Lecture notes - Managing people for service advantage - Services Marketing PDF

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MARK270 CHAPTER 11 Managing people for service advantage Chapter focusing on service personnel and the service front-line managers. Source of customer loyalty and can add value to the company if the quality of staff is better than competition, could be a source of differentiation. The most important because they make up the first impression through “Moments of truth”. Sometimes customers prefer a certain company because of personnel who are friendly and easygoing. Customer loyalty is built by: -

Anticipate needs Customize service delivery Building personalized relationships

Frontline service agents can be indirect through machines like ATMs, IVRs or Websites. Behind the front-line are office managers who do not interact with the customers. What makes frontline work difficult? -

Boundary Spanners Personnel who link the organization to the outside world. Those personnel go to the customer as opposed to the customers coming to the organization. Usually to reach operational and marketing goals. For example, Sales People who have targets and goals set by their managers. Those managers expect the following form them:  Be fast and efficient  They need to delight customers  Expected to do selling, cross-selling and up-selling  Have to enforce pricing and rate integrity

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Conflicts They have to decide whether or not to obey the organization rules and regulations or to satisfy the client’s demands. This conflict is especially serious in companies that are not customer-oriented. A conflict between the job roles the personnel is expected to full and their personalities and believes. Thus, companies enforce ‘professionalism’ onto the staff, and it is very difficult to change. Another form of conflicts, is a fight between customers within the confines of the service factor, thus the personnel have to intervene.

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Emotional Labour Personnel who are always thinking with their hearts and is related to high empathy factors – those people lead to management issues. It creates a problem for the company when it comes to frontline work – thus, they ensure strict rules. It

puts pressure and stress on the emotional employee. This can be avoided by HR during the recruitment and selection process. Cycles of Failure -

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Employee: Bored with the job, developed poor service attitude, low service quality, high turnover. Customer: Dissatisfied with the service, could lead to discontinuing the relationship with the company, and thus increases the customer turnover. This decreases the customer loyalty.

Service Sabotage by the employee Check slides and text-book. Read about it online. Four kinds of sabotages (1) Customer-private, (2) Customer-public, (3) SporadicPrivate, & (4) Sporadic-public. Other than employees, sometimes customers sabotage the service as well. By negative WOM, by damaging company properties, by going on customer strikes. The servicescape Model Firms try to invest in their people which will lead to a long-term benefit. They offer attractive pays and benefits to retain talented workers. The higher the training, and the more the salaries, will increase the employee satisfaction which will reflect on the customer satisfaction. Service Talent Cycle 1. Starts with hiring the right person as per position needs. 2. Enabling the personnel by empowering the personnel. It comes in levels – one wouldn’t give high levels of delegations to frontlines due to their junior levels, but other lower-risk decisions can be delegated to them. 3. Motivating and energizing the people – thus, the whole range of rewards could be utilized to improve their skills and abilities. Hire the Right People Be a preferred employer For customer contact jobs, hire personnel who are friendly, easy-going, soft-hearted, etc. to offer the customers with the best service.

Who is the right candidate? -

Employ multiple, structured interviews: Structure interview in order to get information that you need, have several interviewers in order to reduce bias. Observe behavior Conduct personality test Give a realistic view of the job...