarding the café service quality and to assess the satisfaction level of customers. For this paper, the customers are the business-to-customer (B2C) which are customers who visit the café and get benefited from the café services, business-to-business (B2B) which are other cafés and restaurants that benefited from the café products, and the employees.

Figure 1 represents the CJM of the café for the B2C. It includes three phases: before visiting, during the experience, and after fulfillment of the need. In those phases, customers interact with the staff of the café in two stages—frontstage and backstage phase. In the frontstage, customers interact with tangible services provided by the company which are the location of the café, the employee interaction with the customer, and the menu. While the backstage deals with the intangible department of the café such as marketing responsibilities.

On the other hand, the CJM of B2B includes three stages: pre-transaction, during, and post-transaction as portrayed in Figure 2. In those stages, customers interact with the operations manager of the café. Customer behavior in the pre-transaction stage has three phases which are awareness, consideration, and supplier shortlisting. In the next phase, purchase and delivery are the two phases that express customer behavior. The last stage of the post-transaction includes the two phases of post-sale and renewal.

The affinity diagram, one of the “Seven New Quality Management Tools,” is used to organize and classify ideas and data. Jiro Kawakita, a Japanese scientist, invented the term affinity diagram in 1960, and it is also known as the KJ or TKJ technique, where the “T” stands for “Team” (Suárez-Barraza et al., 2016). By employing an Affinity Diagram, data may be grouped based on their natural connection via brainstorming or analysis of verbal data acquired through surveys, interviews, or feedback responses. In the beginning, it was designed as a quality management tool, but currently, it is used in a wide range of industries to generate ideas for decision making. Using the Affinity Diagram is recommended by Ishikawa when data or concepts need to be arranged (Awasthi & Chauhan, 2012). According to Foster and Ganguly (2007), the following stages are used to create an affinity diagram:

1) Identify the issue that needs to be expressed. Present a brief, straightforward summary of the problem that is easily understood by team members.

2) Distribute note cards and pens to each team member. Ask them to write down any difficulties that belong to the topic. Each card should include just one concept.

3) Arrange the completed cards so that all participants may see and access all of them.

4) Allow members of the team to sort the cards into groups that have a common theme. Carry out this activity discreetly, since discussing your ideas does not assist. Work fast and efficiently.

5) If you disagree with another person’s placement of a notecard, remain silent and just relocate it.

6) Consensus is reached when all the cards are grouped, and the team members have stopped moving the cards. Once an agreement has been achieved on the ordering of the cards, header cards may be created.

7) Draw a completed affinity diagram.

The result of applying these steps is revealed in a completed Affinity diagram of this study which is presented in Figure 3.

The interrelationship diagram is a method for prioritizing topics that have the greatest effect. The interrelationship diagram helps distinguish between causes (or drivers) and consequences (or outcomes) (Jones, 2014). The affinity diagram was utilized to determine the main influence and to identify a problem’s primary underlying concerns. The primary goal of the interrelationship diagram is to improve knowledge (or drivers) and impacts (or outcomes) (Foster & Ganguly, 2007). The following relationships are retrieved from the logical connection between groups in this research (see Figure 4).

1) Shorter operational hours & the cost of hiring employees, whether Saudi or foreigner: Since all café branches are placed in malls, and all the malls have limited operating hours that comparing to cafés that are not in a mall. Hiring more employees became costly since the café cannot operate full-time to cover this cost.

2) Limited seating area & long waiting time: Due to the high cost of mall shop rental and mall policies for food and beverages places space café has a limited seating area. So, in pick times all areas will be occupied. That leads to a long waiting time until a table is available to seat customers. The café’s insufficient use of space in the seating area leads to more waiting time for a customer to be served.

3) Staff training high cost & kitchen untidy: To train new staff is the high cost so they were trained by senior staff. Since the staff is not well trained as waiters or coffee baristas, they lack experience in tidying the serving area (kitchen). Moreover, when there is high demand, they face a lot of fast-paced work regardless to tidy the serving area.

4) Out-of-stock raw material & lack of variation in menu items: The café faced a shortage of some raw materials from suppliers, especially during the COVID-19 outbreak. This shortage limits the ability to create new items to increase variation on menu items. Furthermore, some raw materials could not be found in the national market with the required quality, so they have to order internationally.

5) There is no clear and agreeable payment interim & increase in the prices in the menu: The cafe is forced to raise the prices of the menu a little to face the lack of clarity of the facilities that will be provided to them by the suppliers in the method of payment, as long as the means of payment for suppliers were more flexible, they will be able to reduce the prices of the menu.

6) No reservation application & long waiting time: Café has no reservation application or a third-party reservation application. In this situation, staff cannot estimate the number of customers that will be served and at what time. So most probably the waiting line will belong. Moreover, there is no clear ticketing system to manage the waiting line or an SMS system.

7) No contact phone number for customer services & lack of customer feedback: café has no customer service contact number due to the hiring cost for will trained operator available 24 hours. This has a great effect on listening to feedback from customers and knowing their complaints about services and products.

8) No order application for B2B customers & complex buying process for B2B customers: The company has no B2B customer application to replace their order which makes the buying process for B2B customers complex because they expect to get an immediate answer at any time they contact employee either by phone or WhatsApp.

9) There is no clear and agreeable payment interim & lack of career development in terms of salary or position: The unclear payment interim for suppliers affects the financial balance of the company which limits the development of an employee’s career in terms of salary and position.

10) Lack of information about suppliers in SA & lack of variation in menu item: Very limited information is available about suppliers in SA which limit the raw materials that can be used to create new items to increase variation in the menu items.

11) out of stock raw material & lack of flexibility in customization of B2B customer orders: To be flexible with B2B customer orders café needs some special materials but if these materials are often out of stock from the supplier’s café is forced to stick to the original orders with no customization.

12) Delay in payment & lack of career development in terms of salary or position: B2B customers usually delayed payment which has a bad effect on the financial situation of the company and so on limits the career development of employees.

13) Customer’s resistance to trying new dishes or drinks & lack of new items on the menu (desserts and savory): when a café tries a new item to add to the menu, they depend on water to convince customers to order the new items, but customers mostly refuse to take the risk of trying new items.

14) No waiting area & customers holding tables for a long time: Some individuals consider the café as a resting area until their families finish their shopping in the mall, so they hold the tables for long times due to the limited benches in the mall and lake of waiting area for café.

15) Employees have a great impact on customers: When a customer enters the café, the employee should greet him and give him a positive impression of the place. Customers are very sensitive to the way they were greeted and serviced. Employees should be humble and pleasant at greeting, as well as while accepting and serving orders. Sensing the client’s requirements and ensuring that they are met improves customer satisfaction, such as adding seats based on the number of guests before the customer request and assisting the elderly.

16) There is a direct correlation between menu innovation and a restaurant’s ability to draw in guests and whet their hunger for new items. The menu gives customers ideas about the café’s vision and message while presenting the items in attractive photos, creative ingredients, and reasonable prices. Furthermore, the café should update its menu continuously with new photos and new items. Consider the dish’s size while determining its pricing, preserving variety to meet the needs of all people.

The tree diagram is a structured process to issue solutions that consider the interests of all stakeholders. This strategy gives tactical planning in a particular order, which helps develop a system of strategic solutions to perceived issues. Creating a tree diagram also allows for shifting ideas from generalities to specifics step-by-step. This is a convenient tool that may be used for many applications (Tague, 2005). Tree diagrams are frequently used to show numerous branching processes, such as family trees, the structure of civilizations, institutions, taxonomies, and various hierarchical relationships (Guri-Rozenblit, 1989). The tree diagram in the study helps find major issues, and sub-causes after the team identified the core issues based on the (voice of the customer) results of the focus group, survey, and the affinity diagram. Consequently, seven key issues were identified, 23 main causes, 40 sub-causes, and 37 solutions (see Figures 5-11).

The process decision program chart (PDPC) is a tool for mapping all possible solutions to a given problem. It is used to plan each possible solution activity set. The PDPC has been used to select the best techniques for obtaining the best result from a given statement by weighing all possible events, contingencies, and outcomes in any action plan (Chu & Tosirisuk, 1991). Therefore, the PDPC diagram imports the tree diagram’s 23 primary causes in the study, which branch out from seven leading issues. Subsequently, many solutions have been identified for each issue and the forecasted risk if these solutions were applied. As a result, there were 35 solutions, 37 risks, and 38 alternatives. The PDPC illustrates the different chart levels, starting from the main issues, the next level is the causes, the risks, and finally, the alternative solutions (see Figures 12-18).

The matrix diagram is a systematic approach for a planning tool to select, organize and rank a problem, solution, and the roots of related issues from a list of options (Tarí & Sabater, 2004). It is created by comparing each component, resulting in a logical and consistent arrangement. The matrix diagram is classified as the most important matrix of the quality management tools due to its role in determining the significance and direction of impact through the use of codes. By making a connection between two different factors in a schedule, those factors intersect on rows and columns to manage the related problem and its intensity to start finding the solution and development (Ryan, 2011). In terms of quality management tools, the matrix diagram is called a decision diagram, referring to its ability to visualize the complex relationship and facilitate the understanding of the cause-and-effect problem the managers are observing, and also when a relationship is established between two factors represented by a symbol in the cell (Mizuno & Bodek, 2020). The diagram represents three relationship levels between the voice of the customer and alternative qualities which are strong, moderate, and weak. 9 reflected the strongest relation and symbolled as (●), while (ᴏ) illustrated a moderate relation and the value was 3, and (▽) reflected the weak level of relationship and valued as 1. However, the empty cells demonstrate that no relationship exists between the factors (see Tables 7-13).

The prioritization matrix is a quantifiable matrix framework classified as one of the quality improvement tools. It’s crucial for the company’s assessment process because it provides an organization with a high-level view that reveals where to place resources and how to change policies and procedures (Bamford & Greatbanks, 2005). Since this matrix emphasizes the relative weight of a project’s factors, the matrix also creates a relationship among those operational and improvement criteria through an L-shaped diagram. The prioritization matrix

suggesting the solutions to the cause-and-effect issues was observed on the matrix diagram. 38 related solutions were generated in Table 14, then, ranking the solutions in order of importance to solve the problem was demonstrated in Table 15.