DELIVERING AND PERFORMING SERVICE

Provider Gap 3
CUSTOMER

Service Delivery
COMPANY

Service Performance Gap Customer-Driven Service Designs and Standards

Part 5 Opener

Employees Roles in Service Delivery

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

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

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

The Critical Importance of Service Employees

They are the service. They are the organization in the customers eyes. They are the brand. They are marketers. Their importance is evident in:
the services marketing mix (people) the service-profit chain the services triangle

The Services Marketing Triangle

Company (Management)

Internal Marketing
Enabling the promise

External Marketing
Making the promise

Employees
Interactive Marketing
Delivering the promise

Customers
Source: Adapted from Mary Jo Bitner, Christian Gronroos, and Philip Kotler

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?

The Service Profit Chain

Source: An exhibit from J. L. Heskett, T. O. Jones, W. E. Sasser, Jr., and L. A. Schlesinger, Putting the Service-Profit Chain to Work, Harvard Business Review, March-April 1994, p. 166.

Service Employees
Who are they?
boundary spanners

What are these jobs like?

emotional labor many sources of potential conflict
person/role organization/client interclient

quality/productivity tradeoffs

Boundary Spanners Interact with Both Internal and External Constituents

External Environment

Internal Environment

Boundary-Spanning Workers Juggle Many Issues

Person versus role Organization versus client Client versus client

Human Resource Strategies for Delivering Service Quality through People

Compete for the best people Measure and reward strong service performers Hire for service competencies and service inclination Be the preferred employer Train for technical and interactive skills

Hire the right people

Treat employees as customers

Retain the best people

CustomerOriented Service Delivery

Develop people to deliver service quality

Empower employees

Include employees in the companys vision Develop service-oriented internal processes

Provide needed support systems

Promote teamwork

Provide supportive technology and equipment

Measure internal service quality

Empowerment
Benefits:
quicker responses to customer needs during service delivery quicker responses to dissatisfied customers during service recovery employees feel better about their jobs and themselves employees tend to interact with warmth/enthusiasm empowered employees are a great source of ideas great word-of-mouth advertising from customers

Drawbacks:
potentially greater dollar investment in selection and training higher labor costs potentially slower or inconsistent service delivery may violate customers perceptions of fair play employees may give away the store or make bad decisions

Traditional Organizational Chart

Manager

Supervisor

Supervisor

Front-line Employee

Front-line Employee

Front-line Employee

Front-line Employee

Front-line Employee

Front-line Employee

Front-line Employee

Front-line Employee

Customers

Customer-Focused Organizational Chart

Customers
Front-line Employee Front-line Employee Front-line Employee Front-line Employee
Front-line Employee Front-line Employee Front-line Employee Front-line Employee

Supervisor

Supervisor

Manager

Customers Roles in Service Delivery

Illustrate the importance of customers in successful service delivery and cocreation of service experiences. Discuss the variety of roles that service customers play: productive resources for the organization; contributors to quality and satisfaction; competitors. Explain strategies for involving service customers effectively to increase both quality and productivity.

Table 13.1

Levels of Customer Participation across Different Services

Source: Adapted from A. R. Hubbert, Customer Co-Creation of Service Outcomes: Effects of Locus of Causality Attributions, doctoral dissertation, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, 1995.

How Customers Widen the Service Performance Gap

Lack of understanding of their roles Not being willing or able to perform their roles No rewards for good performance

Interfering with other customers

Incompatible market segments

 Other customers can detract from satisfaction:

disruptive behaviors overly demanding behaviors excessive crowding incompatible needs

Importance of Other (Fellow) Customers in Service Delivery

Other customers can enhance satisfaction:

mere presence socialization/friendships roles: assistants, teachers, supporters, mentors

Customer Roles in Service Delivery

Productive Resources

Contributors to Service Quality and Satisfaction

Competitors

Services Production Continuum

Customer Production Joint Production Firm Production

Gas Station Illustration 1. Customer pumps gas and pays at the pump with automation 2. Customer pumps gas and goes inside to pay attendant 3. Customer pumps gas and attendant takes payment at the pump 4. Attendant pumps gas and customer pays at the pump with automation 5. Attendant pumps gas and customer goes inside to pay attendant 6. Attendant pumps gas and attendant takes payment at the pump

Customers as Productive Resources

customers can be thought of as partial employees
contributing effort, time, or other resources to the production process

customer inputs can affect organizations productivity key issue:

should customers roles be expanded? reduced?

Customers as Contributors to Service Quality and Satisfaction

Customers can contribute to:
their own satisfaction with the service
by performing their role effectively by working with the service provider

the quality of the service they receive

by asking questions by taking responsibility for their own satisfaction by complaining when there is a service failure

Customers as Competitors
customers may compete with the service provider internal exchange vs. external exchange internal/external decision often based on:
expertise capacity resources capacity time capacity economic rewards psychic rewards trust control

Strategies for Enhancing Customer Participation

Strategies for Enhancing Customer Participation

Define customers jobs
helping oneself helping others promoting the company

Recruit, educate, and reward customers

recruit the right customers educate and train customers to perform effectively reward customers for their contributions avoid negative outcomes of inappropriate customer participation

Manage the customer mix