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MODULE – 4
Service Standards

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 Synopsis – Module 4

SERVICE STANDRDS

 Aligning strategy

 Service design and standards

 Customer defined service standards

 Leadership and measurement system for market drove services

performance

 Service design and positioning

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ALIGNING STRATEGY

SERVICE DESIGN

AND STANDARDS

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 Understanding customer expectations and service standards set to correspond those
expectations

CUSTOMER

Development of
Customer Driven
COMPANY Service Designs &
Standards

GAP 1 GAP 2 Service Design & Standards Gap

Company Perceptions
of Consumer
Expectations
Source: Service Marketing Book-Valarie, Mary- PgNo 205 5
 Company
Perception of
GAP Consumer
2 Expectations

Key Factors Related to Service Standards:

 Inadequate standardization of service behaviors and actions
 Absence of formal process of setting service quality goals
 Lack of customer-defined standards

Customer
Driven Service
Designs and
Standards
Source: Service Marketing Book-Valarie, Mary- PgNo 205 6
 Aligning strategy
Inadequate standardization of service behaviors and actions
standardization of service can take three forms

1. Substitution of technology for personal contact and human effort (ATM,

X-ray machines, Automatic car wash).

2. Improvement in work methods (Serving procedure in hotel, maid service

in home clean)

3. Combination of these two methods.

 Absence of formal goal setting.(call back customer quickly)
 Lack of customer-defined standards. (Productivity, efficiency,
eg:IVR)

Source: Service Marketing Book-Valarie, Mary- PgNo 207 7

 Customer defined service standards
 Customer defined standards are operational goals and measures based on
pivotal customer requirements that are visible to and measured by
customers. They are operations standards set to correspond to customer
expectations and priorities rather than to company concerns such as
productivity or efficiency. They are the translation of customer
requirements into goals and guide lines for employee performance.

 Two major types of customer defined service standards can be

distinguished. They are
1. “Hard” customer-defined standards
2. “Soft” customer-defined standards

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 HARD SOFT
 Things that can be counted, timed  Opinion based measures that can
or observed through audits (time, not be observed and must be
number of events). collected by talking to customers
 Operational process or outcomes (perceptions, beliefs).

 Eg: How many students out of  Conversation with customer and

1000 came late to exam hall. employee.

 Eg: surveys and customer
advisory panels, feedback.

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Process for developing customer-defined standards

Identify existing or desired service encounter sequence

Translate customer expectations into behaviors and actions for

each service encounter

Select behaviors and actions for standards

Decide whether hard or soft standards are appropriate

Develop feedback mechanisms for measurement to standards

Establish measurements and target levels

Track measures against standards

Provide feedback about performance to employees

Periodically feedback about performance to employees

Source: Service Marketing Book-Valarie, Mary- PgNo 222 10

 Step1: Identify existing or desired service encounter sequence – Involves
delineating(Portray) the service encounter sequence, the company would be open to
discovering customer’s desired service encounter sequences, exploring the ways
customers want to do business with the firm.

 Step2: Translate customers expectations into behaviors and actions for each
service encounter – Abstract customer requirements and expectations must be
translated into concrete, specific behavior and actions associated with each encounter
in the service encounter sequence. Abstract requirements (eg-reliability) can call for
different behavior or action in each service encounter, and these differences must be
probed.
 Information on behaviors and actions must be gathered and interpreted by objective
source such as a research firm or an inside department with no stake in the ultimate
decisions. If the information is filtered through company managers or front line
people with an internal bias, the outcome would be company defined rather than
customer defined standards.
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Source: Service Marketing Book-Valarie, Mary- PgNo 223
 Step 3: Select behaviors and actions for standards
 Customer defined standards need to focus on what is very important to
customers. Unless very important behaviors/actions are chosen, a company
could show improvement in delivering to standard with no overall
customer satisfaction or business goals.
 Employees perform according to standards consistently only if they
understand, accept and have control over the behaviors and actions
specified in the standards. Holding contact people to standards that they
cannot control (such as product quality or time lag in introduction of new
products) does not result in improvement. For this reason, service standard
should cover controllable aspects of employees jobs.
 Imposing standards on unwilling employees often leads to resistance,
resentment, absenteeism and even turnover. This practice inevitably leads
to increasing tensions among employees.
 Customer defined standards should not be established on the basis of
complaints or other forms of reactive feedback. Reactive feedback deals
with past concerns of customers, rather than with current and future
customer expectations. Both negative and positive to be considered.
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 Step 4: Decide Whether Hard or Soft Standards are Appropriate
 The best way to decide whether a hard standard is appropriate is to first
establish a soft standard by means of trailer calls and then determine over
time which operational aspect most correlates to this soft measures.

Step 5: Develop Feedback Mechanisms for Measurement of Standards

 Standards must be measured and reviewed regularly. Without measurement
and feedback, corrections to quality problems will probably not occur.

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Step 6: Establish Measures and Target Levels

Step 7: Track Measures against Standards

Step 8: Provide Feedback about Performance to Employees

Step 9: Periodically Update Target Levels and Measures.

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 Identify Existing or Desired Service Encounter Sequence

Translate Customer Expectations into Behaviors/Actions

Select Behaviors and Actions for Standards

Hard Head or Soft? Soft

Set Standards
Measures by Develop Feedback Measures by
Audits or Hard Mechanisms Soft Transaction
Operating Data Based Surveys
Establish Measures and Target Levels

Track Measures against Standards

Provide Feedback about Performance to Employees

Update Target Levels and Measures

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Source: Service Marketing Book-Valarie, Mary- PgNo 224
 LEADERSHIP AND

MEASURMENT SYSTEMS

FOR MARKET-DRIVEN

SERVICE PEFORMANCE

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 Customer
Driven Service
GAP Designs and
2 Standards

Key Factors Related to Provider GAP 2

 Inadequate service leadership
 Lack of recognition the quality service is a profit strategy
 Imbalanced performance scorecard

Management
Perception of
Consumer
Expectations
Source: Service Marketing Book-Valarie, Mary- PgNo 241 17
 Inadequate service leadership

Motives and Traits Knowledge, Skills & Ability

Motives Knowledge
Drive Technological Expertise Knowledge
of Organization and Industry
Leadership Motivation
Skills
People Skills
Traits Management Skills
Honesty/Integrity Ability
Self-Confidence Cognitive Ability/Intelligence

Vision
Vision Statement
Formulating the Vision
Promoting Commitment
Developing a Strategic vision

Implementation of the Vision

Structuring
Selecting, Acculturating, and Training
Motivating
Managing Information
Team Building
Promoting Change, Innovation and Risk Taking 18
Source: Service Marketing Book-Valarie, Mary- PgNo 243
 VISION

1. A leader creates a service vision: An organizational vision is “an ideal and unique
image of the future.”

2. Synthesizing the vision: Synthesizing a vision requires foresight, to ensure that the
vision will be appropriate for the future environment; hindsight, so that
organizational tradition and culture are not overly violated; a worldview, to
capitalize on the impact of new developments

3. Promoting commitment to the service vision: Employer/Management promoting

commitment to service employees on which they depend for execution of the
vision.

4. Clearly articulate the vision: Services may be simple or complex, but the best
ones are “brief, clear, abstract in representing a general ideal rather than a specific
achievement, challenging, future-oriented, stable and desirable.
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 A leader Implements the Service Vision
1. Structuring the organization for service vision: A service organization
must be configured in a way the accomplishes the leader’s vision. Among
the structural elements that inhibit service excellence are bureaucracy,
rigid hierarchy, strict definition of functional boundaries, centralization,
myriad layers of management, and command-control approaches. With
these elements a company is a ‘typical vertical organization, a company in
which staffers look up to bosses instead of a customers.
 Prominent in correcting these structural problems is a recognition called
the ‘Horizontal organizations organize work flow around processes that
ultimately link to customer needs, instead of around functions,
departments, or tasks.
 In its purest state, the horizontal corporation centers around a company’s
core process- its flow of activity, information, decision and materials –
that deliver what customers expect. Redesigning processes appropriately
can improve performance and allow employees to interact more directly
with customers, and to respond more quickly to customer needs.

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 The seven key elements of the horizontal corporation include:

1. Organize around process, not task. Build three to five ‘core processes’ with
specific performance goals. Assign an ‘owner’ to each process.

2. Flatten the hierarchy by eliminating work that fails to add value.

3. Use teams to manage everything, giving teams a common purpose and
limiting supervision.

4. Let customers drive performance, making customer satisfaction (rather than

profits or stock appreciation) the measure of performance.

5. Reward team performance rather than just individual performance.

6. Maximize supplier and customer contact.

7. Inform and train all employees and entrust employees with data.
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2. Selecting, Acculturating and Training Service Personnel: All these three
are related to critical leadership activities. Selecting involves choosing the
right service worker for each job. Acculturating involves installing the
organizations culture and vision in those selected. Training helps
employees understand and perform their responsibilities and duties.
3. Motivating subordinates: Motivating subordinates involves generating
“enthusiasm for the work, commitment to task objectives, and compliance
with order and requests.” the means which leaders motivate subordinates
include:
 Use of formal authority
 Role modeling
 Building self-confidence
 Delegating
 Creating challenge through goal setting
 Rewarding and punishing.

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4. Managing Information: Effective leaders are information gathers who
listen to their subordinates and to source outside the organization,
especially customers, they are around and available. They share and
disseminate information appropriately with in the organization. They
personally read complaint logs and letters, took phone calls, and were
highly visible and available to the rank and file. They are unwilling to
delegate this most important function to others in the firm, but want to be
involved and knowledgeable themselves.
Leaders who keep their ears turned to employees are using upward
communication to understand the activities and performance in company.
Specific types of communication that may be relevant are formal (Reports
of problems and exceptions in service delivery) and informal (Discussion
between contact people and upper-level management).
Leaders who stay close to their contact people benefit not only by keeping
their employees happy but also by learning more about the customer.

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5. Building Teams: Service leaders need to build cooperation among their
followers, to each subordinates to work effectively together to achieve
goals. Among the strategies used to ensure that employees work together
are creating cooperative goals that can only be reached together, using
project teams and task forces, and implementing group based reward
system. Building an effective top management team to demonstrate to all
in the organization that team work is essential, is symbolic as well as
practical.
6. Promoting Change, Innovation and Risk Taking: Leaders of unsuccessful
service organizations often demonstrate short term, narrow thinking, and
unwillingness to think creatively and optimistically about customer needs,
and an excuse for maintaining the status quo. Successful service leaders
tend to be open to innovation and receptive to different and possibly
better ways of doing business. These leaders operate with the philosophy
that almost anything the customer wants could be considered and
evaluated. They are willing to transform the way they do business as well
as to invest money, time, and effort to fully satisfy their customers.

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 Service Quality as a Profit Strategy

Costs
Defensive Volume of Margins
Marketing Purchases

SERVICE CUSTOMER Price Premium

QUALITY RETENTION
Word of Mouth
PROFITS

Market Share

Offensive Reputation
Sales
Marketing
Price Premium

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Source: Service Marketing Book-Valarie, Mary- PgNo 253
 OFFENSIVE MARKETING
 Offensive marketing is an openly competitive marketing strategy
involving one company exposing and attacking the weaker points of
another company in order to take market share directly away from the
competition

DEFENSIVE MARKETING
 Defensive marketing refers to the actions of a brand, especially a market
leader, to protect its market share, profitability, product positioning, and
mind share against an emerging competitor. If a brand fails to defend its
position, then they'll likely lose some of its customers to the competitor.

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 The role of Service Quality in Offensive Marketing:
Attracting More and Better Customers
 Service quality can help companies attract more and better customers to
the business, when service is good, a company gains a positive reputation
and through that reputation a higher market share and the ability to
charge(Price) more for services that the competition.

The role of Service Quality in Defensive Marketing:

Retaining Customers
 Customer defection (or ‘customer churn’) is wide spread in service
businesses. Lost customers can not be replaced by new customers, and
replacement comes at high cost, because it involves advertising,
promotion and sales costs as well as start-up operating expenses.
 The money a company makes from retention come from four sources
(costs, volume of purchases, price premium and word-of-mouth
communication).
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1. Lower costs: Lowering costs defection rates saves money. It has been
found that attracting a new customer is five times as costly as retaining an
existing one. Consultants who have focused on these relationships assert
that customer defections have a stronger impact on a company’s profit
than market share, scale, unit costs, and many other factors usually
associated with competitive advantage. They also claim that, depending
on the industry, companies can increase profits from 25 to 85 percent by
retaining just 5 percent more of their customers.
2. Volume of Purchases: Customers who are satisfied with a company’s
services are likely to increase the amount of money they spend with that
company or the types of services purchased.
3. Price Premium: Evidence suggests that a customer who notices and
values that services provided by a company will pay a price premium for
those services.
4. W-O-M: It is considered more credible than other sources of info. It
brings new customer who advocate the firm. It save the promotional cost
and it streams of revenues from new customers.

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 The balance score card

Financial
Perspective
Goals Measures

Operational
Customer
Perspective
Perspective
Goals Measures
Goals Measures

Innovation and Learning

Perspective

Goals Measures

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Source: Service Marketing Book-Valarie, Mary- PgNo 256
 THE BALANCED PEFORMANCE SCORECARD

 The financial leadership factor concerns senior executives views of performance.

Some executives view, measure, and evaluate performance only in financial terms.
 Other measures of performance must be captured and quantified to predict future
financial performance and to drive the performance of companies.
 One leading expert on corporate performance claims that “…. With in next five
years, every company will have to redesign how it measures its business
performance in order to remain competitive.
 The balanced score card brings together, in a single management report, may of
the seemingly disparate elements of a company’s agenda.
 Second, the scorecard guards against sub-optimization by forcing senior managers
to consider all the important operational measures together.

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 Financial measurement – Involves calibrating the defensive impact of
retaining and losing customers. The monetary value of retaining customers
can be estimated from projecting average revenues over the lifetime of
customers. Companies can also measure actual increases or decreases in
revenue from retention or defection of customers by capturing the value of
loyal customers, including expected cash flow over a customer’s life time.
Other financial measure include:
1. Value of price premiums.
2. Volume increases.
3. Value of customer referrals.
4. Value of cross sales.
5. Long term value of customers.
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 Customer perception measurement: These measures reflect customer
beliefs and feelings about the company and its products and services and
can be considered predictors of how the customer will behave in the future.
Some of the measure to track details are:
1. Loyalty
2. Intent to switch customer
→ Customer referrals
→ Cross sales of defections
 Operational measurement: These measures involve the customer
perceptual measures into the standards or actions that must be set internally
to meet customers expectations. These measures are not independent of
customer perceptual measures but instead are intricately linked with them.
 Innovation and learning measurement: It involves ability to innovate,
improve and learn by launching new products, creating more value for
customers, and improving operating efficiencies. This is the measurement
area that is most difficult to capture quantitatively but be accomplished
using performance-to-goal percentages.

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 Innovation and learning measurement

Financial Measures
Price Premium
Volume Increases
Value of Customer Referrals
Value of Cross Sales Long-
Customer Perspective term Value of Customer Operational Perspective
Service Perceptions
Service Expectations Right First Time (% hits)
Perceived Value Right on Time (% hits)
Behavioral Intentions Innovation and Learning Responsiveness (% on
% Loyalty Perspective time)
% Intent to Switch Transaction Time (hours,
# Customer Referrals Goals Measures days)
# Cross Sales
# of Defections

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Source: Service Marketing Book-Valarie, Mary- PgNo 259
SERVICE DESIGN

AND

POSITIONING

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 Service Design and Positioning
 Service Designing: It is the activity of Planning and Organizing
people, Infrastructure, Communication and Material components of
a service in order to improve its quality and the interaction between
service provider and customers. Design according to the needs of
the customers, so the service is user friendly, competitive and
relevant to the customers.
 Service Design is the application of established design process and
skills to the development of services. It is a creative and practical
way to improve existing services and innovate new ones.
 Positioning is a defined as the process of establishing and
maintaining a distinctive place in the market for an organization
and /or its products/services offerings. This is the creating of an
distinct place in the minds of a customer, or the perception of a
customer w.r.t other companies or their product/services.

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Source: Service Marketing Book-Valarie, Mary- PgNo 0
Challenges of service design and positioning

1. Oversimplification

2. Incompleteness

3. Subjectivity

4. Biased interpretation

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Source: Service Marketing Book-Valarie, Mary- PgNo 265
 New Service Development

→ The fact that services are intangible makes it even more imperative for a

new service development system to have 4 basic characteristics:-

1. It must be objective, not subjective

2. It must be precise, not vague

3. It must be fact driven, not opinion driven

4. It must be methodological, not philosophical

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Source: Service Marketing Book-Valarie, Mary- PgNo 267
 TYPES OF NEW SERVICE
The types of new service options can run the gamut from major innovations to
minor style changes. As described below:-
1. Major innovations – New services of markets as yet undefined. Jio Mart
2. Start-up-business – For a market that is already served by existing product
that meet the same generic needs. Door delivery
3. New services for the currently served market – Represent attempts to offer
existing customer of the organization a service not previously available from
the company (although it may be available from other companies). Wifi at
Café
4. Service line extension – Represents the augmentation of the existing service.
Airline offering new route.
5. Service improvements – Represents perhaps the most common type of
service innovation. Change in features of service that are already offered
might involve faster execution of an existing service process – Work hours
6. Style changes – Most model service innovations, although they are often
highly visible and can have significant impact on customer perception,
emotions and attitudes. Logo or Package.
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Source: Service Marketing Book-Valarie, Mary- PgNo 268
 Stages in new service development
1. Business Strategy Development or Review
2. New Service Strategy Development

3. Idea Generation
4. Concept Development and Evaluation

5. Business Analysis
6. Service Development and Testing

7. Market Testing
8. Commercialization

9. Post-introduction Evaluation

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Source: Service Marketing Book-Valarie, Mary- PgNo 269
 Business Strategy Development or Review

New Service Strategy Development

Idea Generation
Screen ideas against new service strategy
Concept Development and Evaluation
Test concept with customers and employees
Business Analysis

Test for profitability and feasibility

Service Development and Testing

Conduct service prototype test

Market Testing
Test service and other marketing-mix elements
Commercialization

Post-introduction Evaluation = Checkpoint 40

Source: Service Marketing Book-Valarie, Mary- PgNo 0
 Business strategy development: It is usually assumed that an organization
will have an overall strategic vision and mission. Clearly the first step in
new service development is to review that vision and mission.
 New service strategy development: The types of new service that will be
appropriate will depend on the organization’s goals, vision, capabilities,
and growth plans, by defining a new service strategy (possibly in terms of
markets, types of services, time horizon for development, profit criteria)
the organization will be in a better position to begin generating specific
ideas.
 Idea generation: the idea generated at this phase can be passed thorough
the new service strategy screen described in the preceding step.

New service strategy matrix for identifying growth opportunities

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Source: Service Marketing Book-Valarie, Mary- PgNo 0
 Service concept development and evaluation: Once the idea surfaces that
is regarded as good fit with both the basic business and the new service
strategies, it is ready for initial development. “To buy and sell stocks for
customers at low prices”- “Discount brokerage concept”. The new service
concept would then be evaluated by asking employees and customers
whether they understand the idea of the proposed service, whether they are
favorable to the concept, and whether they feel it satisfies an unmet need.
 Business analysis: The next step is determine its feasibility and potential
profit implications. Demand analysis, revenue projections, cost analyses
and operational profit implications are assessed at this stage. Because the
development of service concept is closely tied to the operational system of
the organization, this stage will involve preliminary assumptions about the
costs of hiring and training personnel, delivery system enhancements,
facility changes, and any other projected operations cost.
 The organization will pass the results of the business analysis through its
profitability and feasibility screen to determine whether the new service
idea meets the minimum requirements.

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Source: Service Marketing Book-Valarie, Mary- PgNo 0
 Service development and testing: To address the challenge, this stage of
service development should involve all who have a stake in the new
service: customers and contact employees as well as functional
representatives from marketing, operations and human resources. During
this phase, the concept is refined to the point where a detail service
blueprint representing the implementation plan for the service can be
produced.
 A finals step is for each are involved in rendering the service to translate
the final blueprint into specific implementations plan for its part of the
service delivery process. Because service development, design and
delivery are so intricately intertwined, all parties involved in any aspect of
the new service must work together at this stage to delineate the details of
the new service. If not, seemingly minor operational details can cause an
otherwise good new service idea to fail.
 Market testing: Because new service offerings are often intertwined with
the delivery system for existing services, it is difficult to test new services
in isolation.

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Source: Service Marketing Book-Valarie, Mary- PgNo 0
 Commercialization: At this stage in the process, service goes live and is
introduced to the marketplace. It has 2 primary objectives. (1) To build and
maintain acceptance of the new service among large numbers of service
delivery personnel who will be responsible day to day for service quality.
(2) To carry out monitoring of all aspects of the service during introduction
and through the complete service cycle. If the customer needs six months
to experience the entire service, the careful monitoring must be maintained
thorough at least six months. Every detail of the service should be accessed
– phone calls, face-to-face transactions, billing, complaints and delivery
problems.
 Post introduction evaluation: at this point, the information gathered during
commercialization of the service can be reviewed and changes made to the
delivery process, staffing, or marketing mix variables on the basis of actual
market response to the offering. No service will ever stay the same.
Whether deliberate or unplanned, changes will always occur. Therefore,
formalizing the review process to make those changes that enhance service
quality from the customer’s point of view is critical.

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Source: Service Marketing Book-Valarie, Mary- PgNo 0
 Service Blueprinting
Service Blueprint
 Service blueprint is a picture or map that accurately portrays the service
system so that different people involved in providing it can understand and
deal with it objectively regardless of their individual point of view.
 Particularly useful at design and redesign stages of service development.
 It provides a way to break the service into logical components and to
depict the steps or tasks in the processes, the means by which they are
executed and evidence of the service as consumer experiences it.

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Source: Service Marketing Book-Valarie, Mary- PgNo 277
 Service blueprint components

Customer Actions
Line of Interaction

“Onstage” Contact
Employee Actions

Line of Visibility

“Backstage” Contact
Employee Actions
Line of Internal Interaction

Support Processes

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Source: Service Marketing Book-Valarie, Mary- PgNo 279
 Service Blueprint or Mapping
 A tool for simultaneously depicting the service process, the points of
customer contact, and the evidence of service from the customer’s point of
view.
A service blueprint visually displays the service by
simultaneously depicting the process of service delivery, the roles
of customers an employees, and visible elements of the service.

PROCESS

Point of Contact

Evidence

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Source: https://www.slideshare.net/vicku1111/service-blueprint
 Basic Components of Blue Print are :-
× Customer Actions: Area encompasses the steps, choices, activities, and
interactions that the customer performs in the process of purchasing,
consuming and evaluating the service.

Paralleling the customer actions are two areas of contact employee actions
× Onstage employee actions: Activities that the contact employee performs
that are visible to the customer.
× Backstage employee actions: Actions that occur behind the scenes to
support the onstage activities.
× Support processes: Covers the internal services, steps and interactions that
take place to support the contact employees in delivering the service.

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Source: Service Marketing Book-Valarie, Mary- PgNo 279
 Service blue print components :-
 Line of interaction: Direct interaction between the customer and
organization. Any time vertical line crosses the horizontal line of interaction,
a direct contact between the customer and organization or a service
encounter, has occurred.
 Line of visibility: Services that are visible to the customer from those that are
not visible. This line also separates what the contact employees do onstage
from what they do backstage.
 Line of internal interaction: which separates contact employee activities
from those of other service support activities and people. Vertical lines
cutting across the line of internal interaction represent internal service
encounter.
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Source: Service Marketing Book-Valarie, Mary- PgNo 279
 Basic Steps in Building a Blueprint

Identify the service process to be blueprinted

Map the service process from the customer’s point of

view

Map contact employee actions, both Onstage and

Backstage

Map internal support activities

Add evidence of service at each customer action step

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Source: Service Marketing Book-Valarie, Mary- PgNo 285
1. Identify the Service Process to Be Blueprinted: Blueprint can be developed at a
variety of levels, and there need to be agreement on the starting point.

2. Map the Service Process from the Customer’s Point of View: Involves charting
the choices and actions that the customers perform or experiences in purchasing,
consuming, and evaluating the service. If the process being mapped is an internal
service, then the customer will be an employee who is the recipient of the service.
Sometimes the beginning and ending of the service from the customers point of
view may not be obvious. (Appointment in call for haircut – Customer driving to
clinic, parking and locating the screening office as part of the service experience).

3. Map Contact Employees Actions, Both Onstage and Backstage: First the lines of
interaction and visibility are drawn, and then the process from the customer
contact person’s point of view is mapped, distinguishing visible or onstage
activities from invisible backstage activities.
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Source: Service Marketing Book-Valarie, Mary- PgNo 0
4. Map Internal Support Activities: The line of internal interaction can then
be drawn and linkages from contact person activities to internal support
functions can be identified.
5. Add Evidence of Service at Each Customer Action Step: Finally, the
evidence of service can be added to the blueprint to illustrate what it is
that the customer sees and receives as tangible evidence of the service at
each step in the customer experience.

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Source: Service Marketing Book-Valarie, Mary- PgNo 0
 Service Positioning
Positioning on the Five Dimension of Service Quality

1. Reliability - Ability to perform the promised service dependably and

accurately.

2. Responsiveness - Willingness to help customers and provide prompt service.

3. Assurance - Employees knowledge and courtesy and their ability to inspire
trust and confidence.

4. Empathy - Employees knowledge and courtesy and their ability to inspire

trust and confidence.

5. Tangibles - Appearance of physical facilities, equipment, personnel, and

written materials.

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Source: Service Marketing Book-Valarie, Mary- PgNo 123
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Source: Service Marketing Book-Valarie, Mary- PgNo 120
 Positioning on Service Evidence
1. People - Service Contact Employees and Other Customers: Here we are
referring to the contact employees (or any visible employee) and customer
who may be in the service facility. How these people look, how they act,
and who they are will influence the service position in the customers mind.
Employee uniform and dress code can also serve to reinforce or convey a
particular service position.
2. Physical evidence – Tangible Communication, Price, Physical
Environment: All forms of tangible communication (brochures,
advertising, business cards, billing statements), the price, the physical
environment where the service is delivered and any guarantees should be
consistent to ensure the position is well established in the customer’s mind.
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Source: Service Marketing Book-Valarie, Mary- PgNo 291
3. Process – Flow of Activities, Steps in the Process, Flexibility of Process:
The basis of any service positioning strategy is the service itself, but we
have littile knowledge of how to craft service processes for positioning
purposes.
 It can be defined in two variables : Complexity and divergence.
Complexity reflects the number of steps involved in delivering the service
and divergence reflects the executional latitude, or variability of those
steps.
 For example: A physician service is high in both complexity and
divergence. Hotel service are high in complexity (lots of steps in the
service delivery process) but low in divergence (they have standardized
their service processes for every sequence from room cleaning to
checkout).

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Source: Service Marketing Book-Valarie, Mary- PgNo 0
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