20 Process of Service Creation and Delivery

Dr. Jasveen Kaur

 

PROCESS OF SERVICE CREATION AND DELIVERY

 

Service delivery is a component of business that defines the interaction between providers and clients where the provider offers a service, whether that is information or a task, and the client either finds value or loses value as a result. Good service delivery provides clients with an increase in value.

 

Elements of a Service Delivery System

 

Running a successful service company should be synonymous with delivering excelling service. Designing the service delivery system should focus on what creates value to the core organizations and how to engage frontline employees to deliver the ultimate customer experience.

 

The four key elements in such a system are:

Source:-http://servicefutures.com/facility-management/four-key-elements-service-delivery-system/

 

 

1. Service Culture is built on elements of leadership principles, norms, work habits and vision, mission and values. Culture is the set of overriding principles according to which management controls, maintains and develops the social process that manifests itself as delivery of service and gives value to customers. Once a superior service delivery system and a realistic service concept have been established, there is no other component as fundamental to the long-term success of a service organization as its culture.

 

2. Employee Engagement includes employee attitude activities, purpose driven leadership and HR processes. Even the best designed processes and systems will only be effective if carried out by people with higher engagement. Engagement is the moderator between the design and the execution of the service excellence model.

 

3. Service Quality includes strategies, processes and performance management systems. The strategy and process design is fundamental to the design of the overall service management model. Helping the client fulfill their mission and supporting them in the pursuit of their organizational purpose, must be the foundation of any service provider partnership.

 

4. Customer Experience includes elements of customer intelligence, account management and continuous improvements. Perception is king and constantly evaluating how both customer and end-user perceive service delivery is important for continuous collaboration. Successful service delivery works on the basis that the customer is a part of the creation and delivery of the service and then designs processes built on that philosophy – this is called co-creation.

 

The order that these four points are listed in is not random and there is a logical sequence in first defining the service culture, then employee engagement, which will then foster a high level of service quality, which will then develop the right customer experience. Therefore, frontline service employees should be empowered to create appreciated service moments and through their service performance influence and preferably leverage the purpose of the customer organization. (http://servicefutures.com/facility-management/four-key-elements-service-delivery-system/)

 

The Service Triangle

 

Service Marketing is about promises-promises made and promises meant to customers. A strategic framework known as the service triangle visually reinforces the importance of people in the ability of firms to keep their promises and succeed in building customer relationships. The triangle shows the three interlinked groups that work together to develop, promote, and deliver services. These key players are the company (SBU, department, or “management”), the customers, and the providers. Providers can be the firm‟s employees, subcontractors or outsourced entities who actually deliver the company‟s services. Between these three points on the triangle, three types of marketing must be successfully carried out for a service to succeed: external marketing, interactive marketing, and internal marketing.

(Source: Valarie A. Zeithaml)

 

On the right side of the triangle are the external marketing efforts that the firm engages in to develop its customer‟s expectations and make promises to customers regarding what is to be delivered. Anyone or anything that communicates to the customer before service delivery can be viewed as part of this external marketing function. But external marketing is just-promises made must be kept. On the bottom of the triangle is interactive marketing or real-time marketing. Here is where promises are kept or broken by the firm‟s employees, subcontractors or agents. Those people representing the organization are critical at this point. If promises are not kept, customers become dissatisfied and eventually leave.

 

The left side of the triangle suggests the critical role played by internal marketing. Management engages in these activities to help the providers deliver on the service promise: recruiting, training, motivating, rewarding, and providing equipment and technology. Unless service employees are able and willing to deliver on the promises made, the firm will not be successful.

 

All three sides of the triangle are essential, and the sides of the triangle should be aligned. That is, what is promised through external marketing should be the same as what is delivered; and the enabling activities inside the organization should be aligned with what is expected of service providers. (Valarie A. Zeithaml)

 

Service Process

 

In order to understand the service product as a process, one can begin by simple recollection of activities or events that take place while using a service. A service experience is nothing but passing through a series of pre-determined steps or stages involving some activity or interaction. A sum total of these create a service experience. For instance, using an air service involves activities like ticket booking, arrival at the airport, check-in, security check, boarding, being seated in the plane, meal service, collection of luggage etc. All these activities are linked together to create a service experience. Service firms use these processes to create differentiation in their service products. Difference in service product is nothing but difference in the service process. Goods are differentiated on the basis of their physical attributes while services are differentiated on the basis of the processes that comprise them.

 

One way of looking into the service process is whether they are visible or invisible to the customer. For instance, in the airline case, the processes that are visible to customers are check-in, security check and physical transfer of passenger to the airplane. On the other hand, the invisible processes include the computerized booking system, the refreshments procurement process and aircraft preparation process.

 

The service processes that create the service experience may involve processing of people, information and materials. Hence, three types of service processes can be distinguished. The people processing processes make the people or customers pass through a sequence of activities in order to create a service experience. For instance, the process of transferring passengers from the airport to the airplane and security check is people processing process. The ticketing process at the booking counter or check-in involves processing of information on the computer system. Finally, the meal service and luggage transfer involves material processing. All kinds of process must be designed to offer the customer a satisfying experience.

 

From the customer‟s point of view, services are experiences (e.g., calling a customer contact center or visiting a library). From the organization‟s perspective, services are processes that have to be designed and managed to create the desired customer experience. This makes processes the architecture of services. Processes describe the method and sequence in which service operating systems work and specify how they link together to create the value proposition promised to customers. In high-contact services, customers are an integral part of the operation, and the process becomes their experience. Badly designed processes are likely to annoy customers because they often result in slow, frustrating, and poor-quality service delivery. Similarly, poor processes make it difficult for frontline employees to do their jobs well, result in low productivity, and increase the risk of service failures. (Christopher Lovelock)

 

Importance of Service Process

 

In case of goods, the manufacturing process takes place in factories in factories in the absence of customers. The processes that lie within the factories tend to be in the sole domain of operations and the customer rarely comes in contact with them. But in services, customer interaction with the system is often integral to service creation. This makes the customer a part of the service process. Service failures, often, are the result of inadequately and inappropriately designed service processes.

 

Ideally, the service process must be designed to satisfy the customer. The stories that float about the poor performance of service firms point tothe failure of some process or the other in delivering a satisfying response. Sometimes, the customer gets bugged with the frontline process with he or she interacts and often the poor service experience is caused by processes that take place in the backroom. For instance, customers in a departmental store find the checking-out very cumbersome and time consuming. The checking-out is a frontline customer involving process. Similarly, credit card customers have horror stories to tell about disappointments and frustrations that they have to experience in getting across to the relevant department using the customer care number. Backroom process failures, on the other hand, cause the frontline service to deteriorate. For instance, order dinner at a restaurant may be a very pleasant experience due to excellent frontline process design and execution but actual dinner delivery may be late. Inadequate backroom process in this case is the culprit foe the delay.

 

Understanding Service Process

 

Three issues are important in understanding the service process. These are: variety involved in service process, value addition, and allocation of key tasks.

 

1.   Variety in Process- The variety characteristic pertains to whether the process has a fixed, non-varying sequence of activities leading to standardized response or services. Process variety has implications on cost, complexity and flexibility of operations. Less variety in process usually gives the benefit of cost efficiency but it scores low on flexibility. Three types of processes can be identified with different degrees of process variety: runners, repeaters and strangers.

 

a. Runnercategory of process refers to standardized set of activities. These are generally found in high volume operations. A well-laid standardized sequence of activities are performed gain and again in this process with variation. These processes lend successfully to tight process control and automation. For instance, railway inquiry about the train arrival or departure or checking the bank account balance is now automated using computerized systems. The standardized, routine nature of the process allows high efficiency in operations.

 

b. Repeaterscategory of process is more or less same as runners except that they tend to be little more complex and occur less frequently. Repeaters often come into existence as a result of unforeseen expansion of services and the runner process that was designed to handle standardized service is now made to handle variety. For instance, a pizza restaurant expands its menu entry by including burgers. This often happens when a service firm, which begins with limited service, expands into other services. Repeaters often take more resources and may require re-learning or process adjustment.

 

c. Strangers are non-standardized processes. They are least frequent and often take the form of one off projects. In case of strangers, demand forecasting is difficult and resource requirements tend to be ill-defined. When a firm adds a new service, stranger processes are added which later on move on to become repeaters and runners.

 

2.   Value Addition in Process- The service are processes. The process, which makes up the service, consists of a number of sub-processes or activities. The next step in developing true understanding of the service process is to appreciate how much value is added in different parts of the process. This means which part of the process is most important to the customer. The customer may not be equally sensitive to each stage in the service process. For instance, is a bank customer more sensitive to the „treatment‟ or „interaction‟ that takes place in the customer contact area between the employee and the customer or are the backroom processes that determine accuracy and reliability more important? That part of the service process which takes place in the backroom and does not involve customer contact is probably more important in case of a bank because customer quality connotation in banking context is driven more by reliability. The opposite may be true for a lounge in a five-star hotel. The frontline process may be more important and value driven in this case.

 

3.  Task Allocation- The third aspect in understanding the service process involves allocation of tasks that are to be carried out throughout the process. Depending upon the value focus of the service process, the tasks must be allocated. One simple way through which the service process can be broken down is front office and back office. Tasks must be distributed between the front office and the back office depending upon the importance. It is important to know that task allocation cannot be fixed for all times to come. Allocation would change according to changes in the service concept. For instance, the grocery stores in India, that served the local clientele, focused on frontline activities to create and build relationships with customers. But now, this approach seems to be becoming less effective with the emergence of twin-worker families. Both the partners work now and therefore do not have time to visit and interact with sellers. The service concept is now shifting from face-to-face interaction to remote selling. What customer now values is the efficiency of executing transactions over phone or other media not the quality of interaction with the seller. This shift accordingly requires reallocation of tasks and focus from front to back office, requiring investments in information technology. (Harsh V. Verma)

 

Importance of Customers in Service Creation and Delivery

 

Customer participation at some level is inevitable in all service situations. Services are actions or performances, typically produced and consumed simultaneously. In many situations employees, customers, and even others in the service environment interact to produce the ultimate service outcome. Because they participate, customers are indispensable to the production process of service organizations, and in many situations they can control or contribute significantly to their own dis/satisfaction.

 

  • Customer Receiving the Service- Because the customer participates in the delivery process, he or she can contribute to narrowing or widening gap through behaviors that are appropriate or inappropriate, effective or ineffective, productive or unproductive. The level of customer participation- low, medium, or high- varies across services. In some cases, all that is required is the customer‟s physical presence (low level of participation), with the employees of the firm doing all the service production work. In other situations, consumer inputs are required to aid the service organization in creating the service (moderate level of participation). Inputs can include information, effort, or physical possessions. In some situations, customers are truly co creators of the service (high level of participation). For these services, customers have important participation roles that affect the nature of the service outcome. The effectiveness of customer involvement at all the levels will affect organizational productivity, and ultimately, service quality and customer satisfaction.
  • Fellow Customers- In many service contexts, customers receive and/or co create the service simultaneously with other customers or must wait their turn while other customers are being served. In both cases, “fellow customers” are present in the service environment and can affect the nature of the service outcome or process. Fellow customers can enhance or detract from customer satisfaction and perceptions of quality. Some of the ways fellow customers can negatively affect the service experience are by exhibiting disruptive behaviors, causing delays, excessively crowding, and manifesting incompatible needs. In some cases, overly demanding customers can cause a delay for others while their needs are met. This occurrence is most common in banks, post offices, and customer service counters in retail stores. Excessive crowding or overuse of a service can also affect the nature of the customer‟s experience.(Valarie A. Zeithaml)

 

Customers’ Roles

 

As participants in service creation, production, and delivery, customers can perform three major roles.. These are explained as follows:-

  • Customers as Productive Resources- Service customers have been referred to as “partial employees” of the organization- human resources who contribute to the organization‟s productive capacity. If customers contribute effort, time, or other resources to the service production process, they should be considered as part of the organization. Customer inputs can affect the organization‟s productivity through both the quality of what they contribute and the resulting quality and quantity of output generated. In a business-to-business service context the contributions of the client can enhance the overall productivity of the firm in both quality and quantity of service. Customer participation in service production raises a number of issues for organizations. Because customers can influence both the quality and quantity of production so delivery system should be isolated as much as possible from customer inputs to reduce the uncertainty they can bring into the production process. But services can be delivered more efficiently if customers are truly viewed as partial employees and their coproduction roles are designed to maximize their contributions to the service creation process. Organizational productivity is increased by using customers as a resource to perform tasks efficiently which were completed by employees previously.
  • Customers as Contributors to Service Quality and Satisfaction- Another role customers can play in service co-creation and delivery is that of contributor to their own satisfaction and the ultimate quality of the services they receive. Customers may care little that they have increased productivity of the organization through their participation, but they likely care a great deal about whether their needs are fulfilled. Effective customer participation can increase the likelihood that needs are met and that the benefits the customer seeks are actually attained, especially for services such as health care, education, personal fitness, and weight loss, in which service outcome is highly dependent on customer participation.
  • Customers as Competitors- The third role played by service customers are that of potential competitor in performing the service for themselves. If self-service customers can be viewed as resources of the firm, or as “partial employees,” they can also partially or entirely perform the service for themselves and not need the provider at all. Thus, customers in sense are the competitors of the companies that supply the service. (Valarie A. Zeithaml)

 

CONCLUSION

 

Service delivery is a component of business that defines the interaction between providers and clients where the provider offers a service. Managing customer in the process of service delivery is critical challenge for service firms. Whereas manufacturers are not concerned with customer participation, service managers constantly face this issue because their customers are often present and active partners in service production and co-creation. Through understanding the importance of customers in service creation and delivery and identifying the roles played by the customer in a particular context, managers can develop strategies to enhance customer participation.

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