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Challenge to managers
n Identify appropriate techniques developed in manufacturing that are
applicable to service operations
n Initiate the innovative use of information systems
n Recognise the consumer as a productive resource
Service Definition
A Service is a Time-perishable, Intangible Experience Performed for a Customer
Acting in the Role of a Coproducer.
-- James Fitzsimmons
Definition of Service Firms
Service Enterprises are Organizations that Facilitate the Production and
Distribution of Goods, Support Other Firms in Meeting Their Goals, and Add Value to
Our Personal Lives.
-- James Fitzsimmons
Taxonomy of services
n Domestic services
n Trade and Commerce
n Services that refine and extend human capacities
Role of Services in an Economy
GOVERNMENT SERVICES
Military
Education
Judicial
Police and fire protection
BUSINESS SERVICES
Consulting
Auditing
Advertising
Waste disposal
MANUFACTURING
Services inside company:
Finance
Accounting
Legal
R&D and design
DISTRIBUTION SERVICES
Wholesaling
Retailing
Repairing
PERSONAL SERVICES
Healthcare
Restaurants
Hotels
CONSUMER
(Self-service)
INFRASTRUCTURE SERVICE
Communications
Transportation
Utilities
Banking
FINANCIAL SERVICES
Financing
Leasing
Insurance
Stages of Economic Development
Features
==============================================================
==================================
Pre- Use of Standard
Dominant human Unit of of living
Society Game activity labor social life measure Structure
Technology
==============================================================
===================================
Pre- Against Agriculture Raw Extended Sub- Routine
Simple hand
Industrial Nature Mining muscle household sistence Traditional
tools
Power
Authoritative
==============================================================
=====================================
Industrial Against Goods Machine Individual Quantity Bureaucratic
Machines
fabricated production tending of goods
Hierarchical
nature
==============================================================
=====================================
Post- Among Services Artistic Community Quality of Inter-
Information
Industrial Persons Creative life in terms
dependent
Intellectual of health, Global
Education,
Recreation
The New Experience Economy
The Four Realms of an ExperienceThe Four Realms of an ExperienceThe Four
Realms of an Experience
Experience Design Principles
n Theme the Experience (Big Chefs)
n Harmonize Impressions with Positive Cues
n Eliminate Negative Cues
(Cinemark talking trash containers)
n Mix in Memorabilia (Hard Rock T-shirts)
n Engage all Five Senses (Mist in Rainforest)
Source of Service Sector Growth
n Information Technology (e.g. Internet)
n Innovation
Push theory (e.g. Post-it)
Pull theory
Services derived from products
Exploiting information (e.g. Auto part sales)
Difficulty of testing service prototypes
n Changing Demographics
Aging of the population
Two-income families
Urbanisation
Role of the Service Manager
n Entrepreneurial Innovation
n Capitalizing on Social Trends
n Management Challenges
Economies of Scale (MRI scanner)
Economies of Scope(Convenience store)
Complexity (Yield Management)
Boundary Crossing (Bank vs Brokerage)
International Competitiveness( Cultural Diversity)
Services and Technology -
3.TECHNOLOGY IN SERVICE ENCOUNTER
Service encounters were viewed as person-to-person interactions. Now, in many contexts, technology
is replacing human providers and either giving customers an option of, or requiring, the use of self-
service technologies. Technology is also being deployed to enhance the performance of the front line
employee in interacting with the customer. In still other cases, technology is allowing introduction of
entirely new service innovations. Across all these situations, the infusion of technology is
dramatically altering the very essence of service encounters formerly anchored in a low tech, high
touch paradigm.
The objective of this research is to explore the changing nature of service encounters emanating from
the infusion of technology, with an emphasis on how service encounters can be improved through
technology. We examine the influence of technology on the ability of firms to effectively:
(1) customize service offerings;
(2) recover from service failure; and,
(3) delight customers.
The role of technology infusion is examined as an enabler of both employees and customers in
creating satisfying service encounters across all three of these categories. Examples are featured and
managerial and research implications highlighted.
IMPLEMENTING SUCCESSFUL SELF-SERVICE TECHNOLOGIES
As companies race to introduce technology that enables customers to get service on their own,
managers often find that it is more difficult than it looks to implement and manage effective self-
service technologies (SSTs). In this research, we present findings from qualitative interviews and
survey research investigating SSTs from the customers point of view. Based on this research and our
work with companies, we present and develop insights around important lessons listed below to
guide managers in developing successful SSTs.
Lesson 1: Be very clear on the strategic purpose of the SST.
Lesson 2: Maintain a Customer Focus.
Lesson 3: Actively promote the use of SSTs.
Lesson 4: Prevent and Manage Failures.
Lesson 5: Offer Choices.
Lesson 6: Be prepared for constant updating and continuous improvement.
Descriptions of technologically based service encounters were collected from over 800 customers.
Results indicate that the determinants of satisfaction or dissatisfaction with SSTs are quite different
from factors that determine satisfaction or dissatisfaction in interpersonal encounters. Satisfactory
encounters result primarily from the customers delight at being able to solve an immediate need,
fascination with being able to conduct transactions electronically, or being able to do something more
easily and conveniently. On the other hand, all dissatisfactory encounters resulted from some type of
service failure, either with the technology itself, the design of the technology, the resulting service
process, or occasionally from the customers own mistake.
As expected, satisfactory encounters lead to significantly greater occurrence of
positive word of mouth and repeat purchases, and less complaining than
dissatisfactory encounters. It was also determined that customers found certain
types of failures (design of the technology or service process) to be more
unforgivable than other more temporary failures such as an out of order SST.
This research examines the issue of employee behaviors and motivation with regard to
recommending a new SST to end customers. Over 300 sales and service employees in dealerships of
a major manufacturer were surveyed to assess their motivation for recommending a new consumer
SST that allows online scheduling of service appointments and tracking of service status by end
customers. Conclusions from the study suggest that:
Employees who have more positive beliefs & feelings about the new SST will be more likely
to recommend it.
Employees are more motivated when they feel they are competent to recommend the
technology and when they feel free to decide to recommend it.
Employee competence and freedom of choice, and thereby motivation and ultimate
recommending behaviors, are increased through:
o Creating a sense of the importance of the strategic SST initiative and buy-in
throughout the organization.
o Increasing management and co-worker support of the SST initiative.
o Having managers clearly expect, or even require, that employees recommend the SST
to customers.
o Training and re-training all managers and employees to use the SST themselves.
o Promoting and advertising the SST internally to employees as well as externally to
customers.
An overall conclusion from the study is the need for organizations to implement
an internal marketing and employee roll out plan for new SSTs in addition to the
more common customer advertising and customer roll out plans.
OR
A service encounter may be described as the direct or indirect interaction between
a service provider (i.e., a firm) and its customer.
The availability and use of appropriate technologies govern the success of a service
encounter. An examination of the role of OT is therefore essential to the
comprehensive understanding of the service encounter. Recent efforts (e.g., Mills
and Moberg, 1990; Quinn and Paquette, 1990) have provided a first attempt at
understanding the role of OT in service encounters. Findings suggest that the
customer is often not just a passive recipient of the service, but an active
participant in the service production process. In fact, in most service encounters
(from a simple tax return preparation to something as complex as psychoanalytic
therapy), the active participation of the customer is not just helpful, but rather an
essential necessity. In general, as customer involvement increases, so does the
complexity of a given service encounter.
The firm's inability to adequately control the extent of customer participation has
prompted researchers to treat the customer as an uncertainty faced by a firm.
Contemporary investigations have accepted the existence of this uncertainty and
have focused on how firms can best manage and control the encounter
Others have suggested the use of appropriate governance structures that match
the nature of the service (e.g., Jones, 1990). A common thread in these arguments
is the need for the firm to focus on the difficult task of managing the customer. The
active role that the customer plays in service encounters makes this task even more
critical for the firm. Therefore, any attempt at understanding OT in service
encounters must account for the active and often unpredictable involvement of the
customer during the encounter.
The article hopes to make several academic and managerial contributions. First, it
extends the research on the co-alignment of customer and firm in service
encounters. Next, it provides a framework for investigating technologies as they
enter the service encounter. This is particularly relevant since the customer is a
provider of technological inputs. Third, to understand the role of OT in service
encounters researchers need to define the broad constructs at a lower level of
abstraction than the words denoting the construct
The article is organized in three sections. The first section of the article sets the
stage for framework development by describing the two primary constructs (i.e.,
service encounters, and OT). Next, the conceptual framework for viewing OT in
service encounters is developed. The conclusions section of the article includes a
discussion on the implications and usefulness of the proposed model.
PRIMARY CONSTRUCTS
Two streams of research have directly influenced the theory development process proposed in
this article --research on service encounters and that on OT. These two areas offer rich sources of
information for the necessary rationale and support of the framework developed in this paper.
This section contains a brief discussion of the relevant research on service encounters and OT.
The Service Encounter
There is increasing agreement among researchers on the basic form and definition of a service.
This consensus has stemmed from an agreement on the unique and distinctive characteristics of a
service (e.g., Gronroos, 1983; Lovelock, 1981; Norman, 1984; Uhl and Upah, 1983; Zeithaml et
al., 1985). The unique characteristics of a service dictate the structure and the conduct of the
service encounter. A review of commonly accepted definitions suggests two unique
characteristics of service encounters. First, both the customer and the firm have key roles to play
in the service encounter. Scholars in management and marketing (e.g., Bowen, 1990;Jones, 1990;
Gronroos, 1990) have noted that service encounters call for a high level of coordination between
the customer and the firm. The interaction between the customer and the firm results in the
sharing and/or use of resources held by the firm and by the customer. Since technology is a
resource that the customer can contribute to the service encounter, researchers must study, (1) the
complimentary roles of the firm and the customer as contributors of technology in a service
encounter, and (2) the process of assembling appropriate technological resources.
The second characteristic noted in the literature is the dynamic interaction between the two key
participants (the customer and the firm) in a service encounter. Researchers have consistently
noted that the customer is not a passive participant in the resource transformation process.
Bowen (1986) suggests that the customer should be considered an active participant in the
resource transformation process. Mills, Chase and Margulies (1983) have suggested that the
customer's willingness to participate in the transaction depends on the expected value of that
outcome. Similar sentiments are expressed by Czepiel (1990), and Larsson and Bowen (1989).
Thus, understanding the role of both the customer and the firm in combining technologies during
the transformation process is the second issue that must be explored when developing a
framework for OT in service encounters.
OR
The value of technology in service encounters
To gain competitive advantage in the market, several retail banks have recently started to deploy
biometric technologies in their service encounters. Biometrics is an emerging technology that
authenticates individuals using their unique physical characteristics. While the application of
biometrics is expected to increase security of a certain physical or logical area, this new
technology seems to engender various consumer concerns.
This study aimed to understand consumers' value perception of using biometric technology, in
particular fingerprint recognition technology at ATMs. Following the utilitarian approach to
define consumers' value, perceived benefit and perceived risk were measured as a "get"
component and a "give" component, respectively. The levels of trust in a bank and personal
innovativeness were also measured as constructs that may influence individuals' value judgment
of using the new technology.
The perceived benefit and the perceived risk were hypothesized as multi-dimensional constructs
and measured by formative indicators. Specific dimensions of those two molar constructs were
determined based on informal personal interviews as well as reviews of extant literature. To
validate the research model of this study, an empirical study was conducted with an Internet
survey. Customers' e-mail addresses were randomly selected from the database of the bank that
deployed fingerprint recognition technology for its ATMs.
Understanding what attracts or inhibits consumers from using such a new
technology-embedded service would enable businesses to evaluate the
technology from their customers' perspectives and develop effective
marketing strategies. This study concludes with discussion on the use of
formative and reflective indicators, limitation, and direction for future
research.
4.AUTOMATION IN SERVICES
Automation Service is the World's largest remanufacturer
of process controls. Our major brands include:
Rosemount, Fisher, Foxboro, Honeywell and Moore
products
Automation Service is a leading remanufacturer of electronic transmitters, diaphragm seals and
capillary systems, pneumatic transmitters, electronic controllers, recorders, indicators and
auxiliary stations, butterfly valves, rotary valves, sliding stem valves, pneumatic controllers,
recorders, indicators and auxiliary stations, valve positioners, transducers, and magnetic flow
systems. Primary industries served include pulp & paper, petro-chemical, chemical, petroleum,
utility and water & wastewater industries. Automation Service also offers the most extensive
process controls recycling program in the world.
Automation Service remanufactures or reconditions equipment originally manufactured by
Fisher Controls and Rosemount and is not a representative, distributor, agent, affiliate, or factory
authorized repair center for Fisher Controls and Rosemount. Specifications and certification
marks applied by the orignial manufacturer may no longer apply.
automation in services
Internet services
Internet Services is the embedded HTTP server application that is available on a
network enabled Document Centre (DC 220/230/332/340). Internet Services
enables you to access printing, faxing and scanning features of the Document
Centre, as well as view device status, perform queue management and perform
device management, over the internet.
Using a browser application, such as Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Internet
Explorer, you can access any Document Centre on a network using the TCP/IP
protocol. By entering the Document Centres IP address as the URL in the
browser, you have access to the Document Centre 220/230/332/340 for scanning,
printing, faxing, performing device management and many other functions you
would normally have to execute at the Document Centre control panel.
FEATURES
Internet Services gives users access to the Document Centre 220/230/332/340
printing, faxing and scanning control panel features over the internet.
Additionally, many system administration tasks can be performed without the use
of native network utilities, allowing faster and easier set up of the Document
Centre 220/230/332/340.
The features that are described in this section correspond to the tabs that are
available within the Internet Services interface.
The following features are available with Internet Services:
Services
Queue
Status
Properties
Maintenance
Assistance
SERVICES FEATURES
There are three primary areas within Services that are available for general users
encompassing Job Submission and Stored Templates selections:
Scanning offers the functionality of scanning a paper document into electronic
format. Scan options, such as scanning to a specified repository or
manipulating templates, allow customisation of scan jobs. Scanning with
Internet Services is a component of other scanning capabilities provided with
the Document Centre 220/230/332/340 ST.
Printing offers the high-speed, high-quality, laser printer functionality of the
Document Centre 220/230/332/340. Print ready files can be submitted for
printing from the Internet Services user interface. Print options, such as
number of copies, collation and paper specifications, allow flexible choices for
print jobs.
Faxing optionally offers the functionality of a fax machine. If faxing is
configured and available on the Document Centre, files can be submitted for
faxing from a workstation. Fax options, such as delayed fax and recipient
phone number list, provide preferences for fax jobs.
PROPERTIES FEATURES
Many system options can be set using Internet Services. The Properties feature
includes options for system administrators:
Modify the system default template that defines how to file, fax, or distribute a
scanned document.
Select a Template Pool for scanning use.
Modify PCL (font information, form length) or PostScript (error sheet)
emulation settings.
Modify connectivity settings that are used by the Document Centre 220/230/
332/340.
Select public and private repositories for scanning.
Define job defaults for print, fax, or scan jobs that do not require
customisation.
Define attributes, such as filing policy and confirmation sheet, for stored
templates.
Obtain device information, such as device profile, fault history, support
contacts and billing meters.
SETTING UP INTERNET SERVICES
GENERAL SETUP
General setup consists of configuring your Document Centre with TCP/IP,
configuring your browser to use Internet Services and then accessing a Document
Centre over the internet.
STEP 1. CONFIGURE THE DOCUMENT CENTRE
NOTE: For complete information on the installation and setup of Internet
Services and Scanning Services with the DC 220/230/332/340 ST, see the Xerox
Document Centre 220/230/332/340 ST or 230 LP System Administration Guide.
To setup a Document Centre for internet access:
1. Configure an IP address for the Document Centre on your network.
2. Setup the embedded HTTP server.
STEP 2. SETTING UP THE INTERNET BROWSER
Internet Services can be used on any system that has an internet browser.
Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.x or later, or Netscape Navigator 3.x or later are
recommended. Other browsers may work but could produce unexpected results.
Internet Browser Configuration
If any problems are encountered using Internet Services, check the following
internet browser settings have been correctly configured.
1. The internet browser should be configured to run Java programs.
2. The internet browser should also be configured with caching disabled.
The procedures to configure these settings vary on different browsers - see the
internet browser on-line help or documentation for assistance.
STEP 3. ACCESS INTERNET SERVICES
To access the Document Centre using Internet Services:
Type the Document Centres IP address in your browsers URL location field.
TIP: Once you have accessed the embedded HTTP server, you can designate it as
a bookmark in your browser, then directly access it simply by clicking this bookmark.
Scanning with Internet Services provides the following options:
printing your electronic document using Print Service options
faxing your electronic document using Fax Service options
specifying a scanning template
scan to public or private repository
On the Services, Job Submission page, printing with Internet Services provides
the following output options:
number of copies to print
collation
duplexing (2-sided)
stapling (if Document Centre has a Finisher configured)
input paper tray
output destination
paper size, type, color
file format
The table below lists the common buttons that are available on many of the pages
and frames. Some of them match the look of the actual button on the Document
Centre control panel.
Button Action Internet Services Buttons
Apply (new settings, settings) Apply changes.
Cancel Exit the page without updating.
Device Index Access Internet Services index for the Document Centre.
Help Access Internet Services help system.
Print/Fax Submission Submits a job for printing or faxing.
Refresh (status, now, latest values, jobs) Update the page with the new information.
Restore Settings Return the settings to their last saved values.
Restore Default Values Return the settings to their default values.
Browse Access network or local directory paths. Note that the Browse buttons do not
appear if you are using Internet Explorer version 3.0 or less.
Device Home Access the Document Centre home page.
Queue Refresh job listing.
WHAT YOU CAN DO WITH INTERNET SERVICES
This section discusses the different tasks that users and system administrators can
perform using Internet Services.
SUBMITTING A JOB
Print-ready (PCL, PostScript, or ASCII) files can be submitted for printing or
faxing directly from Internet Services to the Document Centre.
NOTE: Existing preformatted jobs do not take priority over options that are set
on the Job Submission page.
To submit files for processing to the Document Centre:
1. Access the Document Centre embedded HTTP server.
2. Click Services.
3. Click the Job Submission radio button to display the Job Attributes. Perform
the following if these options are not already set according to your job
requirements:
Type in the number of copies needed.
Select other options, such as finishing options, for your job from the dropdown lists.
4. Type the path and file name or click Browse (if available) to locate the file to process.
5. When finished with your selections, click the submission button to process your job.
NOTE: It is recommended that print files should not be larger than 6 MB.
OR
Basic network types
System area network (SAN)
same room (meters)
300 MB/s Cray T3E
Local area network (LAN)
same bldg or campus (kilometers)
10 Mb/sEthernet
100 Mb/s Fast Ethernet
100 Mb/s FDDI
150 Mb/s OC-3 ATM
622 Mb/s OC-12 ATM
Metropolitan area network (MAN)
same city (10s of kilometers)
800 Mb/s Gigabit Nectar
Wide area network (WAN)
nationwide or worldwide (1000s of kilometers)
telephone system
1.544 Mb/s T1 carrier
44.736 Mb/s T3 carrier
Global Internet
The internetworking idea (Kahn, 1972)
Build a single network (an interconnected set of networks, or
internetwork, or internet) out of a large collection of separate
networks.
Each network must stand on its own, with no internal changes
allowed to connect to the internet.
Communications should be on a best-effort basis.
black boxes (later called routers) should be used to connect
the networks.
No global control at the operations level.
Internetworking challenges
Challenges:
heterogeneity
lots of different kinds of networks (Ethernet, FDDI, ATM,
wireless, point-to-point)
how to unify this hodgepodge?
scale
how to provide uniques names for potentially billions of
nodes? (naming)
how to find all these nodes? (forwarding and routing)
Note: internet refers to a general idea, Internet refers to a
particular implementation of that idea (The global IP Internet).
Internetworking with repeaters: Pros and cons
Pros
Transparency
LANS can be connected without any awareness from the
hosts.
Useful for serving multiple machines in an office from one
ethernet outlet.
Cons
Not scalable
ethernet standard allows only 4 repeaters.
more than 4 would introduce delays that would break
contention detection.
No heterogeneity
Networks connected with repeaters must have identical
electrical properties.
Internetworking with bridges: Pros and cons
Pros
Transparency
LANS can be connected without any awareness from the
hosts
popular solution for campus-size networks
Cons
Transparency can be misleading
looks like a single Ethernet segment, but really isnt
packets can be dropped, latencies vary
Homogeneity
can only support networks with identical frame headers
(e.g., Ethernet/FDDI)
however, can connect different speed Ethernets
Scalability
tens of networks only
bridges forward all broadcast frames
increased latency
Internetworking with routers
Def: An internetwork (internet for short) is an arbitrary
collection of physical networks interconnected by routers to
provide some sort of host-to-host packet delivery service.
Building an internet
We start with two separate, unconnected computer networks
(subnets),
which are at different locations, and possibly built by different
vendors.
Next we physically connect one of the computers, called a
router
to each of the networks.
Finally, we run a software implementation of the Internet
Protocol (IP)
on each host and router. IP provides a global name space for
the hosts, routing messages between network1 and network 2
if necessary.
At this point we have an internet consisting of 6 computers
built from
2 original networks. Each computer on our internet can
communicate
with any other computer. IP provides the illusion that there is
just
one network.
IP: Internetworking with routers
IP is the most successful protocol ever developed
Keys to success:
simple enough to implement on top of any physical network
e.g., two tin cans and a string.
rich enough to serve as the base for implementations of more
complicated protocols and applications.
The IP designers never dreamed of something like the
Web.
rough consensus and working code
resulted in solid implementable specs.
Basic Internet components
An Internet backbone is a collection of routers (nationwide or
worldwide) connected by high-speed point-to-point networks.
A Network Access Point (NAP) is a router that connects
multiple backbones (sometimes referred to as peers).
Regional networks are smaller backbones that cover smaller
geographical areas (e.g., cities or states)
A point of presence (POP) is a machine that is connected to the
Internet.
Internet Service Providers (ISPs) provide dial-up or direct
access to POPs.
The Internet circa 1993
In 1993, the Internet consisted of one backbone (NSFNET) that
connected 13 sites via 45 Mbs T3 links.
Merit (Univ of Mich), NCSA (Illinois), Cornell Theory Center,
Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, San Diego Supercomputing
Center, John von Neumann Center (Princeton), BARRNet (Palo
Alto), MidNet (Lincoln, NE), WestNet (Salt Lake City),
NorthwestNet (Seattle), SESQUINET (Rice), SURANET (Georgia
Tech).
Connecting to the Internet involved connecting one of your
routers to a router at a backbone site, or to a regional network
that was already connected to the backbone.
5. DISTINCTIONS BETWEEN SERVICES AND GOODS
One of the most basic ideas in economics is goods and services. More than
anything else, money is spent on goods and services. It helps to know the difference
between two.
A good is something that you can use or consume, like food or CDs or books or a car or clothes.
You buy a good with the idea that you will use it, either just once or over and over again.
A service is something that someone does for you, like give you a haircut or fix you dinner or
even teach you social studies. You don't really get something solid, like a book or a CD, but you
do get something that you need.
The basic difference is that a good is something you can hold in your hand (unless it's something
big, like a car or a house).
Now, a service can also contain a good. Someone who fixes you dinner gives you food, which
was bought. In this example, the food is the good and the person's fixing it for you is the service.
In the same way, your teacher gives you a service by teaching you social studies. He or she also
gives you a good by giving you a textbook.
Your teacher teaching you social studies is a good example of a service that you personally don't
pay for. (Your family might pay for it, but you don't.)
And not all services are economic, either. A service can be as simple as reading a book to
someone. This kind of activity doesn't cost anything, but it is something that one person did for
another.
A good doesn't have to cost anything, either. If you give your friend a book or a CD, then you
given that friend a good, since we have already defined books and CDs as goods. Your friend
didn't give you any money for the good. But you didn't really do something for your friend,
either; you just gave your friend something he or she could hold or touch.
Remember, the one thing that sets goods and services apart is the ability to touch them. You can
touch a good, but you can't touch a service. You can touch the result of a service but not the
service itself.
OR
1. Goods are tangible, and transferable while the services are intangible and
non transferable.
2. Goods are separable, and non - perishable while services are inseparable.
3. Goods are homogeneous while services are heterogeneous
A good is a tangible object used either once or repeatedly. A service is intangible.
The tangibility differentiator indicates the ability to touch, smell, taste and see
which is absent in services. This can be a deterrent to the service receiver to gauge
the quality and dependant on the service company reputation. In the case of goods
the ownership of the product is transferable from sellers to buyers, whereas in
services there is no ownership involved.
On the quality front, with goods it is homogeneous, once produced the quality is
uniform across all line of products. They can be separated from the seller/ provider
and not dependant on the source for its delivery to the purchaser. With regard to
service it is inseparable from the service provider and heterogeneous, where each
time the service is offered it may vary in quality, output, and delivery. It cannot be
controlled and is dependant on the human effort in achieving that quality hence is
variable from producer, customer and daily basis.
Another key distinction is perishability of services and the non perishability of
goods. Goods will have a long storage life and are mostly non perishable. Whereas
services are delivered at that moment and do not have a long life or cannot be
stored for repeat use. They do not bear the advantage of shelf life as in the case of
goods like empty seats in airlines. With the production and consumption taking
place simultaneously in services, it differs from goods on simultaneity and the
provisions for quality control in the process.
6.SERVICES MARKETING MIX
Service marketing mix means
Seven P's: 4 P's of a tangible good (price, presentation, place, and Promotion) plus 3
P's of an intangible service participants, physical evidence, and process (of service
assembly).
The service marketing mix comprises off the 7ps. These include:
Product
Price
Place
Promotion
People
Process
Physical evidence.
7 Ps of Services Marketing
Marketing services is different from marketing goods, and the marketing tools and practices
developed for goods marketing are often not directly transferable to the marketing of services.
There are several major differences, including:
The buyer purchases are intangible
The service may be based on the reputation of a single person
It's more difficult to compare the quality of similar services
The buyer cannot return the service
4 P's product promoation placement and price
The differences have resulted in a divergence in the education of services marketing
versus regular marketing. Apart from the traditional "4 P's," Product, Price, Place,
Promotion, there are three additional "P's" consisting of People, Physical
evidence, and Process.
Product refers to the creation of a service concept that will offer value to target
customers and satisfy their needs better than competing alternatives. This consists of a
core product that responds to the customer primary need and an array of supplementary
service elements that are mutually reinforcing value-added enhancements that help
customers to use the core product more effectively.
Place and time may involve physical or electronic channels such as banks now offer
customers a choice of distribution channels including visiting a branch, using a network
of ATMS, doing business by phone or conducting them over the Internet.
Price and other user outlays are crucial as well. To determine if a particular service is
worth it, customers go beyond monetary considerations and assess the outlays of their
time and effort. Thus, service marketers must set prices that target customers are willing
and able to pay and minimize other burdensome outlays that are incurred. These may
include additional monetary expense in traveling, time expenditures, unwanted mental
and physical effort and exposure to negative sensory experiences.
Promotion in services marketing is also educational in nature, especially for new
customers. Suppliers need to teach these customers about the benefits of the service,
where and when to obtain it, and how to participate in service processes to get the best
results. This can be delivered via individuals such as salespeople, at websites, on display
screens in self-service equipment and through a variety of advertising media.
The process of delivering the service is very often as important as the function of the
service. Operational inputs and outputs can vary widely due to the lack of inventory and
real time interaction involved. Nonetheless, variability can be reduced through careful
design of the customer service process, adopting standardized procedures, implementing
rigorous management of service quality, high standards of training, and automation.
Furthermore, customers are often involved in co-production as partial employees through
self-service, telecommunications and the Internet.
Physical environment includes the appearance of buildings, landscaping, vehicles,
interior furnishing, equipment, uniforms, signs, printed materials and other visible cues
that provide evidence of service quality, facility service delivery and guide customers
through the service process. This can also be referred to as the servicescape which can
have a profound impact on customer satisfaction and service productivity.
People refer to the human capital of the firm, i.e. the employees. These individuals
should possess the required technical skills, good interpersonal skills and positive
attitudes that can become a key competitive advantage for the firm.
CHARACTERISTICS OF A SERVICE
What exactly are the characteristics of a service? How are services different from a
product? In fact many organisations do have service elements to the product they sell, for
example McDonalds sell physical products i.e. burgers but consumers are also
concerned about the quality and speed of service, are staff cheerful and welcoming and
do they serve with a smile on their face?
There are five characteristics to a service which will be discussed below.
1. Lack of ownership.
You cannot own and store a service like you can a product. Services are used or hired for
a period of time. For example when buying a ticket to the USA the service lasts maybe 9
hours each way , but consumers want and expect excellent service for that time. Because
you can measure the duration of the service consumers become more demanding of it.
2. Intangibility
You cannot hold or touch a service unlike a product. In saying that although services are
intangible the experience consumers obtain from the service has an impact on how they
will perceive it. What do consumers perceive from customer service? the location, and
the inner presentation of where they are purchasing the service?.
3. Inseparability
Services cannot be separated from the service providers. A product when produced can
be taken away from the producer. However a service is produced at or near the point of
purchase. Take visiting a restaurant, you order your meal, the waiting and delivery of the
meal, the service provided by the waiter/ress is all apart of the service production process
and is inseparable, the staff in a restaurant are as apart of the process as well as the
quality of food provided.
4. Perishibility
Services last a specific time and cannot be stored like a product for later use. If travelling
by train, coach or air the service will only last the duration of the journey. The service is
developed and used almost simultaneously. Again because of this time constraint
consumers demand more.
5. Heterogeneity
It is very difficult to make each service experience identical. If travelling by plane the
service quality may differ from the first time you travelled by that airline to the second,
because the airhostess is more or less experienced.
A concert performed by a group on two nights may differ in slight ways because it is very
difficult to standardise every dance move. Generally systems and procedures are put into
place to make sure the service provided is consistent all the time, training in service
organisations is essential for this, however in saying this there will always be subtle
differences.
Services marketing is a form of marketing which focuses on selling services.
Services can be tricky to sell and the marketing approach for them is much different
than the approach for products. Some companies offer both products and services
and must use a mixture of styles; for example, a store which sells computers also
tends to offer services such as helping people select computers and providing
computer repair. Such a store must market both its products and the supporting
services it offers to appeal to customers.
6.CUSTOMER BEHAVIOUR IN SERVICE ENCOUNTER:
Four Categories of Services
1. Direct Caring for or providing for others face-to-face who
are different in age/experience.
Examples
Tutoring children
Reading to the elderly
Serving as a mentor or buddy
Working with animals/shelters
Indirect Doing something to care for the community, a group or
the environment as a whole; often done with a partner or group.
Examples
River/roadside clean up
Donation programs for the homeless or poor
Stocking a food pantry
3.Advocacy Creating awareness or promoting action on an issue
of public interest.
Examples
Letter writing campaign
Sponsoring a public meeting on an issue
Public speaking
Performing a play on an issue
4. Research Finding, gathering, and reporting on information in
the public interest.
Examples
Conducting surveys on issues related to public
safety, school, the environment, etc.
Testing water or soil samples for pollution
Differences among Services Affect Customer Behavior
Consumers are rarely involved in the manufacture of goods butoften participate in
service creation and delivery
Challenge for service marketers is to understand how customersinteract with
service operations
Based on differences in nature of service act (tangible/intangible)and who or what
is direct recipient of service(people/possessions), there are four categories of
services:
People processing
Possession processing
Mental stimulus processing
Information processing
Who or What Is the Direct Recipient of the Service?
Nature of the Service Act People Possessions
Tangible Actions People processing
(services directed at peoples bodies): People
processing
(services
Is the Direct Recipient of the Service?
Who or What Is the Direct Recipient of the Service?
Nature of the Service Act People
Possessions
.
Tangible Actions People processing
Possession processing
.
(services directed at
(services directed at
peoples bodies):
physical possessions):
Barbers
Refueling
Health care
Disposal/recycle
..
People Processing
Customers must:
Physically enter the service factory
Co-operate actively with the service operation
Managers should think about process and output from customers perspective
To identify benefits created and non-financial costs:
Time, mental, physical effort
Possession Processing
Customers are less physically involved compared to people processing services
Involvement is limited
Production and consumption are separable
Mental Stimulus Processing
Ethical standards required when customers who depend on such services can
potentially be manipulated by suppliers
Physical presence of recipients not required
Core content of services is information-based
Can be inventoried
Information Processing
Information is the most intangible form of service output
But may be transformed into enduring forms of service output
Line between information processing and mental stimulus processing may be
blurred.
Customer Decision Making
Three-Stage Model of Service Consumption
The Purchase Process for Services
1. Prepurchase Stage
2. Service Encounter Stage
3. Post-Encounter Stage
Pre-purchase Stage
Customers seek solutions to aroused needs
Evaluating a service may be difficult
Uncertainty about outcomes increases perceived risk
What risk reduction strategies can service suppliers develop?
Understanding customers service expectations
Components of customer expectations
Making a service purchase decision
Customers Seek Solutions to Aroused Needs
People buy goods and services to meet specific needs/wants
External sources may stimulate the awareness of a need
Companies may seek opportunities by monitoring consumer attitudes and behavior
Evaluating a Service May Be Difficult
Search attributes help customers evaluate a product before purchase
Style, color, texture, taste, sound
Experience attributes cannot be evaluated before purchasemust experience
product to know it
Vacations, sporting events, medical procedures
Credence attributes are product characteristics that customers find impossible to
evaluate confidently even after purchase and consumption
Quality of repair and maintenance work
Perceived Risks in Purchasing and Using Services
Functionalunsatisfactory performance outcomes
Financialmonetary loss, unexpected extra costs
Temporalwasted time, delays leading to problems
Physicalpersonal injury, damage to possessions
Psychologicalfears and negative emotions
Socialhow others may think and react
Sensoryunwanted impact on any of five senses
How Might Consumers Handle Perceived Risk?
Seeking information from respected personal sources
Relying on a firm that has a good reputation
Looking for guarantees and warranties
Visiting service facilities or trying aspects of service before purchasing
Asking knowledgeable employees about competing services
Examining tangible cues or other physical evidence
Using the Internet to compare service offerings and search for independent reviews
and ratings
.
MODULE 3. EXPANDED MARKETING MIX:
1. PEOPLE EMPLOYEES ROLE IN SERVICE DELIVERY
The Critical Importance of Service Employees
Key focus on customer contact service
employees because:
They are the service
They are the organization in customers eye
They are the brand
They are the marketers
Their importance is evident in:
The Services Marketing Mix (People)
The Service-Profit Chain The Services Triangle
The Service Triangle
External Marketing: includes anything or anyone that communicates to
the customer before service delivery
Interactive Marketing: its the real time marketing were promises are
kept
Internal Marketing: management aids the providers in their ability to
deliver the service promise- recruiting, training, motivating, rewarding, and providing
equipment & technology
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?
Objectives
This chapters objectives are to:
1. Show the importance of creating a service culture in which providing
excellent service to all customers is paramount.
2. Illustrate the important role of service employees in creating
customer satisfaction and service quality.
3. Identify challenges in boundary-spanning roles.
4. Provide examples of strategies for creating customer-oriented
service delivery through a variety of ways.
Service Culture
It has been suggested that a customer-oriented, service-oriented
organization will have at its heart a service culture. A service culture exists
when:
There is an appreciation for good service.
Good service is given to internal as well as external customers.
Good service comes naturally, and is an important norm of the
organization.
The Critical Importance of Service Employees
Front-line employees and those supporting them are critical to the success of
any service organization because:
They are the service.
In the customers eyes, they are the organization.
They are the brand.
They are marketers.
The Services Triangle
The triangle shows three interlinked groups that work together to develop,
promote and deliver services. These key players are labelled on the points of
the triangle:
The company (management)
The customers
The providers (employees, or those who actually deliver the service)
The sides of the services triangle are labelled:
External marketing External marketing efforts set up its customers
expectations prior to service delivery.
Interactive marketing This is where promises are kept or broken by a
firms employees or agents.
Internal marketing Management engages in internal marketing
activities to help providers deliver on the service promise. They
accomplish this through recruiting, training, motivating, rewarding and
providing equipment and technology.
Employee Satisfaction, Customer Satisfaction, and Profits
Satisfied employees can make for satisfied customers.
The service profit chain suggests that there are critical linkages among internal
service quality; employee satisfaction/productivity; the value of services provided to
the customer; and ultimately customer satisfaction, retention and profits
The Effect of Employee Behaviours on Service Quality Dimensions
Reliability Delivering the service as promised is often totally within the
control of front-line employees.
Responsiveness Front-line employees directly influence customer
perceptions of responsiveness through their willingness to help and
promptness in serving customers.
Assurance This is highly dependent on employees ability to communicate
and inspire trust and confidence.
Empathy Employees will pay attention, listen, adapt and be flexible in
delivering what customers need.
Tangibles Employee appearance and dress are important aspects of this
dimension of service quality.
Boundary-Spanning Roles
Front-line service employees are referred to as boundary-spanners because
they operate at the organizations boundary.
They provide a link between the external customer and the internal
operations of the organization.
Boundary-spanning positions require:
Emotional labour
Ability to handle interpersonal and inter-organizational conflict
Ability to make trade-offs between quality and productivity
Emotional Labour
Emotional labour refers to the labour that goes beyond the physical or
mental skills needed to deliver quality service.
Friendliness, courtesy, empathy and responsiveness directed towards
customers all require huge amount of emotional labour.
For example, a front-line service employee who is having a bad day is
still expected to put on the face of the organization when dealing with
customers.
Boundary-Spanning Workers Juggle Many Issues
Person versus role
Organization versus client
Client versus client
Sources of Conflict
Front-line employees are expected to deal with several types of conflicts.
Person/role conflicts arise when boundary-spanners feel conflicts
between what they are asked to do and their own ideas or values.
Organization/client conflicts are between the organization and the
individual customer.
Employees may have to choose between following standard
rules and procedures or satisfying the demands of the customer.
Inter-client conflict occurs when incompatible expectations or
requirements arise from two or more customers.
This situation occurs most often when customers are being
served in turn.
Quality/Productivity Tradeoffs
Front-line service workers must be both effective and efficient they are
expected to deliver satisfying service to customers and at the same time be
both cost-effective and productive.
This trade-offs between effectiveness and efficiency can put demands
and pressures on service employees.
Finding a balance can be particularly difficult in the service industry
service employees are required to provide customized service offerings
while still pursuing the goals of customer satisfaction and productivity.
Strategies for Delivering Service Quality Through People
The strategies for enabling service promises are referred to as internal
marketing.
A combination of strategies is needed to ensure that service
employees are willing and able to deliver quality services, and stay
motivated to perform in customer-oriented ways.
Four basic themes exist for building a customer-oriented, service-
minded workforce. An organization must:
Hire the right people
Develop people to deliver service quality
Provide the necessary support systems
Retain the best people
Hire the Right People
To effectively deliver service quality, firms should focus considerable
attention on hiring and recruiting service personnel.
Traditional practices dictate that in many service industries, service
personnel are lowest in the organizational hierarchy and work for minimum
wage.
Now, many organizations are looking beyond the technical qualifications of
applicants to assess their level of customer and service orientation.
Compete for the Best People
An organization must identify the right people and compete with other
organizations to hire them.
When firms act as marketers in their pursuit of the best employees, they are
better able to attract potential valuable, long-term employees.
Hire for Service Competencies and Service Inclination
Service employees must possess the following capacities:
Service competencies the skills and knowledge necessary to do the
job.
Service inclination their interest in doing service related work,
reflected in employees attitudes.
Be the Preferred Employer
One way to attract the best people is to be known as the preferred employer
in a particular industry or location.
Some strategies that can support this goal include:
Extensive training
Career and advancement opportunities
Excellent internal support
Attractive incentives
Quality goods and services that employees are proud to be
associated with
Develop People to Deliver Service Quality
In order to grow and maintain a workforce that is customer-oriented and
focused on delivering quality, an organization must develop its employees to
deliver service quality.
Three strategies for training individuals to ensure service performance are:
1. Training for Technical and Interactive Skills
2. Empowering Employees
Promoting Teamwork
Train for Technical and Interactive Skills
In order to provide quality service, employees need training in necessary
technical skills as well as in process or interactive skills.
Most service organizations are relatively effective at training
employees in technical skills (Ex. McDonalds). However, service
employees also need training in interactive skills that allow them to
provide courteous, caring, responsive and empathetic service.
Successful companies will invest heavily in training and ensure that training is
congruent with the organizations business goals and strategies.
Empower Employees
In order to truly be responsive to customer needs, front-line employees must
be empowered to accommodate customer requests and recover on the spot
when problems arise.
Empowerment means giving employees the desire, skills, tools and
authority to serve the customer.
It is important to remember however, that authority alone is not
enough. Employees need the knowledge and tools to be able to make
decisions on the customers behalf, and they need incentives that
encourage them to make the right decisions.
Potential Costs and Benefits of 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 will interact with customers with more warmth and
enthusiasm.
Empowered employees are a source of service ideas.
Word-of-mouth advertising from customers.
Costs
Potentially greater dollar investment in selection and training.
Higher labour costs.
Potentially slower or inconsistent service delivery.
May violate customers perceptions of fair play.
Employees may give away the store, or make poor decisions.
Service Culture
Good service delivery begins with an appropriate service culture
A customer orientated and service orientated organization will have a good
service culture
Strategies for Delivering Service Quality Through People
1. Hire the right people
2. Develop to deliver service quality
3. Provide needed support systems
4. Retain the best people
2. PROCESS SERVICE BLUEPRINTING
Service blueprinting
A special kind of flow-chart is called service blueprint, which also includes the line of
visibility, between customers and service provider. In other words, in service
blueprinting, the line of visibility separates activities of the front office, where customers
obtain tangible evidence of the service, from those of the back office, which is out of the
customers view.
The high and low contact parts of the service delivery process are kept physically
separate, but they remain linked by communications. This separation highlights the need
to give special attention to operations above the line of visibility, where customer
perceptions of the services effectiveness are formed. Designing an efficient process is
the goal of the back office, but the back office operations have an indirect effect on the
customer because of delays and errors. The blueprinting exercise also gives managers the
opportunity to identify potential fail points and to design foolproof (Poka-Yoke is the
term borrowed from Japan) procedures to avoid their occurrence, thus ensuring the
delivery of high quality service (Fitzsimmons and Fitzsimmons, 1999).
A process chart gives a more detailed breakdown of the process into tasks, and it
classifies each activity as being either a processing operation, a movement, an inspection,
a delay, or a storage. All those charts can be based on an existing process for a redesign
or a tentative design for a new process (Martinich, 1997). Service blueprinting is chosen
as the most popular and useful tool for service operations analysis. This type of analysis
not only can lead to the elimination of tasks, reduction movements, and simplification of
work, but it can also help to identify opportunities to create work cells or to use more
efficient flow processing for some set of activities. This tool also provides an excellent
communication device for visualizing and understanding the service operation. Shostack
(1984; 1987) was the one who first suggested service blue printing for service process
analysis. He showed how the service process could be modified by using service
blueprinting for a typical shoe repair service and a discount brokerage service. He
proposed a four steps approach for designing a blueprint as:
(1) Identifying processes of service delivery and present them in a diagrammatic form. The
level of details will depend on the complexity and nature of the service.
(2) Identify the fail points. These are stages where things might go wrong. The actions
necessary to correct these must be determined, and systems and procedures developed to
reduce the likelihood of them occurring in the first instance.
(3) Establishing time frame. Set standards against which the performance of the various
steps might be measured. Frequently, this is the time taken.
(4) Analyzing the profitability of the service delivered, in terms of the number of customers
served during a period of time.
list of benefits about using service blueprinting, while a more
completed
list of benefits is given by Martinich (1997) as follows:
(1) The visual representation makes it easier to determine which activities are truly
necessary,which can be deleted, and which can be modified.
(2) Customer contact points are clearly identified. This helps to point out activities that
can be performed separately and where opportunities for co processing of activities exist.
(3) Likely service failure points are identified. This is helpful in developing plans to
minimize the chance of a failure and in identifying possible corrective actions, if failure
does occur.
(4) The service blueprint is an excellent tool for training workers. They can see what
activities must be performed and how; where failures are most likely to occur and how to
prevent and correct them.
(5) The blueprint is useful for identifying the equipment and materials needed and how
the service facilities should be spatially arranged to facilitate the services.
(6) Service blueprints can be reconstructed regularly and used to evaluate and improve
the service system over time, especially as new technologies become available and the
services provided by the system change or expand.
Service blueprinting Service mapping
(1) Primary an engineering paradigm
(2) Organizational structure not specifically included
(3) Physical products included in a limited sense
(4) Fail points are identified
(5) Line of visibility identified
(6) Line of interaction not shown
(7) Line of implementation not shown
(8) Time and cost partly referred to
(9) Comments to each service element not systematically presented
(10)Not related to quality dimensions
Service blueprinting shares similarities with other process modeling approaches in that it
1) is a visual notation for depicting business processes via symbols that represent actors and
activities,
2) can be used to represent high-level overviews of conceptual processes or details
of particular support or subprocesses, and
3) will accommodate links to parallel and sub-process documents and diagrams via other more
internally-focused process modeling tools and languages such as BPMN (Business Process
Modeling Notation) and UML (Unified Modeling Language). However, service blueprinting is
not as complex or as formal as some business process modeling tools such as UML (Siau and
Loo, 2006).
SERVICE PROCESS REDESIGN
In today's booming service economy, providing customers with high-quality and quick services has been
widely recognised as an essential means of achieving business excellence. To attain a higher quality
level of service than the competitor in the market, Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) has been developed as a
breakthrough strategy for service process design and/or redesign, which is fundamental to the delivery of
service quality to the customer. Meanwhile, a faster time-to-market capability of service can be obtained
through utilising the speed advantage of Lean. Therefore, it is the motivation of this paper for researching
that DFSS when combined with Lean can be synergistic in the upfront design phases of the service
development process
Dell Services Process Redesign Service provides value in the following ways:
Identify process barriers and issues, areas of rework and risk in current environment, and
opportunities for improvement
Improve operational efficiencies through the redesign of patient care processes, patient care
forms, and nursing documentation tools
Integrate performance improvement principles with care process redesign activities
Integrate patient care workflow into training strategy and approach
Identify benefits with regards to patients, physicians, financials, labor, best practices, safety, and
compliance
Improve clinician satisfaction and adoption through process redesign that engages and involves the
clinician
Service Process Redesign
The mission statement and agenda of the improvement project
were revised after the as-is process had been evaluated. Although
SCF had come to an agreement on what needed to be improved,
thererealized.
A number of procedures for the redesign of business processes
have been proposed in the literature. Hammer and Champy
recommended 17 general
principles for process reengineering in their BPR book Although
these principles were thought provoking, they were not specified
in much detail,
much less empirically validated. Subsequently, a number of
authors proposed transformation methods for BPR projects, e.g.
To extend these efforts, Reijers et al. consolidated 28 best
practices of business process design based on literature reviews
and lessons learned from consulting projects .These best
practices were packaged in reusable patterns and
assigned to different application levels of process design
(compare table 1).
In this project we focused our effort on task redesign, process
routing, and resource allocation, which were comparable to the
best practices in the task, routing, and allocation categories of
Reijerss framework. Figure 4 shows an excerpt of the to-be
process model.
1.Task 2.Routing 3.Allocation 4.Resource 5.External Party 6Integral Best Process
1.Task
.Elimination
Resequencing 3.Case Manager
4.Numerical
Involvement
5.Integration
Case Type
Task
Composition
2.Knockout Case
Case Assignment
Extra Resource
Resource
Outsourcing Technology
Task Automation
Control Relocation
Customer
Assignment
Specialist-
Generalist
Interfacing Exception
Parallelism
Flexible
Assignment
Empower
Contract
Reduction
Case-based
Work
Triage
Centralization
Buffering
Split
Responsibility
Trusted
Party
PHYSICAL EVIDENCE MARKETING MIX
Physical evidence as part of the marketing mix
Physical evidence is the material part of a service. Strictly speaking there are no physical attributes to a service, so
a consumer tends to rely on material cues.
There are many examples of physical evidence, including some of the following:
Packaging.
Internet/web pages.
Paperwork (such as invoices, tickets and dispatch notes).
Brochures.
Furnishings.
Signage (such as those on aircraft and vehicles).
Uniforms.
Business cards.
The building itself (such as prestigious offices or scenic headquarters).
Mailboxes and many others . . . . . .
The evidence that is presented during a trial usually plays a major role in the outcome. There are
several types of evidence that can be used. One type, physical evidence, refers to items that can
be brought into a courtroom for observation. Examples of physical evidence include a bloody
shirt, the mold of a foot print, and a bullet casing.
In many instances, law officials are the first to discover and handle physical evidence. This is
because such items are often obtained from crime scenes, meaning that suspects have not been
named, and therefore no lawyers are involved at that point. The manner in which this type of
evidence is collected and maintained is important because such items can be crucial in winning a
case. If it is not obtained according to procedure or it is damaged, it may be deemed inadmissible
or useless.
Physical evidence often supersedes other types of evidence because it is commonly less
problematic. For example, testimonial evidence refers to things people say regarding some
aspect of a court case. This type of evidence can be riddled with problems such as false
statements, faulty memory, or hidden agendas.
The reliability of such evidence can, however, have drastically differing effects. In some
instances, such items can be used to confirm what someone has asserted. In other instances,
they can disprove or cast doubt upon the things that have been said or alleged. For example, a
fingerprint lifted from the crime scene can prove that an individual has indeed visited a place that
he has claimed he never visited. Likewise, a photo of the individual at a certain event can prove
that at the time of a crime he was not at the crime scene.
Servicescape is a concept that was developed by Booms and Bitner to emphasize the impact of the
physical environment in which a service process takes place. If you were to try to describe the differences
a customer encountered when entering a branch of say like McDonald'scompared with a small family
restaurant, the concept of servicescapes may prove useful. Booms and Bitner defined a servicescape as
"the environment in which the service is assembled and in which the seller and customer interact,
combined with tangible commodities that facilitate performance or communication of the service" (Booms
and Bitner, 1981, p. 36).
Physical evidence may be likened to 'landscape'. It includes facilities exterior (landscape, exterior design,
signage, parking, surrounding environment) and facilities interior (interior design & decor, equipment,
signage, layout, air quality, temperature and ambiance). Servicescape along with other tangibles like
business cards, stationery, billing statements, reports, employee dress, uniforms, brochures, web pages
and virtual servicescape forms the 'Physical Evidence' in marketing of services.
Servicescape is not defined as above. The definition above is the definition for physical evidence.
Physical evidence consist of servicescape combined with the tangible elements, so servicescape is a part
of physical evidence.
Service Environments
With the rapid deployment of wireless LAN connectivity in the private and public sectors,
opportunities for businesses to offer services to users moving within their physical
premises with portable computers (including PDAs and smart phones) are increasing. At
the same time, emerging sensing and semantic interpretation technologies enable the
implementation of presence, identity and localization services that are key enablers for the
types of pervasive, context-aware services we envision. Also, a variety of low cost sensors
can easily be embedded in the environment and in user devices.
Possible service providers include companies owning (or operating their business
within) conference / training centers, shopping centers, airports or stations. In the public
sector, government agencies and hospitals provide additional examples of environments
that may provide contextualized services to visitors.
We refer to these kinds of space as physical service environments1. Physical service
environments provide services that are enhanced by knowledge of the physical
environment: for example, the distance between users and objects located in this space,
position of users, and specific characteristics of environment and user. A physical
environment seamlessly integrates the services provided by the computing devices it
contains. These are likely to include sensors, embedded systems and portable devices
owned by mobile users as well as more traditional application servers running in a separate
computer room, or remotely on a grid.
Service users operating in physical service environments may include, members of the
organization owning the environment, who can use the service infrastructure to perform
management tasks, surveillance, and other activities, as well as visitors from outside.
The major classes of services that a physical service environment can deliver include:
Information provisioning: delivery of personalized, context-dependent content
Physical environment awareness and control: access to information collected from
sensors (e.g. video from cameras, events from presence sensors, smoke detectors) and
control of the physical environment (e.g. open/close doors)
Remote work support: access to personal data stores and services for users visiting
the environment
Collaborative work support: sharing information among users and service
components present in the environment (e.g. by generating a context-based virtual
shared data space)
Sharing or leasing of networked devices and appliances, e.g. printers, fax machines,
etc.
main characteristics of a Physical Service Environment.
Personal Device: The user is equipped with a portable personal device (e.g. PDA,
smartphone, wearable computer, or - more generally - a set of interconnected wireless
devices forming a Body Area Network). The device or devices adapt dynamically to
different radio protocols.
Network Architecture: The user moves within a space where heterogeneous wireless
communications islands form an extension of the wired network. User devices interconnect
using ad hoc or infrastructure-based wireless networks. They may also connect to devices,
sensors and services present in the environment.
Service Provisioning: In the envisioned service model, the user moves through
environments within which she can use local services provided by the environment and
by wireless connectivity resources. These services are delivered by devices embedded
within the environment and by application servers accessible over a network infrastructure.
Another group of potential service providers are other mobile users with whom the user
comes into contact in the environments visited, either in ad hoc mode or via the
environments network infrastructure. Applications and services may belong to a
personal zone (e.g. sharing of data on ones own PDA). More often they are
environmental (e.g. local information services delivered by an environment). These
services may include both paying services and services that are available free of charge
Sensing Architecture: To support the delivery of these services, environments are
augmented with heterogeneous sensors. These allow the extraction of context
information making interaction with the user and service delivery more efficient. The
sensors capture information continuously, taking into account users activities. They then
communicate the information to an ambient intelligence module which processes context
information and distributes it to applications. Sensors may include both traditional sensing
devices (e.g temperature, pressure, light and humidity sensors), and more complex devices
such as cameras connected to a wired network. Since users personal devices are often able
to capture data from the physical world (e.g. through GPS and other position sensors
Modes of Interaction between the User and the Services: The user interacts with
services through a multimodal user interface, which uses the personal devices resources to
communicate with the user. Alternatively the interface may use I/O devices embedded
within the environment. Communication between the user and services (or other users)
may be mediated by a Personal Agent belonging to the user. This is an application with
reasoning capabilities. The task of the Personal Agent is to filter information and provide
intelligent support for the management of interpersonal communications.
OR Service Blueprinting.
A picture map that visually portrays the service system
- process of delivery
- role of customers & employees,
- visible elements of the service
Breaks down a service into logical components & easily definable tasks &
steps
Blueprinting Key components
Customer Action Line of External Interaction
Onstage Contact Employee Action - Line of Visibility
Backstage Contact Employee Action Line of Internal Interaction
Support Processes
Process
1.Service Blueprint 2. Point of Contact
Evidence =
3. A tool for simultaneously depicting the service process, the points of
customer contact, and the evidence of the service from the customers point
of view
( Service blueprint )
Useful at design & redesign stages of service development
Different from other product blueprints because here it includes customers
& their views of the service process
Application..a few
1. Restaurant service
2. Hotel Stays
- Checkin procedures
- Room services
- Housekeeping
- Laundry
- Express Mail delivery
Steps in Building a Blueprint
1. Identify the service process to be blueprinted
2. Map the service process from the customers point of view
3. Map Contact Employee Actions
Onstage - Line of External Interaction
Backstage Line of Visibility what customers should see and which
employees are in contact with the customers.
4. Map Internal Support activities
Line of Internal Interaction clarify interfaces across departmental lines,
their interdependencies
5. Add Evidence of Service at each Customer Action Step
Benefits of Blueprinting
Provides a customer orientation overview employees can relate to what I
doin the process
Identifies Fail points- weak links in the chain of service activities
Basis for identifying costs, revenues, capital investment required
Facilitates top-down, bottom-up approach to quality improvements.
4. MANAGING CAPACITY AND DEMAND
Perishability implications for demand and supply
Present the implications of time, labor, equipment, and facilities constraints
combined with variations in demand patterns.
strategies for matching supply and demand through
(a) shifting demand to match capacity or
(b) adjusting capacity to meet demand.
Overview
Demonstrate the benefits and risks of yield management strategies in forging
a balance among capacity utilization, pricing, market segmentation, and
financial return.
Provide strategies for managing waiting lines for
times when capacity and demand cannot be
aligned.
Variations in Demand Relative to Capacity
Alternative supply and demand outcomes
Demand versus Supply
Understanding Capacity Constraints and Demand Patterns
1.Capacity Constraints
Time, labor, equipment, and facilities
Optimal versus maximum use of capacity
2. Demand Patterns
Charting demand patterns
Predictable cycles
Random demand fluctuations
Demand patterns by market segment
Strategies for Shifting Demand to Match Supply
(a)Demand Too High
Use signage to communicate busy days and times.
Offer incentives to customers for usage during nonpeak times.
Take care of loyal or regular customers first.
Advertise peak usage times and benefits of nonpeak use.
Charge full price for the serviceno discounts.
-
(b)Demand Too Low
Use sales and advertising to increase business from current market
segments.
Modify the service offering to appeal to new market segments.
Offer discounts or price reductions.
Modify hours of operation.
Bring the service to the customer.
Adjusting demand to meet supply
Strategies for Adjusting Supply to Match Demand
Demand Too High
Stretch time, labor, facilities and equipment.
Cross-train employees.
Hire part-time employees.
Request overtime work from employees.
Rent or share facilities.
Rent or share equipment.
Subcontract or outsource activities.
-- Adjust Capacity
Demand Too Low
Perform maintenance, renovations.
Schedule vacations.
Schedule employee training.
Lay off employees.
Adjusting supply to meet demand