Name: Sudarshan Gopal

Enrollment: 16104059

Batch: B12

Answer 1:

A service guarantee is a promise or a guarantee that the service will meet a customer’s expectations or
standards. It is used to reduce consumer risk perceptions, and helps the firm get an opportunity to
rectify their errors.

The marketing impact of a service guarantee may be positive or negative.

Positive marketing impact:

 The firm shows a focus towards consumer expectations and sets clear performance standards
for employees
 Increases product quality and reputation
 Helps reduce potential fall points
 Attract new customers

Negative marketing impact:

 Cost of maintaining and selling the product is now higher

 Impression of consumer may become bad if the guarantees are not fulfilled
 Price of products is now higher

Answer 2:

Accelion’s service guarantee design is simple and straightforward.

 24 hours support center

 Response within 2 hours of receiving a complaint
 Advance notice of 48 hours before disrupting their service
 Will credit customer’s account with proper service fee if guarantee is not fulfilled if given a
written notice within 5 days.
 Customer’s privacy concerns are taken into account and no personal information is disclosed.

Such a service design will be very effective in communicating service excellence to potential and current
customers.

 The service design is efficient and reliable, and takes privacy concerns into account.
 Employees clearly understand their roles, there are no intermediaries.
 100% availability guarantees less of a communication gap.
  Potential customers will be attracted and more willing to use the service whereas current
customers will feel satisfied, increase in brand loyalty and spread of word of mouth praise for
the firm.

Design recommendations:

 Increase transparency by generating regular reports

 Addition of disclaimers to avoid communication gap.

Implementation recommendations:

 Employ more staff to ensure complaints are always heard

 Ensure efficiency from all employees by giving them appropriate bonuses
 Continuously track customer expectations by having consistent surveys of their service
performance.

Answer 3:

There will definitely be an increase in culture creation for service excellence within Accellion with such a
service design. Service excellence is achieved via principles like clear business objectives, leadership
accountability, vision and mission statement etc. The attributes of service guarantee that help achieve
service excellence are:

 Performance guarantee
 Availability guarantee
 Customer service guarantee
 Security and privacy policy

All of which are being provided by the firm. Hence, there will definitely be a culture of creation for
service excellence.

The potential challenges that may be faced are:

 Miscommunication
 Conflict in priorities
 Accountability
 Teamwork, comm. Gap
 Problem might not be resolvable and customer might still be unsatisfied.

Answer 4:
There will always be some customers who will try to find loopholes and try to take advantage of the
guarantees being provided by the firm. Therefore, it is important to negate the loopholes and ensure
the service is only provided after making sure that the customer’s complaint is legitimate.
There are various ways accelion can minimize cheating.

 Introduce customer loyalty programs: This is done so as to ensure that the customer feels there
is a long term benefit to staying with the company instead of switching.
 Customers may cheat when they feel unsatisfied, so it is important to ensure that the service
being provided to customers is satisfactory. So it is important to ensure seamless and high
quality service.
 There should be clear disclaimers stating the exact scenarios in which customers can invoke
their guarantees. Else, the customers will invoke their guarantees for every little thing,
exploiting this loophole.
 It should be specified what will happen if the customer is caught cheating. In such a case, heavy
penalties should be ensured, so as to negate such a possibility.