ASSIGNMENTS
From Module I
REMINDER
Answer the following In not more than 200 words:
1. Critically examine the importance of Service Sector for the Indian
economy. What, in your view, is the potential / opportunities in this sector?
2. How can an enterprise use services as a winning strategy over
competition? Illustrate with examples.
3. As Director Operations which aspects would you consider for measuring
and improving the service levels of (any one):
a) Air India OR
b) Blue Dart couriers
Sessions 7 & 8 / *8 Nov 2023
1
KEY
LEARNINGS
from last class*
Designing the Service Process
Importance, Innovation & Stages
|
Blueprinting the Service Process
Rajeev Bhatia
Session 12 / 30 Nov 2023
2 Chapter 8: Johnston, Clark & Shulver and
Chapter 8: Zeithaml, Bitner, Gremler, Pandit
3.2
How can
Service Operation Managers
design & maintain
Customer Defined Service Standards
Rajeev Bhatia
Session 13 / 02 Dec 2023
3 Chapter 8: Johnston, Clark & Shulver and
Chapter 8: Zeithaml, Bitner, Gremler, Pandit
What are
Service Standards?
The goal of standardization is to produce a consistent service product from
one transaction to another.
Service Standards are the defined parameters to measure & evaluate
performance levels of a service experience in terms of service ‘behaviors’ or
‘actions’ taken during the service process.
Service firms that produce consistently excellent service- FedEx, Walt
Disney, Singapore Airlines, Vistara, Taj hotels- have specific, quantified,
measurable service goals.
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Type of
Service Standards
Most organizations create service standards as per Company defined
parameters which are almost always based on considerations of cost, output,
quality or profitability.
E.g. Automated IVRS | Response time to a customer complaint
Customer defined service standards are company’s operational goals based
on key requirements identified by the customer himself.
These requirements and performance levels are identified by collating large
data of customer feedback or customer research.
Inventory issues: Co view is based on costs, space, value, ageing
Customer’s viewpoint: ‘Average number of stockouts per week’
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Customer Defined
Service Standards
There are two aspects to Customer Defined Standards:
Hard Customer Defined Standards
- Quantifiable measures of employee behavior and service delivery
- Are those which can be counted, measured, observed or timed.
- Consists of tangible parameters- appearance of physical servicescape,
staff, reliability and responsiveness.
D2C delivery- No of days taken, no of wrong or late deliveries, time in which
returns are processed | Online food delivery- Firm timings | Complaint
resolution (in 24 hrs.)
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Hard
Customer Defined Service Standards
FedEx sets standards through SQI (Service Quality Indicator)
- FedEx has the most comprehensive, customer defined, service standard in the world.
- Has documented customer feedback & complaints since 1980
- ‘Hierarchy of Horrors’ was 12 most common customer complaints- wrong day
deliveries, right day late delivery, pick up not made, lost packages, misinformed by
FedEx, billing & paperwork mistakes, employee performance failures & damaged
packages.
- Weights were assigned to each parameter on basis of its importance to customer
- FedEx looked at ‘number’ of errors instead of ‘percentage’ because of very high
number of transactions managed per day.
- As a result, FedEx has an ‘unforgiving’ internal performance measurement:
100% customer satisfaction after every transaction
100% service performance on every package handled
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Customer Defined
Service Standards
Soft Customer Defined Standards
- These are neither tangible, nor physical attributes of service.
- Can not be easily observed, timed or weighted and must be collated by
talking to customers, employees, intermediaries, managers etc. or by
conducting market research to assess what customers think of your services
relative to your competitors.
Keeping patient information confidential | Polite, smiling staff in hotel |
Trustworthy | Helpful | Responsiveness | Interpersonal skills of a telephone
operator
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Soft
Customer Defined Service Standards
Service Standards at Four Seasons: Global & Local norms
- World’s leading luxury hotels & resorts, operate 82 properties in 35 countries
- 7 ‘Service Culture Standards’, expected of all staff, all over the world, at all times.
- Smile: Employees will actively greet guests, smile, and speak clearly in a friendly tone
- Eye: Employees will make an eye contact, even in passing, with an acknowledgement
- Recognition: All staff will create a sense of recognition, by using guest’s name, when
known, in a natural & discreet manner.
- Voice: Staff will speak to guests in an attentive, natural, courteous and clear manner
- Informed: All guest contact staff will be well informed about their hotel, will take
ownership of simple requests, and not refer guests elsewhere.
- Clean: Staff will always appear clean, crisp, well groomed and well fitted.
- Everyone: Everyone, everywhere, all the time, will show care for our guests.
Additionally, the hotel has 270 core standards that apply to different services provided .
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Developing
Customer Defined Service Standards
1. Identify customer encounter sequence
One service cycle = multiple encounters | Identify customer priorities for each
encounter
2. Translate customer expectation into behavior or action (at every
encounter)
Friendly welcome and a time bound check in process at a hotel | Wholesome
food & prompt service during in room dining
3. Determine appropriate standards (Hard or Soft or a combination of both)
To capture response to a particular service encounter- Meeting a hotel guest
in the hallway vs meeting a guest during breakfast
10
Developing
Customer Defined Service Standards
4. Developing a process to measure the standards
Systems to capture actual feedback for every service encounter across the
whole service cycle
Hotels encourage guests to provide online ratings & reviews | Service
agencies as management consultants solicit service feedbacks during review
meetings with clients
5. Establish target levels for the defined standard for each encounter
Hard targets- measurable, countable, timed or observed during review audit
Soft targets – Opinion based measures, set up after collating customer
expectations through surveys & personal interviews about the service
11
Developing
Customer Defined Service Standards
6. Measure & track service performance
FedEx and Disney have fact based systems that provide information about
their operations so that they can continuously compare actual vs targets
7. Provide performance feedback to employees
FedEx provides weekly feedback on its SQI, so that everyone knows about
company performance and required course corrections in early stages itself.
Supervisors listen in to tele callers or calls are recorded to monitor call quality.
8. Periodically update target levels, measurement process and
customer expectations
Initially, in FedEx SQI a ‘lost packet’ was given an index weight of 10, which
was recently updated to 50, following customer expectation feedback.
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DISCUSSIONS
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