Introduction

G.J. Coles founded Coles in 1914 in Melbourne. One of the largest shop chains in the country, with over 800 sites. Coles, part of the publicly traded Coles Group, sells groceries, fresh farm produce, and home products. Due to its commitment to quality and customer service, the grocery store chain has become a key force in Australian retail. Coles prioritizes consumer loyalty, environmental responsibility, and community involvement. The organizational ideals permeate the company's operations and are evident in customer service and team management. Coles is at its mature business stage, thus it must keep trying to maintain its market share in a competitive area (Merrett, 2020). The company always seeks new methods and larger growth prospects to maintain its top rank. Leader development, teamwork, and practical excellence are stressed. Coles has to focus on internal expansion and strategic management to react to market changes and consumer expectations.

This research examines Coles Melbourne customer service professionals. In the store's day-to-day running, they are indispensable. This personnel monitors the checkout process, answers questions, and ensures a smooth shopping experience. Coles offers its customers exceptional standards of service, and the team's performance is crucial to maintaining those commitments in an ever-changing workplace. Teamwork, communication, and customer service are essential to the team's everyday job (Shaikh & Shaikh, 2023). This workforce is crucial since they directly impact customer satisfaction and shop profitability. This article aims to show how Coles' customer care staff fits within its organizational structure. The research examines team interactions, leadership styles, and team members' responsibilities and motivations to identify strengths and shortcomings. These elements must be understood to ensure the team's effort matches with Coles' aims and boosts efficiency. This research will examine the team's composition, conduct, and leadership using applicable theories and models. This will help us understand its success elements. Based on these outcomes, the research will include recommendations to improve teamwork and ensure Coles' commitment to good service and operational brilliance. This paper highlights the team's current work and helps Coles find strategies to boost employee productivity and engagement.

Team dynamics

The manner in which Coles' customer service staff works illustrates how both leadership and management are interdependent. Both are needed for team success. The management staff prioritizes practical responsibilities including following plans and inspecting customers in accordance with Coles' policies (Xu & Lee, 2020). This management style helps maintain things orderly and consistent, especially in a crowded environment that needs speedy service. The team manager ensures resource efficiency, performance goals, and customer service. Leadership in the team extends beyond these basic activities and affects team success more. Effective leaders inspire their teams, motivate their employees to achieve their goals, and provide an engaging and enjoyable workplace. Team leaders seek to improve morale and teamwork and offer advice and assistance when required. For consistent high-quality execution, this hat trick of managing day-to-day operations while also guiding and motivating the team is crucial. A team leader's ability to manage everyday chores and inspire and motivate personnel ensures that the team accomplishes its daily goals and works together efficiently and with purpose.

The customer service team is mature and skilled in Tuckman's Stages of Team Development's "Performing" level. Right now, everyone in the team knows their role and works aggressively to achieve the same goals with little conflicts (Grigsby-Duffy et al., 2020). Open communication and strong leadership resolved early issues, enabling the organization to go forward. Team members may focus on their work without being distracted by arguments due to a strong feeling of trust and unity. The team can govern itself and make decisions that benefit the group throughout this stage of growth. This indicates that Coles' and the team's aims are comparable. This degree of consistency and efficiency shows that the team has an established basis and can operate well in a variety of conditions, even during retail peak periods. During the acting stage, the team performs at its peak (Malik, 2023). The team leader could place strategic direction above everyday conflict resolution when everyone is engaged, roles are defined, and duties are clear.

Figure 1: Coles Group supermarket sales from 2018 to 2024
(Source: Statista, 2021)

The Coles Group stores business made about 39 billion Australian dollars in sales in the 2024 fiscal year, which is more than the previous year's sales. Within the given time window, an upward increase in sales may be seen (Statista, 2021).

Coles' customer service representatives use their EI to guide their interactions with customers and co-workers. Team ties are greatly affected by behaviour. Moreover, various EI levels affect how successfully the team works together. A high level of emotional intelligence among team members facilitates better communication, empathy, and stress management. Customer service involves dealing with difficult situations, thus these abilities are crucial. The team leader's ability to establish a secure and inviting workplace shows their high emotional intelligence. Team members are able to freely express themselves when their leaders are attuned to their emotional needs and able to address those needs, as well as when their leaders are able to regulate their own emotions. This strategy helps individuals create solid relationships and improves team spirit by making members feel encouraged and driven to accomplish their best (Kelly, 2024). Even if the leader has high emotional intelligence, the team might improve how they handle team member differences. Moreover, if everyone generates along, emotional intelligence variations can produce blunders or little arguments that disrupt teamwork. These disagreements are not serious, but they demonstrate the need of strengthening emotional intelligence, particularly between smaller or less experienced team members. Coles' customer care team works effectively together and is driven by strong management and leadership (Coyle et al., 2020). The team has reached Tuckman's performing stage, meaning it has mastered conflict and adaptability and formed a cohesive and effective group. High emotional intelligence, in particular for the team supervisor, helps everyone manage stress and maintain strong professional relationships. Still, resolving team disputes might boost performance. Since members have varying emotional intelligence, they disagree. The team should focus on emotional intelligence and open communication to strengthen its track record as a team and those who perform well in the Coles unit (Spanjaard & Freeman, 2023). Coles can ensure that the technical and social teams are working together toward the same goals by adopting this flexible and equitable strategy, and this supports the store's excellent customer service.

Team Leadership Styles

According to Goleman's leadership philosophy, Coles' customer service team leader usually leads by democracy. This strategy is unique since it encourages team participation and contribution. This fosters belonging and shared decision-making. When the supervisor makes team members feel appreciated for their thoughts and opinions, they get more individuals involved and maximize the team's abilities and perspectives. Since retail is continually evolving, this inclusive approach helps the team work collaboratively to satisfy client wants and address practical difficulties.

Furthermore, effective democratic leadership fosters trust and open communication among a team. The team is happier and solves difficulties together (Ananthapavan et al., 2022). However, the boss realizes they must adapt to the circumstances. When there are many customers or pressure, the boss adopts a more authoritative position and makes rapid choices to stay in command and ensure things function. This responsive leadership style indicates that the leader knows the issue and can balance political beliefs with decisive action when needed. Moreover, to take charge of team issues shows how enthusiastic the boss is. The supervisor will often talk to clients and support company floor employees during busy moments.

Active engagement reduces stress and gives a good example of hard work and devotion. Leaders' intentional engagement during high-stress moments demonstrates they are willing to share the load and fosters collaboration. The leader also inspires the team by recognizing and encouraging individual and team accomplishment. This increases employee satisfaction and engagement. Since motivated workers work harder and contribute more to the team's goals, the boss's passion boosts productivity (Maganja et al., 2023). Along with their active leadership style, the leader helps Coles live by its basic principles of putting customers first, working together, and developing over time. By demonstrating these values daily, the leader shows the team how to follow Coles' organizational principles. The manager monitors team conduct and responds immediately with comments and directions to correct any misbehaviour. Sustaining performance and following Coles' standards requires continuous management. The leader's attempts to identify development possibilities in team members' abilities and teamwork demonstrate their dedication to continual improvement. Leaders foster a positive work environment that helps individuals and the company flourish by exhibiting good conduct and following Coles' standards. This method maintains Coles' customer support personnel focused on the company's goals and promotes high performance and progress.

Team roles and readiness

Coles' customer service staff has many positions, under the Belbin Model. This helps explain how each person's contributions impact team efficiency. The team has "Coordinator," "Implementer," and "Team Worker" roles, and each member contributes to its success. The "Coordinator" is generally a team member who is skilled at assigning work, setting up processes, and keeping everyone focused on the team's goals (Whelan et al., 2021). These people guide and focus on the broader picture, making procedures work smoothly even when demand is high. The "Implementer" is skilled at implementing plans and methodically monitoring everyday operations. Implementers must be reliable and skilled to ensure things operate smoothly. However, "Team Worker" people are effective at establishing team spirit, solving difficulties, and maintaining friendly and helpful team relations. Moreover, to feel helps maintain the workplace cheerful, which is critical for customer-facing occupations because mood may impact performance.

As there is no "Completer Finisher" job, the team occasionally struggles even when everyone contributes. The "Completer Finisher" pays attention to every detail and strives for perfection to finish jobs entirely and well. Without this capability, the team may miss minute details and make mistakes in inventory control or checkout, which can disrupt the whole process (Kent et al., 2021). This gap suggests the team might benefit from greater skill development or adding new members to strengthen its performance. Without a "Completer Finisher" end-of-day reconciliations and complex customer queries are neglected. This can cause mistakes that upset customers.

The team contains seasoned and new people with diverse talents and engagement. Legacy team members have a lot of information to contribute and often act as casual mentors, helping newer team members learn their duties. These experts are experienced and skilled. They manage client relations well and create team best practices (Brimblecombe et al., 2023). They can anticipate and resolve issues since they know Coles so well, improving team performance. However, the fact that team members are participating in diverse ways may present issues, especially for younger workers who require more guidance to succeed.

Although one is new, they have ambition to learn but may not or make problems that experienced teammates need to correct. Coles often assembles courses to improve staff' technological and customer service abilities. These programs aim to bridge skill gaps between experienced and less qualified employees. They offer professional development and continuing learning.

Despite much effort, these initiatives still have issues, notably in dispute resolution and advanced customer service (Kodithuwakku, 2022). The overall productivity of the team can take a hit if new team members, in particular, struggle to handle challenging clients or resolve conflicts amongst themselves. These abilities need more targeted training since they will help individuals perform better and help the team operate successfully under duress. The team's varying readiness levels highlight how crucial it is for everyone to constantly learn and seek support to ensure they have the skills and knowledge they need to execute their jobs. While the more seasoned workers bring a wealth of expertise and reliability to the table, fresh faces play an essential role in ensuring consistent high-quality service. Coles should continue to invest in training that fills skill gaps and engages customer service workers to be adaptable, efficient, and committed to organizational success. The team's diverse talents and tasks create a vibrant environment where everyone can shine (Gerungai et al., 2021). There is space for improvement. In order to maximize team effectiveness, workers might pay greater attention to subtleties and improve dispute resolution.

Conclusion

A close study of the Coles customer service team shows that it works very well because everyone knows what their job is and their leader is competent at leading. The team works very efficiently within the larger goals of Coles' companionship, showing a great level of dedication to consumer satisfaction and teamwork. A competent leader and a peaceful team setting have significant impacts on how well the team does, but members of the team can also improve their emotional intelligence and learn how to deal with conflicts. The way tasks are currently divided is in line with the objectives set by the team, but making certain changes could lead to even better performance optimization.

Recommendation

• To create and run training programs that focus on conflict resolution and emotional intelligence to improve how teams work together and connect with each other.
• To encourage the team leader to use situational leadership styles when needed to make the plan more flexible, especially when there is a lot of stress.
• To mentorship programs can help close the gap in skills between team members with and without experience, creating an environment where people are always learning.
• It is suggested that regular feedback sessions that give team members useful information about their work help them develop personally and professionally.
• For the "Completer Finisher" role, one should choose or train a team member with great attention to detail. This will ensure that all of the work is done perfectly.

Coles' customer service staff has many positions, under the Belbin Model. This helps explain how each person's contributions impact team efficiency. The team has "Coordinator," "Implementer," and "Team Worker" roles, and each member contributes to its success. The "Coordinator" is generally a team member who is skilled at assigning work, setting up processes, and keeping everyone focused on the team's goals. These people guide and focus on the broader picture, making procedures work smoothly regardless of whether demand is high. The "Implementer" is skilled at implementing plans and methodically monitoring everyday operations. Implementers must be reliable and skilled to ensure things operate smoothly. However, "Team Worker" people are effective at establishing team spirit, solving difficulties, and maintaining friendly and helpful team relations. Understanding the way individuals feel helps maintain the workplace cheerful, which is critical for customer-facing occupations because mood may impact performance. Since, there is no "Completer Finisher" job, the team occasionally struggles even when everyone contributes. The "Completer Finisher" pays attention to every detail and strives for perfection to finish jobs entirely and well. Without this capability, the team may miss minute details and make mistakes in inventory control or checkout, which can disrupt the whole process. Without a "Completer Finisher" end-of-day reconciliations and complex customer queries are neglected. This can cause mistakes that upset customers.

The team contains seasoned and new people with diverse talents and engagement. Legacy team members have a lot of information to contribute and often act as casual mentors, helping newer team members learn their duties. These experts are experienced and skilled. They manage client relations well and create team best practices. They can anticipate and resolve issues since they know Coles so well, improving team performance. However, the fact that team members are participating in diverse ways may present issues, especially for younger workers who require more guidance to succeed. Because they're new, they desire to learn but may not or make mistakes that more experienced team members must correct. Coles often organizes courses to improve staff' technological and customer service abilities. These programs aim to bridge skill gaps between experienced and less experienced workers. They offer professional development and continuing learning. Despite much effort, these initiatives still have issues, notably in dispute resolution and advanced customer service. New team members may struggle to handle tough customers or resolve conflicts, which can reduce team efficiency. These abilities need more targeted training since they will help individuals perform better and help the team operate successfully under duress. The team's differing readiness levels highlight how crucial it is for every member to constantly learn and seek support to ensure they have the skills and knowledge they need to execute their jobs. Experienced staff give expertise and stability, but younger people are also essential to providing excellent service. Coles should continue to invest in training that fills skill gaps and engages employees in customer service to be adaptable, efficient, and committed to organizational success. The team's diverse talents and tasks create a vibrant environment where everyone can shine. There is space for improvement. To maximize team effectiveness, workers might pay greater attention to details and improve dispute resolution.

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