MKT412

SERVICE BLUEPRINT OF ‘SUNDARBAN COURIER’:

Failure Point: Most of the problems and mismatches happens in the step of “arrival to the
delivery center, sorting and loading” so we choose this as the failure point.
GAP MODEL OF ‘SUNDARBAN COURIER’:

Bangladesh rapidly becoming a major economic force, now more and more courier companies are
covering cities, towns and rural areas under their wide network Sundarban courier is one of them.
Basically, Services are very different from products. Today’s consumer has become increasingly
demanding. They expect high-quality customer service. There is always a gap between customer
expectations and perceptions. Customer expectations are standers points that customers bring into
the service experience, whereas customer perceptions are subjective assessments of actual service
experience.

Customer gap: Sundarban courier service has some gap between customer expectations and
perceptions.

# Gap 1: Not knowing what customers are expecting

Under gap one the differences between what customers expected of service and company
understanding of those expectations. Sundarban courier service has some lacking things with their
customer at this stage. Like in Sundarban courier service the corporate management doesn’t have
any direct interaction with their customers. Sometimes they are unwilling to ask about customer
expectations. If any customer-facing the problem with their service, they are unable to directly
contact with upward management system so as a result, they lack upward communication is
increasing. Sundarban courier service another lacking thing is they have no online payment
service. When people with the authority to set priorities and the responsibility to do so do not fully
understand customers' service expectations, they may trigger a chain of a bad decision and
suboptimal resource allocations that result in perceptions of poor service quality and customers
dissatisfaction.

# Gap 2: Not selecting the right service design and standards

The gap two is the difference between management’s perceptions of customer expectations and
the translation of those perceptions into service quality specifications and designs. In Sondarban
courier, many branches provide low quality of services they are unable to provide good services
because of environment, place, etc that’s why they are not sufficient for delivering superior quality
service. The quality of service delivered by a customer contact person is critically influenced by
the standards against which they are evaluated and commented. Sundarban courier’s service also
has a lack of customer-driven service standards and the absence of process management to focus
on customer requirements.

# Gap 3: Not delivering the service standards

At this stage, the difference between specifications or standards of service quality and the actual
service delivered to the customer. Once service design and standards are in place it would seem
that the firm’s well in its way to deliver high quality service. This assumption is true but it stills
not enough to deliver excellent service. Sundarban sometimes provides its customers with poor
human resource policies, failure to match demand. Another reason is:

*Sometimes Customers become more impatient.

*Company agents and frontline employees face rude and arrogant behavior from the customers.

* Too much negative behavior from the customer deteriorates employee performance.

# Gap 4: not matching performances to promises.

Sundarban courier service has some problems at this stage. This stage basically differences
between the services delivered to customers and the promise of the firm to customers about its
service quality. Sundarban always tries to give its customers better service but due to some
problems, they are a failure. One major problem is the lack of integrated service marketing
communication. Sometimes differences in policies of units or branches create a gap between
customer and company. One of the major difficulties associated with provider gape four is that
communication to the customer involves issues that cross organizational boundaries. Another gap
is interactive marketing-the marketing between contact people customers.

In summary external communication whether from marketing communication can create a large
customer gap by raising expectations about some delivery. In addition to improving Sundarban
courier service Delivery Company must also manage all communication to the customer so that
inflated promises do not lead to higher expectations.
The Cycle of failure and success

THE CYCLE OF FAILURE

Source: Schlesinger and Heskett (1991)

Some managers in organizations experiencing the ‘Cycle of Failure’ are aware of the negative
impact high level of employee turnover causes the business. However, they fail to improve the
situation largely due to their assumptions about the labor pool, attitudes and biases about the
technology, availability of excuses, preference for short-term gains, and not knowing the real cost
of damage caused by the “Cycle of Failure’ (Schlesinger and Heskett, 1991)
In the case of Sundarban courier service, the cycle of failure starts with destitute working
environment which interprets into destitute client benefit with workers managing with their
clients the way their managers treat them. This happens because they lack recruiting and training
for front-line employees and housekeepers as for managers and senior executives. Furthermore,
Sundarban courier service can put themselves in the cycle of failure by not giving their
employees the motivation and freedom they need. Nevertheless, “the consequences of this cost-
containment strategy include stressed employees who are forced to carry a heavier workload
and/or disgruntled employees who feel underpaid and unappreciated” (Levoy and Levoy, 2007,
p.263).

THE CYCLE OF SUCCESS

Acritical analysis of service-profit chain with the aims of identifying and utilizing opportunities
for improvement plays an integral role in entering this cycle. The service-profit chain “consists of
all activities involved in the direct link between an organization’s service providers and customers
or clients” (Schermerhorn, 2011, p.468). To put it simply, service profit chain includes all the links
in service operations that has impact on the level of customer satisfaction.
The first step to put Sundarban currier service in the cycle of success would be to Empower,
enfranchise and give job ownership to motivate all employees to do better for the company and
then they can is build a well-structured, change specific motivation program by working on
behavioral changes at the same time as belief changes approaching the situation from two fronts
at once.
However, the initial point to focus on is enhancing the internal service quality i.e. investing in
employee skills and capabilities, as well as motivating them, and this will increase the external
service value though increasing the levels of customer satisfaction and loyalty (Heskett et al.,
2008).

SERVICE RECOVERY

Service recovery refers to the actions a service provider takes in response to service failure. By
including also customer satisfaction into the definition, service recovery is a thought-out, planned,
process of returning aggrieved/dissatisfied customers to a state of satisfaction with a
company/service. Service recovery differs from complaint management in its focus on service
failures and the company’s immediate reaction to it. Complaint management is based on customer
complaints, which, in turn, may be triggered by service failures. However, since most dissatisfied
customers are reluctant to complain, service recovery attempts to solve problems at the service
encounter before customers complain or before they leave the service encounter dissatisfied. Both
complaint management and service recovery are considered as customer retention strategies.

Here are some instances of ‘SUNDARBAN COURIER’:

Instance 1: Sometimes the behavior of the service representative is not satisfactory. They don’t
listen to customer care or they don’t want to know the customer's problem. The service
representative should enthusiastic about the problems of customers.
Recovery: The best way to recover this problem is to have a database management system to store
the information of the customers. So, if there is any problem arises, they can inform the customer
immediately. It will enhance the service of the customers. Hence, the customer will be benefited
too.
Instance 2: Very rare it may happen that the delivered product has become damaged due to
ambiances of the delivering truck while it was on the road.
Recovery: In this case, the company can pay demurrage by making the delivery charge-free or
they can pay a demurrage fee.
Instance 3: One of the major service failures is mistaken billings and late deliveries.
Recovery: The solution can be done by implementing return policies, refunds, and guarantees.
For the case of mistaken billing a good apology with a discount can win back customer and for
the instance of late deliveries, the delivery charge should also be discounted.