Process: Process can be used for position strategy

1. People: Here people we are referring to as contact employees who come in contact with the customer and offer service facility. How these people look how they act and who they are, will influence the service position in the customer mind. Imagine yourself arriving in city for the first time, seeking a place to have a dinner. As you wonder down a street with a number of different restaurant, you glance at the board, notice the service personnel (what are they wearing) and other customers (are they dressed in business attire or casual).Sometimes the dress worn by the people is an indication of the service and this has a great bearing on positioning. Employee uniform dress codes can also serve to convey a particular service position.

Eg. Lawyer in black dress, Doctor in a white coat are the indication of their service.

2. Physical Evidence: Physical evidence is similar to tangible elements. While tangibles may be rated high by consumers in terms of their influence on quality physical evidence for positioning places in a role.

Eg., All forms of communication such as brochures, advertising, business cards, billing statements etc.,Let us take the example of an educational institution where all the details regarding the courses offered, fees structure, study program content, food facility and hostel facilty,library facility available etc,So the above are examples of physical evidence.

3. Process: Process can be used for position strategy.

Dept. of MBA/SJBIT Page 61 Process are divided into,

a. Based on Complexity b. Based on Divergence

Whether a service is high or low in complexity refers to the number of steps involved in delivering the service. Divergence refers to variation in these steps,

Eg, A physician service is high both in complexity and divergence, and A Hotel services are high in complexity, i.e. lots of steps in service delivery process, but low in divergence i.e. they have standardized their services from room cleaning to check out. These are services which are low in complexity but high in divergence.

Quality Function Deployment:

In Addn., to Blueprinting another approach is used to develop a service architecture is -QFD‖.

A system for translating customer requirement into Co., requirements at every stage, from research through production, design & development to manufacture. Distribution, installation, Marketing, sales & services. QFD is implemented via what is known as the “House of Quality”

House of Quality:

Which links customer requirements to design characteristics of the product or service They linked to internal process such as:

 Product Planning,

 Process Planning,

 Production Planning &

 Parts Deployment.

Dept. of MBA/SJBIT Page 62 Module 5: (8 Hours)

Employee role in service designing: importance of service employee, Boundary spanning roles, Emotional labour, Source of conflict, Quality- productivity trade off, Strategies for closing GAP3.

Customer’s role in service delivery-Importance of customer & customer‘s role in service delivery, Strategies for enhancing-Customer participation, Delivery through intermediaries-Key intermediaries for service delivery, Intermediary control strategies.

Employees’ Roles in Service Delivery:

Demonstrate the importance of creating a service culture in which providing excellent service to both internal and external customers is a way of life. Illustrate the critical importance of service employees in creating customer satisfaction and service quality. Identify the challenges inherent in Boundary-Spanning roles.

Provide examples of strategies for creating customer-oriented service delivery through hiring the right people, developing employees to deliver service quality, providing needed support systems, and retaining the best service employees.

Service Culture: ―A culture where an appreciation for good service exists, and where giving good service to internal as well as ultimate, external customers, is considered a natural way of life and one of the most important norms by everyone in the organization.‖ - Christian Gronroos in (1990).

The Critical Importance of Service Employees:

• They are the service.

• They are the organization in the customer‗s eyes.

• They are the brand.

• They are marketers.

Their Importance is Evident in:

– The service Marketing Mix (people) – The Service-Profit Chain

Dept. of MBA/SJBIT Page 63 The Service Marketing Triangle

The triangle shows the three interlinked groups that work together to develop, promote and deliver services. These key players are labeled on the points of triangle: the company (or SBU or Department or Management): the customers: and the providers. Providers can be the firm‗s employees, subcontractors or outsourced entities who actually deliver the company‗s services.

Between these points on the triangle, three types of marketing must be successfully carried out for a service to succeed: External Marketing, Interactive Marketing & Internal Marketing.

On the right side of the triangle are the ―external marketing ―efforts that the firm engages in to set up its customers expectations & make promises to customers regarding what is to be delivered. But external marketing is just the beginning for services marketers. Promise made must be kept.

Interactive Marketing or Real time marketing: Here is where promises are kept or broken by the firm‗s employees, subcontractors or agents. People are critical at this juncture. If promises are not kept, customers become dissatisfied and eventually leave. Recruiting, training, motivating, rewarding & providing equipment and technology. Unless service employees are able & willing to deliver on the promises made, the firm will not be successful, and the services triangle will collapse.

Ways to Use the Services Marketing Triangle:

• Overall Strategic Assessment

– How is the service organization doing on all three sides of the triangle?

– Where are the weaknesses?

– What are the strengths?

• Specific Service Implementation

– What is being promoted and by whom?

– How will it be delivered and by whom?

– Are the supporting systems in place to deliver the promised service?

There are Five Dimensions of Service Quality, They are, 1. Reliability

Dept. of MBA/SJBIT Page 64 2. Tangible

3 Responsiveness 4 Assurances 5. Empathy

1. Reliability: Reliability means, ability to perform the promise to service dependably and accurately. Reliability means that the company delivers as per the promises. Customers want to do business with a company which keeps up the promise.

2. Tangible: Tangible means, appearance of physical facilities, equipments personnel and written materials. All of these provide physical image of the service. This is very important particularly to the new customers who will use this as criteria to evaluate quality. A Service industry emphasizes tangibles in their strategy which includes hospitability in services when the customers visit the establishment to receive services. While tangibles are used by service companies to enhance their image, provide continuity and signal quality to the customers.

3. Responsiveness: Responsiveness means willingness to help customers and provide prompt service. This deals with attentiveness and promptness in dealing with customer request questions, complaints and problems. Responsiveness is communicated to the customers in an indirect way as follows,

4. Assurances: Assurance means, employee‗s knowledge and courtesy and their ability to inspire trust and confidence. This dimension is likely to be particularly important for services that customer perceives as having high risk and feel uncertain about their ability to evaluate outcomes.e.g. Medical, Banking and Legal Services

5. Empathy: Empathy means caring and individualized attention to the customers. The essence of empathy is to convey the message that the customers are unique and special. Customers want to feel that he is important to the company and to the service provider. Personnel at small service firms often know the customers by name and build relationship with them and meet their requirements and preferences. Such a small firm competes with large firms; the ability to empathetic may give the small firm a clear advantage.

• Service Employees: Who are they?

Dept. of MBA/SJBIT Page 65 Boundary Spanners -Frontline service employees because they operate at the organization‘s boundary.

• What are these jobs like?

Emotional labor-That goes beyond the physical or mental skills needed to deliver quality service. Means delivering smiles, making eye contact, showing interest, and engaging friendly conversation with clients.

• Person/Role

• Organization/Client

• Interclient

Quality/Productivity Tradeoffs:

As indicated in the figure Boundary Spanners provide a link between the external customers and environment and the internal operations of the organization. They serve as critical function in understanding, filtering and interpreting information and resources to and from the organization and its external constituencies.

In industries such as fast food, hotels, telecommunication & retail, the boundary spanners are the least skilled and lowest paid employees in the organization. They are order takers, front desk employees, telephone operators, store clerks, truck drivers and delivery people.

Dept. of MBA/SJBIT Page 66 In other industries boundary spanners are paid well, highly educated professionals. For example:

doctors, lawyers, accountants, consultants, architects and teachers.

Emotional Labor: Refers to the labor that goes beyond the physical or mental skills needs to deliver quality service. It means delivering smiles, making eye contact, showing sincere interest and engaging in friendly conversation with people who are essentially strangers and who may or may not ever seen again, Friendlyness, empathy and responsiveness direct towards customers all require huge amount of emotional labor frontline employees who shoulder this responsibility for the organization.

Emotional labor draws on people‗s feelings (often requiring them to suppress their true feelings) to be effective in their jobs.

Source of Conflict: Frontline employees often face interpersonal and inter organizational conflicts on the job. Their frustrations and confusion can, if left unattended, lead to stress, job dissatisfaction, a diminished ability to serve customers and burnout.

Boundary-Spanning Workers Juggle Many Issues:

 Person versus role

• Organization versus client

• Client versus client

Because they represent the customer to the organization and often need to manage a number of customers simultaneously. Frontline employees inevitably have to deal with conflicts, including Sources of Conflict:

*Person/role conflicts

*organizational/Client conflicts

*Interclient conflicts

Person/Role Conflicts: Arises when employees are required to wear specific clothing or change some aspect of their appearance to confirm to the job requirements. A young lawyer, just out of school, may feel an internal conflict with his new role when his employer requires him to cut his long hair & trade his casual clothes for a three-piece suit.

Organizational/Client conflicts: A common type of conflict for front line service employees is the conflict between their two bosses, the organization and the individual customer.

Dept. of MBA/SJBIT Page 67 Service employees are rewarded for following certain standards, rules, & procedures. Ideally these rules and standards are customer based.

For Eg, employees who depend on tips or commission are likely to face greater levels of organization/client conflict because they have greater incentives to identify with the customer.

Interclient Conflict: Sometimes conflict occurs for boundary spanners when incompatible expectations and requirements arise from two or more customers. This situation occurs most often when the service provider is serving customers in turn (a bank teller, a ticketing agent, a doctor) or is serving many customers simultaneously (teachers, entertainers).

Strategies for Closing GAP 3:

 Teamwork, Empowerment, Role clarity, Training

 Synchronize Demand & Capacity

 Communicating with customers

Empowerment:

• Benefits:

– Quicker responses to customer needs during service delivery Quicker responses to dissatisfied customers during service recovery

– Employees feel better about their jobs and themselves

– Employees tend to

interact with

warmth/enthusiasm – Empowered employees are a great source of ideas

Dept. of MBA/SJBIT Page 68 – Great word-of-mouth advertising from customers

Drawbacks:

– Potentially greater dollar investment in selection and training – Higher labor costs

– Potentially slower or inconsistent service delivery – May violate customers‗ perceptions of fair play

– Employees may ―give away the store‖ or make bad decisions

Customers’ Roles in Service Delivery: Illustrate the importance of customers in successful service delivery and co creation of service experiences. Discuss the variety of roles that service customers play: productive resources for the organization; contributors to quality and satisfaction; competitors.

How Customers Widen the Service Performance Gap: Lack of understanding of their roles, not being willing or able to perform their roles, No rewards for ―good performance‖, interfering with other customers Incompatible market segments.

Importance of Other (“Fellow”) Customers in Service Delivery:

Other customers can detract from satisfaction:

– Disruptive behaviors

– Overly demanding behaviors – Excessive crowding

– Incompatible needs

• Other customers can enhance satisfaction:

– Mere presence

– Socialization/friendships

Dept. of MBA/SJBIT Page 69 Customers as Productive Resources: customers can be thought of as partial employees‖

– contributing effort, time, or other resources to the production process

• customer inputs can affect organization‗s productivity

Customers as Contributors to Service Quality and Satisfaction:

Customers can contribute to:

– Their own satisfaction with the service

• By performing their role effectively

• By working with the service provider

The quality of the service they receive

• By asking questions

• By taking responsibility for their own satisfaction

• By complaining when there is a service failure

Customers as Competitors: Customers may compete‖ with the service provider Internal exchange‖ vs. ―External exchange‖

Internal/External decision often based on:

– Expertise capacity

Dept. of MBA/SJBIT Page 70 – Resources capacity

– Time capacity – Economic rewards – Psychic rewards – Trust

– Control

Strategies for Enhancing Customer Participation: The overall goals of customer participation will typically be to increase organizational productivity & customer satisfaction while simultaneously decreasing uncertainty due to unpredictable customer actions.

Strategies for Enhancing Customer Participation:

I. Define customers’ jobs: The organization first determines what types of participation it wants from customers, thus beginning to define the customer‗s job. Identifying current level of customer participation can serve as a starting point.

Once the desired level of participation is clear the organization can define more specifically what the customer‗s job entails. The customers‖ job description‖ will vary with the type of service &

the organizations desired position within its industry. The job might entail., 1. Helping oneself

2. Helping others

3. Promoting the company

II. Recruit, Educate and Reward Customers: Once the customer role is clearly defined the

In document Mba III Services Management [14mbamm303] Notes (Page 60-70)