1.

Marketing Impact of well-designed service guarantee

Nowadays, increasing competitor and demand of consumer in the market, having a well-
design service guarantee is very importance for a business especially for service industry.
It is because well-design service guarantee represent good service quality and promises to
the consumer. It helps to increase service quality, customer loyalty, brand image,
consumer satisfaction and provide positive impact in their market.

First of the foremost, increasing market share and sales are one of the marketing impacts
by well-design service guarantee. Well design service guarantee can reduce the perceived
risk and improve service quality, it will bring higher market shares to the company if the
price is remain the same. . Since the potential negative consequences reduced, the
expected value of a service is enhanced, and therefore, consumers are likely to be willing
to pay a price premium for the service. Furthermore, it will increase the customer
retention rates and brand loyalty, so it’s have ability to charge a price premium translate
to an increase in sales. It is because the company with the well-design service guarantee
makes customers feel value for money and be at ease, so it increases the consumer loyalty
to the company. As sales and market share increased through well design service
guarantee, the profit of the company and the cost for the service will also increase.
Although costs are increased for setting a well-designed service guarantee, some of the
increase is offset by increased efficiency. Therefore, profits are expected to rise.

Secondly, well-design service guarantee will provide positive world of mouth and
positive brand image to the public. Well-design service guarantee can attract new
customers into the market because it provide positive brand image to the market and
positive word of mouth by loyalty consumer. Positive word-of-mouth markets the service
quality to potential customers and reduces perceived risk, which again can increase the
number of new customers trying the service. Well-design service guarantee also
contribute to an increase in satisfaction and brand loyalty of existing customers. One
explanation is that consumers try to reduce risk by remaining loyal to a brand that is tried

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and found satisfactory. And also it can increase company reputation in the market, higher
reputation are effective in transforming potential customers into loyal customers.

Besides, well-design service guarantee provides customers with clear standards against
which to assess a service performance of the firm. For example related to the cases,
without the guarantee, consumer may not be confident about his assessment and therefore
reluctant to complain when they have problem with the performance of the Network in
uploading and downloading content when using Accelion, so they provide performance
guarantee to guarantee that the performance of the Network in uploading and
downloading content, as a result of using the Accellion services, will no less than 200
percent of that which is achieved by a benchmark origin site being accesed from the edge
of the internet. Therefore, if the performance is not meet as they guarantee, the same
customer might feel perfectly in the right to complain. The guarantee also promises the
customer a meaningful compensation if guaranteed standards are not met. Providing
customers with a clear basis for performance assessment and promising compensation if
standards are not met, increases the strength of the customer's belief that complaining if
dissatisfied due to sub-standard performances leads to a favourable outcome.

Well-design service guarantee can also create strong competitive advantages. It can
specific your service against competitor and better service quality compare to the
competitor. Well-design service guarantee increase customer satisfaction, positive image
and reputation, so increase their competitive in the market. Furthermore, well-design
service guarantee will also increase their market awareness, so the potential customer will
choose their service rather than competitor who are poor in service guarantee. ) Besides,
service guarantees build marketing muscle by encouraging loyalty from current
consumers and by creating positive word-of-mouth. Hence, a well-designed service
guarantee can enhance the competitive advantage of a firm.

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2.0

2.1 Evaluate the design of Accellion in Exhibit 1

Evaluate the design of Accellion in Exhibit 1 quality of service guarantee aspects of the
service are covered by the full satisfaction promise of the guarantee. We can using the
following criteria to evaluate the design of service guarantee, which is unconditional,
easy to invoke, easy to understand and communicate, meaningful, easy to collect on and
credible.

Unconditional is important to make it easy for dissatisfied customer to complaint.

Unconditional talk about customer assurance, it means consumer can enjoy their services
guarantee without any extra condition. For example, consumer can return a product at
any time and get, at his or her option, a replacement, a refund, or a credit. In the cases,
Accellion is expressing an pleasant link of providing 100% management accessibility
barring booked prop and downtime.

Besides, Services Company must ensure their guarantee is easy to invoke. It is because a
customer who is already dissatisfied should not have to jump through hoops to invoke a
guarantee. It will increase the consumer dissatisfaction when the guarantees are not easy
to invoke. Next, Customers shouldn’t have to work hard to collect a payout, either.. In the
Accellion cases they promise will response consumer question within 2hour with any
inquiry in relation to the service.

Furthermore, The procedure should be easy and, equally important, quick—on the spot, if
possible. The surety ought to be less subject to the client and all the more on
administration supplier. In the Accellion, no enquiry would be asked on consumer as
indicated by the Accellion consumer.

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After this, the service guarantee provide to customer must be meaningful. Meaningful
guarantee means the service guarantee provide to customer is useful for them. They must
understand what consumer which to get from the guarantee and the guarantee provide
value for them. In the Accellion cases they promise will response consumer question
within 2hour with any inquiry in relation to the service.

In addition, a guarantee should be written in simple, concise language that pinpoints the
promise. It must be short and simple as possible and with the intention of being highly
memorable. Create clear explanation for your consumer can easy to understand, and be
specific and straight to your points, don’t give vague information to consumer. In
Accellion situation, the QoS they provide to customer is simple and easy to understand.

Lastly, the services guarantee must be credible. guarantee should provide excellent
service to the customers if can’t guarantee the service that will bear a high risk to
compensate customers. For this situation, the nature of administration (QoS) ensure by
Accellion is custom-made and can satisfy customer demand. Accellion QoS provide
confident promise to customer for their service guarantee.

2.2 Effectiveness in communicating service excellence

Accelion service guarantee is effective in communicate service excellent to potential and

current customer. Their service guarantee will attract customer to purchase their services
because they found out the company is confident on their service. For example, Accelion
Company is confident on their internet speed, he promise that the download and
uploading speed is not less than 200%. Furthermore, the provide 100% service
availability to attract potential and current consumer. In additional, security and privacy
policy is important nowadays because customer is very care about their privacy and the
company security. Accelion promise that the data of the users is kept secretly in their
database. So strong in the security and privacy policy make consumer confident by using
their services.

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2.3 Recommenced

In my opinion, I suggest them to improve their implementation. First, hiring more staff
can ensure productivity and also provide idea for QoS guarantee. Besides, Accelion
Company can provide staff training to improve their staff ability to provide a quality
service and well-design service guarantee, because the employee ability can directly
affect the service guarantee quality. They can provide them detail of QoS(quality of
service) guarantee, explain it to them and ensure their staff are clearly understand the
guarantee they provide. Training the staff can also enhance administration
productivity.The complaint handling procedure will be efficiency when the staff clearly
understand the detail of guarantee and have ability to handling the complaint from
customer. And also they must keep truck of consumer expectation trough the research
and feedback, it is because customer mind and expectation are always change, so they
must know customer expectation frequency. They can through research on consumer
behavior and collect feedback from customer to know what is customer expectation to
their service guarantee and what is the problem they found in their guarantee .These
information are useful to help Accelion to improve their service guarantee.

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3.0

3.1 Guarantee be successful in creating a culture for service excellence

Based on my view, the guarantee has been successful in creating a culture for service
excellence within Accellion. The service guarantee will improve employee performance
in providing and maintenance good quality service to consumer. They have built a
culture of service excellence where everyone is consistently taking more action to create
more value for everyone else.. It also means looking at the systems and processes in place
to sustain a culture of service excellence and the leadership actions that are necessary to
ensure they stay in place.

Service guarantee is effective to lead the company to achieve a culture of excellence. The
company provide service guarantee to customer when they have problem of their services.
If the company fails to provide satisfaction to their customers in all time, it would affect
their company image and reputation. To solve this problem, the company must ensure
their employee is produce quality service in all time. Company can provide guideline tom
ensure their progress is on the right ways. In the case, service guarantee guides the
company to focus in customer satisfaction and providing the best service to satisfy their
customer.

Service guarantee will be costly when your service is failure; it is because consumer can
claim replacement, refund or credit, under the circumstances of service delivery failure.
So the employees are know this situation, this will prove them to work hard to ensure
their services are quality to satisfy consumer demand to avoid customer claim from
guarantee. For example, Service guarantee made Accellion company put more effort and
focus on customer satisfaction, they are working well in service and they will keep
improve their service time on time to ensure their service is quality and meet customer
demand. They are always take customer situation in serious, they are maintains a 24-hour
support center and will provide the customer with a response no more than 2 hour from
time of receipt of such query by customer services.

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3.2 Method to achieve such culture

Award
The Accellion can provide award system to help their employee to achieve such culture.
Award means how employer appreciates employee contributions. Developing award can
keep employees motivated and invested in your business. Accellion Company can create
an Employee of the month awards for best Employees to praise their performance and
their disburse to the company and also encourage other employee to work better to
compete this award. These awards can combine a variety of employee attributes,
including sales, customer service, and attendance and being a team player. So the
employee within the company will work hard and provide quality performance in all time
because of this award.

Punishment

The Acccellion can also provide punishment system to push their employee achieve their
culture. Punishment has immediate effect for poor employee to correct their habit and
improve their performance but also the long-term effect for the employee behavior.
Although punishment is effective in improve employee behavior and performance but
they ways of punishment could have bad impact to employee, so they must use the right
punishment method. Accellion can use pay cut as their punishment, but only for serious
situation. This is use to cut problem employee pay when they have serious mistake that
will harm company and affect their service business. This can improve their behave and
be more focused on their job to perform quality service to consumer.

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4.0

Ways to minimize the potential cheating on the services guarantee

My answer is agrees, consumer may exploit this insurance and "stage" administration
disappointments to conjure the certification.

First method can help Accelion to minimize potential cheating on its guarantee is the
service guarantee they provide should not be unconditional and low easy to invoke. The
conditional must list and explain it in detail to avoid customer cheating. The customer
nowadays is very clever, they will try hard to found out the error and mistake from the
unconditional guarantee and take advantages on its. In Accelion, they did not provide
any specific conditions of invoking are written. The ease of invoking a guarantee service
of Accellion is high, so the customer will try to claim money from their service guarantee.
Therefore, the service guarantee provide by Accelion must be conditional and be specific
in explanation. For example, they can list down the conditional and explanation clearly in
their service guarantee.

Besides, Consumer may cheat and take advantages on its guarantee when they are
dissatisfaction with the service. Cheating increases after the individual is unhappy or
perceives unfair treatment, such as unhappiness with his or her rate of raise or
performance. It is because a dissatisfied customer may view a poor service performance
as a “breach of the contract,” which then causes him or her wanting to seek revenge on
the firm. In the cases, Accelion provide high standard services to customer, but if they
fail their promise to customer, they may feeling angry and try to revenge on the firm and
cheat them. So the Accelion must focus on their service and ensure that their service is
quality and high performance to create high satisfactiom to their customer.

Furthermore, the research show that the customer cheating on service guarantees is lower
when customers intend to repeat purchase from the same firm than when they do not.
Which mean the customer with no intention to repeat purchase provide a higher
propensity to cheat from the guarantee. In the cases, Accelion can minimize this problem
by focus to provide their service to loyal customer and membership rather than one-off
customer. And they can provide benefit with the service to repeat purchase customer and

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build relationship with them to improve loyalty. So, customers who are loyal to Accellion
will be benefit. Futher, Accellion can also reserve or stop the right of invoke service
guarantee on customer who are cheating.

Lastly, customer cheating on service guarantees increases with increasing size of the
payout. High potential material gain higher propensity to take advantage from guarantee
and also the incentive to cheat increases with the size of the economic gain (sometimes
referred to as reward or benefit). Similarly in the services marketing literature, it has been
suggested that people make fraudulent complaints for material gain because the rewards
for opportunism are high . To minimize this problem, Accelion can reduce size of payout
and also reduce the potential material gain to minimize the cheating happens.

References

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1. Five Ways to Create a Customer Service Culture | Shep Hyken. 2015 [ONLINE]
Available at: http://www.hyken.com/customer-service-training/five-ways-to-
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3. Disciplinary Action Against Employees : Penalties and Punishments. [ONLINE]
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4. The Effects of Punishment on Employee Behavior | Chron.com. 2015. [ONLINE]
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5. Consumer Cheating on Service Guarantees, Jochen Wirtz and Doreen Kum 2015.
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March 2015].
6. Development of a Conceptual Model on the Impact of Guarantees on Service
Firms and Their Customers, Jochen Wirtz and Prem N. Shamdasani 2015
[ONLINE] Available at: http://acrwebsite.org/volumes/11198/volumes/ap01/AP-
01 [Accessed 05 March 2015].
7. The Power of Unconditional Service Guarantees - HBR. 2015. [ONLINE]
Available at: https://hbr.org/1988/07/the-power-of-unconditional-service-
guarantees/ar/1. [Accessed 05 March 2015].
8. Service guarantees: a review and explanation of their continued rarity.. 2015
[ONLINE] Available at: http://www.freepatentsonline.com/article/Academy-
Marketing-Studies-Journal/243043172.html. [Accessed 05 March 2015].
9. Building a Culture of Service Excellence - UP Your Service. 2015 [ONLINE]
Available at: http://www.upyourservice.com/blog/service-culture/the-building-of-
a-culture-of-service-excellence. [Accessed 05 March 2015].

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10. Jochen Wirtz, “Development of A Service Guarantee Model” Asia Pacific Journal
of Management, 15, 1998, 51-75
11. Jump up ^ Jochen Wirtz, Doreen Kum, and Khai Sheang Lee, “Should a Firm
with a Reputation for Outstanding Service Quality Offer a Service Guarantee?”
Journal of Services Marketing, 14, No. 6, 2000, 502–512

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