Module 4

Employee role in Service designing

Topics to be covered
➔ Importance of Service Employee
➔ Boundary Spanning Roles
➔ Emotional Labour
➔ Source of Conflict
➔ Quality- Productivity Trade off,Strategies for closing Gap 3.
➔ Customer’s role in service delivery-importance of Customer & Customer’s role
in service Delivery
➔ Strategies for enhancing-customer Participation
➔ Delivery through Intermediaries-key Intermediaries for Service Delivery,
Intermediary Control Strategies.
Terrorists attacked Mumbai's famous Taj Mahal Hotel in 2008,many of the hotel employees, who could
have easily escaped, chose instead to stay back risking their lives to help to save the hotel guests
Importance of Service employees
● Is a core part of the product
○ Most visible element of the service, delivers and determines quality
● Is the service firm
○ Represents the service firm (from a customer’s perspective frontline service is the firm)
● Is the brand
○ Are the core part of the brand
○ Determines whether the brand promise gets delivered
● Play a key role in anticipating customers’ needs
● Customise service delivery
● Build personalized relationship with customers
● They are marketers
Boundary- Spanning Roles
● Frontline service employees interact directly with customers
● Internal service employees are also applicable as boundary spanners
● The frontline service are referred to as boundary spanners because they operate at the
organization’s boundary.
● They provide a link between the external customer and environment and internal
operations of the organization.
● They understand, filter and interpret the information and resources to and from the
organization and its external constituencies.
● Their skills and experience cover the full spectrum of jobs and career.
Boundary-Spanning Roles
● Their positions are often high stress jobs, they need extraordinary skills and
frequently demand an ability to handle interpersonal and interorganizational
conflict.
● These stresses trade-offs can result in failure to deliver services which widens
the service performance gap.
Emotional Labour
● Refer to the labour that goes beyond
the physical or mental skills needed to
deliver quality service.
● The employees are expected to align
their displayed emotions with
organizationally desired emotions.
● Positive attributes and responsiveness
towards the customers require huge
amounts of emotional labour from
frontline employees.
● Emotional labour draws on people’s
feelings to be effective in their jobs.
Sources Of Conflict
● Frontline employees often face interpersonal and
interorganizational conflicts on the job.
● Their frustration and confusion can, if unattended, lead
to stress, job dissatisfaction, a diminished ability to
serve customers, and burnout.
● Because they represent the customer to the
organization and often need to manage a number of
customers simultaneously
● Frontline employees inevitably have to deal with
conflicts, including person/ role conflicts, organization/
client conflicts, and interclient conflicts.
Person/Role conflict
● Boundary spanners feel conflict between what they are asked to do and their
own personalities, orientations, or values.
● Service workers may feel role conflict when they are required to subordinate
their feelings or beliefs, as when they are asked to live by the motto “ The
customer is always right - even when he is wrong.”
● Sometimes there is a conflict between role requirements and self image or
self esteem of the employee.
Organization/ Client conflict
● Conflict between their two bosses, the organization and the individual
customer.
● Service employees are typically rewarded for following certain standards,
rules and procedures.
● However, the employee’s other bosses - the customer - may expect
personalized attention and a significant amount of her time in preparing the
return.
● The organization/ client conflict is greatest when the employee believes the
organization is wrong in its policies and must decide whether to
accommodate the client and risk losing a job, or to follow the policies.
Interclient Conflict
● Sometimes conflict occurs for boundary spanners when incompatible
expectations and requirements arise from two or more customers.
● Occurs most often when the service provider is serving customers in turn (a
bank teller, a ticketing agent, a doctor) or is serving many customers
simultaneously( teachers, entertainers).
● When serving customers in turn, the provider may satisfy one customer by
spending additional time, customizing the service, and being very flexible in
meeting the customer’s needs.
● Meanwhile, waiting customers may become dissatisfied because their needs
are not being met in a timely way.
Interclient Conflict (Continued…)
● Beyond the timing issue, different clients may prefer different modes of
service delivery.
● Having to serve one client who prefers personal recognition and a degree of
familiarity in the presence of another client who is all business and would
prefer little interpersonal interaction can also create conflict for the employee.
Quality/ Productivity Trade-offs
● Frontline service workers are expected to deliver
satisfying service to customers and at the same
time to be cost effective and productive in what
they do.
● E.g.: A physician is expected to deliver caring,
quality, individualized service to his/her
patients but at the same time to serve a certain
number of patients within a specified time frame.
● These essential trade offs demands and
pressures on service employees.
Strategies for delivering service quality through people

● Hire the right people

○ To effectively deliver service quality
○ Many organisations are now looking above and beyond the technical
qualifications of applicants to assess their customer & service orientation

○ Compete for the best people

■ Firms act as marketers in their pursuit of the best employees, just
as they use their marketing expertise to compete for customers.
Strategies for delivering service quality through people

● Hire for service competencies & service inclination

○ Service competencies are the skills and knowledge necessary to do the
job.
● Be the preferred employer
○ Include extensive training career & advancement opportunities , excellent
internal support, attractive incentives & quality goods & services with
which employees are proud to be associated.
Strategies for delivering service quality through people
● Develop people to deliver service quality
○ To grow & maintain a workforce that is customer oriented & focused on
delivering quality
○ Train for technical & interactive skills
■ Technical skills - on -the job training, use of IT to train employees &
knowledge needed on the job
■ Interactive skills- allows to provide courteous, caring, responsive &
empathetic service
Strategies for delivering service quality through people
● Promote teamwork
○ Can enhance the employees’ abilities to deliver excellent service
○ Team goals & rewards also promote teamwork
● Empower employees
○ Empowerment means giving employees the authority, skills, tools &
desire to serve the customer
○ To be truly responsive to customer needs, frontline providers need to be
empowered to accommodate customer request & to recover on the spot
when things go wrong.
Strategies for delivering service quality through people

● Provide needed support systems

○ Without customer- focused internal support & customer-oriented
systems, it is impossible for employees to deliver quality service
○ Measure internal service quality
■ Internal customer service audit can be used to implement internal
service quality culture
Strategies for delivering service quality through people
● Provide supportive technology & equipment
○ No right equipment and or their failure, leads to frustrated in their desire
to deliver quality service
● Develop service-oriented internal process
○ Internal procedures must support quality service performance.
Process reengineering should be done for service oriented internal
process
Strategies for delivering service quality through people
● Retain the best people
○ Employees turnover can be detrimental to customer satisfaction,
employee morale, & service quality.
○ Strategies below can support retention of best employees
■ Include employees in the company’s vision
■ Treat employees as customers
■ Measure & reward strong service performers
Human Resource Strategies
for Delivering Service Quality
through People
Customer Oriented Service Delivery

● Hiring and energizing frontline workers take on a different look and feel
across companies, based on organization’s values, culture, history and vision.
● Strong service culture oriented firm’s emphasis on customer and customer’s
experience.
● Create an environment that staunchly supports the customer contact
employee.
● Employees are responsible for ensuring that the customer’s experience is
delivered as designed.
Traditional Organisational Chart
Customer focused Organisational Chart
Inverted services market triangle

● The two groups that are the most important people to the organization:
○ Customers
○ Those who interact with customers
● Customers should be at the top of the chart followed by those with whom they
have contact.
● A truly customer oriented management team might actually “flip” the service
marketing triangle
Customer oriented focus
● Organization’s most important people are customers.
● The role of top level management changes from commanding to facilitating,
● Supporting employees in the organization who are closest to the customer.
The Importance of Customers in Service co creation and Delivery

● Customer participation at some level is inevitable in all service situations.

● Services are actions or performances, typically produced and consumed
simultaneously
● Customers are indispensable to the production process of service
organizations.
● Many situations customers can control and contribute to their own
dis/satisfaction.
● Participatory customers are always co creators of value.
● Level of customer participation (low, medium, high) varies according to
services
Customer receiving the Service

● Customers can contribute to narrowing or widening GAP 3 through behaviour

○ Appropriate or inappropriate
○ Effective or ineffective
○ Productive or unproductive
● Positive customer participation can ensure a successful outcome.
● The effectiveness of customer involvement at all the levels will affect
organizational productivity and ultimately service quality and customer
satisfaction.
Fellow Customers

● Fellow customers are present in the service environment, and can affect the
service outcome or process
● Mere presence of fellow customers enhances the experience.
● Fellow customers can enhance or detract from customer satisfaction and
perceptions of quality
● Negatively affect the service experience by exhibiting disruptive behaviours,
causing delays, excessively crowding, manifesting incomplete needs
● Customers who have incompatible needs can negatively affect each other.
● The influence of fellow customers helps in online service environment
Customers’ Role
● Three major role played by the customers in service co creation and
delivery:
○ Customer as productive resources.
○ Customers as contributors to quality and satisfaction.
○ Customers as competitors.
Customer as productive resources

● Customers contribute effort, time or

other resources to the service
productive process, they should be
considered as the part of the
organisation.
● They are considered as the “partial
employees” of the organization.

Family members participate in caring for their

loved ones in the ICU and increase the service
productivity
Customers as contributors to quality and satisfaction

● Customer contribute to their own

satisfaction and the ultimate quality
of the service they receive.
● Customer may care little about the
increased productivity of the
organization through their
participation, but are more
concerned about whether their
needs are fulfilled. Customers participation at a gym determines their
satisfaction level
Customer as Competitors

● If the service customer can be viewed as resources of the firm, or as “partial

employees”, they could in some cases partially perform the service or perform
the entire service for themselves and not need the provider at all.
● Such decisions depend upon following:
○ Expertise capacity
○ Resource capacity
○ Time capacity
○ Economic rewards
○ Trust
○ Control
Self-Service Technology(SST)
● SSTs are services produced entirely by the customer without any direct
involvement or interaction with the firm’s employee.
● SSTs represents the ultimate form of customer participation along with a
continuum from services that are produced entirely by the firm to those that
are produced entirely by the customer.
Service Production Continuum
A Proliferation of New SSTs

● Advances in technology,
particularly the internet, have
allowed the introduction of a wide
range of SST
● These technologies have
proliferated as companies see the
potential cost savings and
efficiencies that can be achieved,
potential sales growth, increased
customer satisfaction, and
competitive advantage.
A partial list of SSTs

● ATMs
● Airline check-in
● Internet banking
● Electronic blood pressure
machines
● Insurance online
● Internet shopping
Customer Usage of SSTs

● It benefits customer in terms of convenience, accessibility and ease of use.

● Benefits of firm, including cost savings and revenue growth.
● SST failures result when customers see little personal benefit in the new
technology or when they do not have the ability to use it or know what they
are supposed to do.
Success with SSTs

● Some companies in the

marketplace have been
successful because of
○ They offer clear benefits to
the customers
○ The benefits are well
understood and appreciated
compared to the alternative
delivery modes
○ The technology is user-
friendly and reliable.
Strategies for Enhancing Customer Participation

● Level and nature of customer participation in the service process are

strategic decisions that can impact
○ Organization’s productivity
○ Positioning relative to competitors
○ Quality service
○ Customer satisfaction.
● The customer participation strategy also decrease uncertainty due to
unpredictable customer actions
Strategies for
Enhancing Customer
Participation
Define customers’ role
● In developing strategies, the organization first determines what type of
participation is desirable from customer and how the customer wishes
participant.
● Once the desired level of participation is clear, the organization can define
more specifically what customer’s role and task entail- in essence the
customer’s “job description”.
Define Customers’ Role
● Helping oneself
○ Increase the level of customer involvement in service delivery through active
participation.
○ In such situations, the customer becomes a productive resource, performing
aspects of the service previously performed by employees or others.
● Helping others
○ Sometimes the customer may be called on to help others who are
experiencing the service.
● Promoting the company
○ In some cases the customer’s job may include a sales or promotional
element.
○ Customers are more comfortable getting a recommendation from someone
who has actually experienced the service than from advertising alone.
Recruit, Educate and Reward Customer

● The customer becomes a “partial employee” of the organization at some level

● Strategies for managing customer behaviour in service production and
delivery can mimic to some degree the effort aimed at service employees.
a. Customers understand their roles and how they are expected to perform.
b. Customers are able to perform as expected.
c. Customers receive valued rewards for performing as expected.
Recruit, Educate and Reward Customer
● Recruit the right customer
○ Before the company begins the process of educating and socializing
customers for their roles, it must attract the right customers to fill those
roles.
○ The expected roles and responsibilities of the customers should be
clearly communicated in advertising, personal selling, and other company
messages.
Recruit, Educate and Reward Customer
● Educate and train customers to perform effectively
○ Customer need to be educated, so that they can perform their roles
effectively.
○ Many service offer “customer orientation” programs to assist customers
in understanding their roles and what to expect from the process before
experiencing it.
○ Customer requires two kinds of orientation
■ Place orientation( Where am I? How I get from here to there?)
■ Function orientation (How does this organisation work? What am I
supposed to do?)
Recruit, Educate and Reward Customer
● Reward customers for their contributions
○ Customers are more likely to perform , or to
participate actively, if they are rewarded for doing
so.
○ Rewards are likely to come in the form of increased
control over the delivery process, time savings,
monetary savings, and psychological or physical
benefits.
○ Customer may not realize the benefits or rewards of
effective participation unless the organization
makes the benefits apparent to them.
Recruit, Educate and Reward Customer
● Avoid negative outcomes of inappropriate customer participation
○ Customers who do not understand the service system or the process of
delivery may slow down the service process and negatively affect their
own as well as other customers outcomes.
○ If customers do not perform their roles effectively, it may not be possible
for employees to provide the level of the technical and process quality
promised by the organisation.
○ If customers are frustrated because of their own inadequacies and
incompetencies, employees are likely to suffer emotionally and be less
able to deliver quality service.
Manage the customer mix
● Customer frequently interact with each other in the process of service delivery
and consumption
● Effective management of the mix of customers who simultaneously
experience the service.
● E.g.: If a restaurant chooses to serve two segments during the dinner hour
that are incompatible with each other.
Compatibility management
● The process of managing multiple and sometimes conflicting segments is
known as compatibility management
● It is a process of first attracting homogeneous consumers to the service
environment, then actively managing both the physical environment and
customer to customer encounter in such way as to enhance satisfying
encounter and minimize dissatisfying encounters
Characteristics of
service that increase
the importance of
compatible segments
Co-creation and Customer's roles and engagement in Service delivery
Service Distribution
● Direct delivery service
○ Delivered directly from Service provider to the customer
○ Channels for services are often direct - with the creator of the service
selling directly to and interacting directly with the customer
○ E.g.: Air travel (Jet airways), health care (Apollo Hospitals) & consulting
services (IBM Global services)
Delivery of service through intermediaries

● Delivering services and performing important functions for Service Provider

● First is co producing the service and fulfilling Service Provider’s promises
● Franchise services are produced by the intermediaries using the process
developed by the Service provider
● Services are locally available, convenient to the customer
● They represent multiple service principals such as travel and insurance
agents
● In finance and professional services, they function as the glue between the
brand or company name and the customer by building the trusting
relationship
Service Provider Participants
● Service principal (originator)
○ Creates the service concept (like a manufacturer)

● Service deliverer (intermediary)

○ Entity that interacts with the customer in the execution of the service
(like a distributor/wholesaler)
The primary types of intermediaries used in service
delivery
● Franchisees
○ Services outlets licenced by a principal to deliver unique service concept.
○ Include fast food chains and video stores, and hotels.
● Agents and brokers
○ Representatives who distribute and sell the services of one or more
service suppliers.
○ It includes insurance and financial services.
● Electronic channels
○ Include all forms of the service provisions through television, telephone,
interactive multimedia and computers.
○ Many financial and information services are currently distributed through
electronic media: banking, bill paying and education.
Key issues involving Intermediaries
● Conflict over objectives and performance
● Conflict over costs and rewards
● Control of service quality
● Empowerment versus control
● Channel ambiguity
○ Doubt regarding roles of the company and intermediary
○ Who will undertake market research to identify customer requirements,
the company or intermediary?
○ Who determines the standards for the delivery?
○ Who should train dealer's customer representatives?
Benefits and Challenges for Franchisers of Service
● Benefits ● Challenges
○ Leveraged business format ○ Difficulty in maintaining and
for greater expansion and motivating franchisees
revenues ○ Highly publicized disputes
○ Consistency in outlets and conflict
○ Knowledge of local markets ○ Inconsistent quality Control
○ Shared financial risk and of customer
more working capital ○ Relationship by intermediary
Benefits and Challenges for Franchisees of Service
● Benefits ● Challenges
○ An established business ○ Encroachment of other
format outlets into franchisee
○ National or regional brand territory
marketing ○ Disappointing profits and
○ Minimized risk of starting a revenues
business ○ Lack of perceived control
over operations
○ High fees
Benefits and Challenges in Distributing Services through
Agents and Brokers
● Benefits ● Challenges
○ Reduced selling and ○ Loss of control over pricing
distribution costs and other aspects of
○ Intermediary’s possession marketing
of special skills and ○ Representation of multiple
knowledge service principals
○ Wide representation
○ Knowledge of local markets
○ Customer choice
Benefits and Challenges in Electronic Distribution of
Services
● Benefits
○ Consistent delivery for
standardized services
○ Low cost
○ Customer convenience
Wide distribution
○ Customer choice and ability
to customize
○ Quick customer feedback
● Challenges
○ Price competition
○ Inability to customize with highly
standardized services
○ Lack of consistency with
customer involvement
○ Requires changes in consumer
behavior
○ Security concerns
○ Competition from widening
geographies
Strategies for Effective Service Delivery through
Intermediaries
● Control Strategies ● Empowerment Strategies
○ Measurement ○ Help the intermediary
○ Review develop customer- oriented
● Partnering Strategies service processes
○ Alignment of goals ○ Provide needed support
○ Consultation and systems
cooperation ○ Develop intermediaries to
deliver service quality
○ Change to a cooperative
management structure
Control strategies
● The intermediaries will perform best when
○ Creates standards both for revenues and service performances
○ Measurers results
○ Compensates or rewards on the basis of performance level.
● Principal must be the most powerful participant
● Through possessing unique services with strong consumer demand or loyalty,
or other forms of economic power
Measurement
● By ongoing measurement programmes that feed data back to the principal
● Monitored regularly by the manufacturer
● Helps in creating the measurement program, administers it, and maintains
control of the information
● The company surveys customers at key points in the service encounter
sequence
○ Individuals and dealerships are rewarded later on
○ The advantage is that the manufacturer retains control
● The trust and goodwill between manufacturers and dealers can easily be
eroded if measurement is used to control and punish dealers.
Review

● Some franchisers control through

○ Terminations, non renewals, quotas and restrictive
supplier sources.
○ Expansion and encroachment
○ Quotas and sales goals, typically by offering price
breaks after a certain volume is attained.
Empowerment Strategies

● Help the intermediary develop customer- oriented service processes

○ To improve intermediary performance
● Provide needed support systems
○ Setting up the standards so that customers expectations are met and
service is improved with these standards
● Develop intermediaries to deliver service quality
○ Training/ development to improve the skills of the intermediaries &
employer
● Change to a cooperative management structure
○ Technique of empowerment to manage/motivate franchisees is used
Partnering Strategies
● Alignment of goals
○ Involves aligning company and intermediary goals
● Consultation and cooperation
○ This will lead to intermediaries participating in the
decision
End of Module 4