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Revision Service Quality: Chapter 1 Defining Services

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REVISION SERVICE QUALITY

RMIT Vietnam Helpdesk Team.

Chapter 1 Defining Services


1.1 Defining Services
• Services
– Are economic activities offered by one party to another
– Most commonly employ time-based performances to bring about desired results in:
– Recipients themselves
– Objects or other assets for which purchasers have responsibility
• In exchange for their money, time, and effort, service customers expect to obtain value from
– Access to goods, labor, facilities, environments, professional skills, networks, and
systems;
– But they do not normally take ownership of any of the physical elements involved.
Five broad categories within non-ownership framework:
1/Rented goods services
2/Defined space and place rentals
3/Labor and expertise rentals
4/Access to shared physical environments
5/Systems and networks: access and usage

11.2 Four Categories of Services

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11.3 Differences, Implications, and
Marketing-Related Tasks

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CHAPTER 2: CONSUMER BEHAVIOR IN A SERVICES CONTEXT
Consumer Decision Making Process: The Three-Stage Model

2.1 Pre-purchase Stage – Evaluation of Alternatives:


1) Service Attributes:
a) Search Attributes: tangible characteristics customers can evaluate a product
before purchase. Give clues how good the service can be, based on: style,
color, texture, taste, and sound (service environments). Ex: search attributes of
a restaurant are type of food, location, prices, type of restaurant (for couples,
family, friends….)

b) Experience Attributes: cannot be evaluated before purchase—Customers


must “experience” product to know what they are getting Vacations,
sporting events, medical procedures. Ex: continue with the restaurant example
above, before using the service, you don’t know how much you like the food,
how it tasted, how the waiter serves you and the atmosphere when you are
really in the restaurant.

c) Credence Attributes: are product characteristics that customers find


impossible to evaluate confidently even after purchase and consumption
(relating to benefits actually delivered) Quality of repair and maintenance
work, education, counseling, legal advice. Ex: for restaurant, you cannot
evaluate the hygiene condition in the kitchen and the freshness of the
ingredients. Patients usually cannot evaluate how well their dentists have
performed complex dental procedures

 All products can be placed on a continuum ranging from easy to difficult to


evaluate, depending on whether they are high in search, experience or credence
attributes.

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2.2 Service Encounter Stage:

1)Servuction System:

 Servuction System – visible front stage and invisible backstage


 Service Operations (front stage and backstage)
 Technical core where inputs are processed and service elements created
 Includes facilities, equipment, and personnel
 Service Delivery (front stage)
 Where “final assembly” of service elements takes place and service is delivered to
customers
 Includes customer interactions with operations and other customers
 Other contact points
 Includes customer contacts with other customers

2)Theatrical Metaphor: An Integrative Perspective


a) Good metaphor as service delivery is a series of events that customers experience as
a performance
b) Service facilities
 Stage on which drama unfolds
 This may change from one act to another
c) Personnel
 Front stage personnel are like members of a cast
 Backstage personnel are support production team
d) Roles
 Like actors, employees have roles to play and behave in specific ways
e) Scripts
 Specifies the sequences of behavior for customers and employees
Ex: customers’ script at KFC: park the vehicles receive parking ticket enter the
store making orders pay money take the food sit at tables eating leave
the store.
Extra: Service Encounters as “Moments of truth”

 Period of time during which customers interact directly with a service

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 As level of customer contact with service operation increases, there are likely to be
more and longer service encounters
 Richard Norman borrowed “moment of truth” from bullfighting (when the bullfighter
faces the bull in the ring) to show the importance of contact points with customers
“when the service provider encounter with the service customer”

2.3 Post-purchase Stage

Expectancy-disconfirmation Model of Satisfaction (Fig. 2.26)

2.4 Perceived Risks:


• Functional – unsatisfactory performance outcomes
• Financial – monetary loss, unexpected extra costs
• Temporal – wasted time, delays leading to problems
• Physical – personal injury, damage to possessions
• Psychological – fears and negative emotions
• Social – how others may think and react
• Sensory – unwanted impact on any of five senses
Ex: Jet Star Airline
- Temporal: Delay the flight
- Functional: this airplane could have technical problems and have to stop somewhere
to repair
- Physical: injuries when the plane has accident
- Psychological: scare when flying in stormy weather
- Social: cheap airline, people might think I don’t have money
- Sensory: the chairs might not be comfortable or small, the food is not delicious.

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CHAPTER 6 Setting Prices and Implementing Revenue Management
6.1/Objectives for Pricing of Services
Revenue and Profit Objectives
-Seek profit
-Cover costs
Patronage and User-Based Objectives
Build demand
-Demand maximization
-Full capacity utilization
Build a user base
-Stimulate trial and adoption of new service
-Build market share/large user base

6.2 Pricing Strategy Stands on Three Legs


• Cost-Based Pricing
Set prices relative to financial costs (problem: defining costs)
Activity-Based Costing
Pricing implications of cost analysis
• Value-Based Pricing
Relate price to value perceived by customer
• Competition-Based Pricing
Monitor competitors’ pricing strategy (especially if service lacks differentiation)
Who is the price leader - does one firm set the pace?
6.3 Revenue Management- What it is and How it Works
• Most effective when:
Relatively high fixed capacity
High fixed cost structure
Perishable inventory
Variable and uncertain demand
Varying customer price sensitivity
• Revenue management is price customization
Charge different value segments different prices for same product based on price sensitivity
• Revenue management uses mathematical models to examine historical data and
real time information to determine
What prices to charge within each price bucket
How many service units to allocate to each bucket
• Rate fences deter customers willing to pay more from trading down to lower
prices (minimize consumer surplus)
Key Categories of Rate Fence

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6.4 Ethical Concerns in Service Pricing
Customers are vulnerable when service is hard to evaluate as they assume that higher price
indicates better quality
Many services have complex pricing schedules
-Hard to understand
-Difficult to calculate full costs in advance of service
Quoted prices not the only prices
-Hidden charges
-Many kinds of fees
Too many rules and regulations
-Customers feel constrained, exploited

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-Customers face unfair fines and penalties
Designing Fairness into Revenue Management
-Design clear, logical and fair price schedules and fences
-Use high published prices and present fences as opportunities for discounts (rather than
quoting lower prices and using fence as basis to impose surcharges)
Ex. Weekend rates, Discounted Weekday rates
Ex. Happy hour
-Communicate consumer benefits of revenue management
-Use bundling to “hide” discounts
-Take care of loyal customers
-Use service recovery to compensate for overbooking

CHAPTER 7 Specific Roles of Marketing Communications


7.1 Role of Marketing Communications
• Position and differentiate service
• Help customer evaluate offerings and highlight differences that matter
• Promote contribution of personnel and backstage operations
• Add value through communication content
• Facilitate customer involvement in production
• Stimulate or dampen demand to match capacity

7.2 Challenges of Service Communications


• May be difficult to communicate service benefits to customers, especially when
intangible
• Intangibility creates 4 problems:
– Generality: Items that comprise a class of objects, persons, or events
– Non-searchability: Cannot be searched or inspected before purchase
– Abstractness : No one-to-one correspondence with physical objects
– Mental impalpability: Customers find it hard to grasp benefits of complex,
multidimensional new offerings
• To overcome intangibility:
– Use tangible cues in advertising
– Use metaphors to communicate benefits of service offerings

7.3 Marketing Communications Planning- The “5 Ws” Model


• Who is our target audience?
• What do we need to communicate and achieve?
• How should we communicate this?
• Where should we communicate this?
• When do communications need to take place?
Target Audience: 3 Broad Categories
• Users
– More cost effective channels
• Prospects
– Employ traditional communication mix because prospects are not known in
advance
• Employees
– Secondary audience for communication campaigns through public media
– Shape employee behavior
– Part of internal marketing campaign using company-specific channels

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7.4 The Marketing Communications Mix

7.5 The Role of Corporate Design


• Many service firms employ a unified and distinctive visual appearance for all
tangible elements
– e.g. Logos, uniforms, physical facilities
• Provide recognition and strengthen brand image
– e.g., BP’s bright green-and yellow service stations
• Especially useful in competitive markets to stand out from the crowd and be instantly
recognizable in different locations
– e.g. Shell’s yellow scallop shell on a red background
– MacDonald’s “Golden Arches”

CHAPTER 8 Service Process


8.1 Flowcharting Service delivery
• Technique for displaying the nature and sequence of the different steps in delivery
service to customers
• Offers way to understand total customer service experience

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8.2 Use Blueprinting to Document and Manage Service Processes
Developing a Blueprint
• Identify key activities in creating and delivering service
• Define “big picture” before “drilling down” to obtain a higher level of detail
Advantages of Blueprinting
• Distinguish between “frontstage” and “backstage”
• Clarify interactions between customers and staff, and support by backstage activities
and systems
• Identify potential fail points; take preventive measures; prepare contingency
• Pinpoint stages in the process where customer commonly have to wait
Key Components of a Service Blueprint
1. Define standards for front-stage activities
2. Specify physical evidence
3. Identify main customer actions
4. Line of interaction (customers and front-stage personnel)
5. Frontstage actions by customer-contact personnel
6. Line of visibility (between front stage and backstage)
7. Backstage actions by customer contact personnel
8. Support processes involving other service personnel
9. Support processes involving IT

- Identify fail points and risks of excessive waits

- Set service standards and do failure-proofing


8.3 Service Process Redesign -Approaches and Potential Benefits
• Eliminating non-value-adding steps
– Simplify front-end and back-end processes with goal of focusing on benefit-
producing part of service encounter
– Get rid of non-value adding steps
– Improve productivity and customer satisfaction
• Shifting to self-service
– Increase in productivity and service quality
– Lower costs
– Enhance technology reputation
– Differentiates company

8.4 The Customer as Co-Creators


• 3 levels
Low – Employees and systems do all the work
Often involves standardized service
Medium – Customer helps firm create and deliver service
Provide needed information and instructions
Make some personal effort; share physical possessions
High – Customer works actively with provider to co-produce the service
Service cannot be created without customer’s active participation
Customer can harm quality of service outcome (e.g. weight loss, marriage counseling)

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CHAPTER 9: MANAGING CAPACITY AND DEMAND
9.1 What is Productive Capacity?
• Productive capacity can take several forms in services
- Physical facilities designed to contain customers
- Physical facilities designed for storing or processing goods
- Physical equipment used to process people, possessions, or information
- Labor
- Infrastructure
- Financial success in businesses that are limited in capacity depends largely on how
capacity is used

9.2 4 Conditions Faced By Fixed Capacity Services:


1) Excess demand:
Too much demand relative to capacity at a given time. Ex: At the restaurant, there
are plenty of customers but it cannot manage to serve all customers choose
another place to eat if this happens many times, customers might give up dining
at this restaurant.
2) Demand exceeds desired capacity:
No customer is turned away; service quality declines. Ex: Eating Pho, not enough
tables customers have to share dissatisfied
3) Demand and supply well balanced at desired capacity:
Staff and facilities are busy but not overworked & customer receives good service
without delay. Ex: This never happen
4) Excess capacity:
Too much capacity relative to demand at a given time, resources not fully used ,
low productivity. This might demotivate employees because they have no spirit to
serve when there are few customers.

9.3 Approaches Used To Manage Capacity


• Manage capacity
Stretch capacity ― squeeze more people into a given capacity
Adjust capacity to more closely match demand
• Understand demand
Understand patterns of demand and determine demand drivers
• Manage demand
Use marketing strategies to smooth out peaks, fill in valleys

9.4 Demand Management Strategies


1. Take no action
– Let customers sort it out
2. Reduce demand
– Higher prices
– Communication encouraging use of other time slots
3. Increase demand
– Lower prices
– Communication, including promotional incentives
– Vary product features to increase desirability
– More convenient delivery times and places
4. Inventory demand by reservation system
5. Inventory demand by formalized queuing

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Other strategies:
 Offer inferior extra capacity at peaks (e.g. bus/train standees). Ex: sub chairs for
extra customers
 Use facilities for longer/shorter periods. Ex: use more equipment when have more
customers
 Reduce amount of time spent in process by minimizing slack time. Ex: forbid
employees to text, phone call in working time
 Adjusting capacity
 Schedule downtime during periods of low demand. Ex: employees take a rest
when there are few customers.
 Cross-train employees. Ex: allocate idle staff to do the tasks of other staff, take
turn
 Use part-time employees
 Invite customers to perform self-service. Ex: some steps can be done by customers
 Ask customers to share. Ex: tables, chairs…..
 Create flexible capacity. Ex: movable equipment easy to arrange, change, move
out
 Rent or share extra facilities and equipment. Ex: don’t have customers for rent

CHAPTER 10: SERVICE ENVIRONMENT


10.1 Four Purposes of Service Environments
1) Shape customers’ experience and their behavior
 Message-creating medium: symbolic cues to communicate distinctive nature
and quality of the service experience
 Attention-creating medium: make servicescape stand out from competition
and attract customers
 Effect-creating medium: use colors, textures, sounds, scents and spatial design
to enhance service experience
2) Support image, positioning and differentiation
3) Part of the value proposition
4) Facilitate service encounter and enhance productivity

10.2The Mehrabian-Russell Stimulus-Response Model


 Feelings Are a Key Driver of Customer Responses to Service Environments
 Simple yet fundamental model of how people respond to environments
 The environment, its conscious and unconscious perceptions and interpretation
influence how people feel in that environment
 Feelings, (rather than perceptions/thoughts) drive behavior
 Typical outcome variable is ‘approach’ or ‘avoidance’ of an environment, but other
possible outcomes can be added to model

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The Russell Model of Affect:

 Emotional responses to environments can be described along two main


dimensions:
 Pleasure: direct, subjective, depending on how much individual likes or
dislikes environment
 Arousal: how stimulated individual feels, depends largely on information
rate or load of an environment
 Advantage: simplicity, allows a direct assessment of how customers feel

10.3 An Integrative Framework: Bitner’s Servicescape Model


1) Main dimensions in a service environment (service escape)

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 Ambient conditions:
 Lighting and color schemes
 Scents
 Sounds such as noise and music
 Size and shapes
 Air quality and temperature
 Space/functionality:
 Spatial layout:
 Floor plan;
 Size and shape of furnishings, counters, machinery, equipment, and
how they are arranged
 Functionality:
 Ability of those items to make the performance of the service
easier
 Signs, symbols and artifacts
 Signals to indicate the names of departments/counters, to give directions or
to communicate service script and behavioural rules
 Use signs, symbols and artifacts to guide customers through the process of
service delivery
 Explicit or implicit signals to:
 Communicate firm’s image
 Help consumers find their way
 Let them know the service script

CHAPTER 11: MANAGING PEOPLE FOR SERVICE ADVANTAGE

11.1 Cycle of Failure

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1) The Employee Cycle Of Failure
 Narrow job design for low skill levels
 Emphasis on rules rather than service
 Use of technology to control quality
 Bored employees who lack ability to respond to customer problems
 Dissatisfied with poor service attitude
 Low service quality
 High employee turnover
2) The Customer Cycle Of Failure
 Repeated emphasis on attracting new customers
 Customers dissatisfied with employee performance
 Customers always served by new faces
 Fast customer turnover
 Ongoing search for new customers to maintain sales volume
3) Costs of short-sighted policies are ignored
 Constant expense of recruiting, hiring, training
 Lower productivity of inexperienced new workers
 Higher costs of winning new customers to replace those lost—more
 need for advertising and promotional discounts
 Loss of revenue stream from dissatisfied customers who go
 elsewhere
 Loss of potential customers who are turned off by negative word of-mouth

11.2 Cycle Of Mediocrity

 Most commonly found in large, bureaucratic organizations


 Service delivery is oriented towards:
 Standardized service

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 Operational efficiencies
 Promotions based on long service
 Successful performance measured by absence of mistakes
 Rule-based training
 Little freedom in narrow and repetitive jobs
 Customers find organizations frustrating to deal with
 Little incentive for customers to cooperate with organizations to achieve better service
 Complaints are often made to already unhappy employees
 Customers often stay because of lack of choic

11.3 Cycle of Success

 Longer-term view of financial performance; firm seeks to prosper by investing in


people
 Attractive pay and benefits attract better job applicants
 More focused recruitment, intensive training, and higher wages make it more likely
that employees are:
 Happier in their work
 Provide higher quality, customer-pleasing service
 Broadened job descriptions with empowerment practices enable front-line staff to
control quality, facilitate service recovery
 Regular customers more likely to remain loyal because:
 Appreciate continuity in service relationships
 Have higher satisfaction due to higher quality

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11.4 The Service Talent Cycle for Service Firms

1) Hire The Right People:


 Be the Preferred Employer
 Create a large pool: “Compete for Talent Market Share”
 Select the right people
 There is no perfect employee
Personalities, Hire candidates that fit firm’s core values and culture, Focus on recruiting
naturally warm personalities for customer contact

2) Enable Employees:
Service employees need to learn:
 Organizational culture, purpose and strategy
 Get emotional commitment to core strategy and core values
 Get managers to teach “why”, “what” and “how” of job
 Interpersonal and technical skills
 Both are necessary but neither alone is enough for performing a job well
 Product/service knowledge
 Staff’s product knowledge is a key aspect of service quality
 Staff must explain product features and help consumers make the right choice
Empowerment: appropriate when:

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 Firm’s business strategy is based on personalized, customized service and
competitive differentiation
 Emphasis on extended relationships rather than short-term transactions
 Use of complex and non-routine technologies
 Service failures are non-routine and cannot be designed out of the system
 Business environment is unpredictable, consisting of surprises
 Managers are comfortable letting employees work independently for benefit of
firm and customers
 Employees seek to deepen skills, like working with others, and have good
interpersonal and group process skills

 Employee Involvement
 Suggestion involvement: Employee make recommendation through formalized
programs
 Job involvement
 Jobs redesigned
 Employees retrained, supervisors reoriented to facilitate performance
 High involvement
 Information is shared
 Employees skilled in teamwork, problem solving etc.
 Participate in management decisions
 Profit sharing and stock ownership

 Creating Successful Service Delivery Teams


 Emphasis on cooperation, listening, coaching and encouraging
 one another
 Understand how to air differences, tell hard truths, ask tough
 questions
 Management needs to set up a structure to steer teams towards
 success
3) Motivate And Energize The Frontline
Use full range of available rewards effectively, including:

 Job content :People are motivated and satisfied knowing they are doing a good job
 Feedback and recognition: People derive a sense of identity and belonging to an
organization from feedback and recognition
 Goal achievement : Specific, difficult but attainable and accepted goals are strong
motivators
a) Structural Bonds
Mostly seen in B2B settings

 Align customers way of doing things with supplier’s own processes


 Joint investments in projects and sharing of information, processes and
equipment.
 Can be seen in B2C environment too
 Airlines - SMS check-in, SMS email alerts for flight arrival and departure
times
 Difficult for competition to draw customers away when they have integrated their way
of doing things with existing supplier.

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CHAPTER 13 COMPLAINT HANDLING AND SERVICE RECOVERY
13.1 Customer Complaining Behavior

13.2 3 Dimensions of Perceived Fairness in Service Recovery Process

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13.3 Seven Types of Jaycustomers
Jaycustomer: A customer who behaves in a thoughtless or abusive fashion, causing problems
for the firm, its employees, and other customers, More potential for mischief in service
businesses, especially when many customers are present
No organization wants an ongoing relationship with an abusive customer
The Cheat: thinks of various ways to cheat the firm
The Thief: No intention of paying--sets out to steal or pay less
The Rule breaker
The Belligerent: Shouts loudly, maybe mouthing insults, threats and cursesService personnel
are often abused even when they are not to be blamed
The Family Feuders: People who get into arguments with members of their own family
The Vandals
The Deadbeat: Customers who fail to pay or delay

13.4 Principles of Effective Service Recovery Systems

How to Enable Effective Service Recovery


• Be proactive
– On the spot, before customers complain
• Plan recovery procedures
– Identify most common service problems and have prepared scripts to guide
employees in service recovery
• Teach recovery skills to relevant personnel
• Empower personnel to use judgment and skills to develop recovery
solutions

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13.5 Service Guarantees
The Power of Service Guarantees
• Force firms to focus on what customers want
• Set clear standards
• Require systems to get & act on customer feedback
• Force organizations to understand why they fail and to overcome potential fail points
• Reduce risks of purchase and build loyalty
How to Design Service Guarantees
• Unconditional
• Easy to understand and communicate
• Meaningful to the customer
• Easy to invoke
• Easy to collect
• Credible
Types of Service Guarantees
• Single attribute-specific guarantee
One key service attribute is covered
• Multiattribute-specific guarantee
A few important service attributes are covered
• Full-satisfaction guarantee
All service aspects covered with no exceptions
• Combined guarantee
All service aspects are covered
Explicit minimum performance standards on important attributes

CHAPTER 14: IMPROVING SERVICE QUALITY AND PRODUCTIVITY


14.1 What is service quality

Dimensions Definition

Tangibles The appearance of physical facilities, equipment,


personnel and communication materials

Reliability The ability to perform the promised service dependably


and accurately

Responsiveness The willingness to help customers and provide prompt


service
Assurance The knowledge and courtesy of employees and their
ability to convey trust and confidence

Empathy The caring, individualized attention given to customers.

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14.2 The GAP Model ― A Conceptual Tool to Identify and Correct Service
Quality Problems

SERVICE FIRM’S GAPS


1) Gap 1: Knowledge Gap: difference between what the senior management believes
customers expect and what customers actually need and expect
2) Gap 2: Policy Gap: difference between management’s understanding of
customers’ expectations and the service standards they set for service delivery.
3) Gap 3: Delivery Gap: difference between service standards and the service
delivery team’s actual performance of these standards.
4) Gap 4: Communications Gap: difference between what the company
communicates, and what the customer understands and subsequently experiences.

CUSTOMERS’ GAPS
5) Gap 5: Perceptions Gap: difference between what is actually delivered and what
customers feel they have received because they are unable to accurately judge
service quality accurately.

6) Gap 6: Summary of All Gaps: the difference between what customers expect to
received and their perception of service that is actually delivered.
I) Strategies To Close The Gaps:
1) Gap 1: Increase interactions between customers and management
Facilitate and encourage communication between frontline employees and
management
2) Gap 2: Offer customers different levels of service at different prices
Use a rigorous, systematic, and customer-centric process for designing and
redesigning customer service processes.

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 Ensure that employees understand and accept goals, standards, priorities
3) Gap 3:
 Balance demand against productive capacity
 Improve recruitment with a focus on employee- job fit; select employees for
the abilities and skill needed to perform their job well
4) Gap 4:
 Let service providers preview advertisement and other communications before
customers are exposed to them
 Seek inputs from frontline employees and operations personnel when new
communications programs are being developed.
5) Gap 5:
 Develop service environment and physical evidence cues that are consistent
with the level of service provided
 Provide physical evidence (Ex: for repairs, show customers the damaged
components that were removed, like computers, air conditioner, TV repair
service)
 For complex and credence services, keep customers informed during service
delivery on what is being done, give a debriefing after the delivery so that
customers can appreciate the quality of the service

14.3 Learning from Customer Feedback


• Total market surveys
• Annual surveys
• Transactional surveys
• Service feedback cards
• Mystery shopping
• Focus group discussions
• Service reviews
• Unsolicited customer feedback

14.4 Service Efficiency, Productivity and Effectiveness


• Productivity: involves financial value of outputs to inputs
– Consistent delivery of outcomes desired by customers should command higher
prices
• Efficiency: involves comparison to a standard, usually time-based (e.g., how long
employee takes to perform specific task)
– Problem: focus on outputs rather than outcomes
– May ignore variations in service quality/value
• Effectiveness: degree to which firm meets goals
– Cannot divorce productivity from quality and customer satisfaction

14.5 Customer-driven Ways to Improve Productivity


• Change timing of customer demand
– By shifting demand away from peaks, managers can make better use of firm’s
productive assets and provide better service
• Involve customers more in production
– Get customers to self-serve
– Encourage customers to obtain information and buy from firm’s corporate
Websites
• Ask customers to use third parties
– Delegate delivery of supplementary service elements to intermediary
organizations

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CHAPTER 15: ORGANIZING FOR CHANGE MANAGEMENT AND SERVICE
LEADERSHIP

15.1 The Service Profit Chain

15.2 Links in the Service Profit Chain

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15.3 Interdependence between Functions

Implementation of Service Profit Chain requires complete understanding of how marketing,

operations and human resource functions relate to a firm’s strategy


Integrated functions create value for the firm
Strategies are defined and driven by a strong, effective leadership team

 Marketing Function
 Target “right” customers and build relationships
 Offer solutions that meet their needs
 Define quality package with competitive advantage
 Operations Function
 Create, deliver specified service to target customers
 Adhere to consistent quality standards
 Achieve high productivity to ensure acceptable costs
 Human Resource Function
 Recruit and retain the best employees for each job
 Train and motivate them to work well together
 Achieve both productivity & customer satisfaction

15.4 From Losers to Leaders: Four Levels of Service Performance


1) Service Losers
 Bottom of the barrel from both customer and managerial perspectives
 Customers dissatisfy with service
 New technology introduced only under duress; uncaring workforce
2) Service Nonentities
 Dominated by a traditional operations mindset
 Unsophisticated marketing strategies
 Customers patronize them because there is no viable alternative
3) Service Professionals
 Clear market positioning strategy
 Customers within target segment(s) seek them out

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 Research used to measure customer satisfaction
 Operations and marketing work together
 Proactive, investment-oriented approach to HRM
4) Service Leaders
 These organization are the best of their respective industries
 Names synonymous with outstanding service, customer delight
 Service delivery is seamless process organized around customers
 Employees empowered and committed to firm’s values and goals

END.
GOOD LUCK FOR YOUR FINAL EXAM
SEMESTER A 2014

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