MKTG 440 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Appropriate Technology, Organism, Shortage
Service Standards - 3/26
1. Service standards: based on the most important customer expectations
a. Sources: customer expectations, customer process blueprints, customer
experience, observations
b. Hard standards: things that can be counted, timed, or observed (ex: time, # of
events)
c. Soft standards: opinion based measures that cannot be observed and must be
collected by talking to customers (ex: perceptions, beliefs)
2. Factors necessary for appropriate service standards
a. Standardization of service behaviors: nonvarying sequential process similar to
production of goods
b. Formal service targets/goals: setting specific targets for individual behaviors
3. Examples:
a. Responsiveness standards at Zappos: respond to 80% of all incoming calls
within 20 seconds, respond to all emails in less than 4 hours, respond to online
chats in less than 10 seconds
b. Toyota in Japan:
i. Soft standards: stand with left hand over right, closed mouth smile
ii. Hard standards: appointment available within one day of customer’s
requested day, vehicle service right on first visit
Physical Evidence - 3/28, 4/2
1. Physical evidence: env where service is delivered and where customer and firm
interact; the servicescape
a. How physical evidence affects the customer experience: flow, meaning,
satisfaction, emotional connections to company
i. Clue mgmt: the process of clearly identifying and managing all the
various clues that customers use to form their impressions about firm
2. Roles of the servicescape:
a. Package:
i. Conveys expectations
ii. Influences perceptions
b. Facilitator: facilitates flow of service delivery process
i. Provides info (how am I to act?)
ii. Facilitates the ordering process (how does this work?)
iii. Facilitates service delivery
c. Socializer: facilitates interaction between-
i. Customers and employees
ii. Customers and other customers
d. Differentiator: sets provider apart from competition in mind of consumer
3. Understanding servicescape effects on behavior:
a. Stimulus organism response theory:
i. Stimulus: multidimensional env
ii. Organism: customers and employees
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iii. Response: behaviors directed at the env
4. Components of servicescape:
a. Individual behaviors in the servicescape: people react to places with two
general/opposite forms of behavior
i. Approach: all positive behaviors that might be directed to a place
1. Desire to stay, work, affiliate
2. Shopping enjoyment, spending time and $
ii. Avoidance: negative behaviors
1. Desire not to stay, etc.
b. Social interactions in the servicescape: all social interactions are affected by
the physical container in which it occurs
i. Scripts (specific progression of events)
ii. Physical proximity
iii. Seating arrangements
iv. Size and flexibility
c. Internal responses to the servicescape:
i. Cognition: env can affect beliefs about the products and the people
found in that place
ii. Emotion: color, decor, music, scent affect pleasure
iii. Physiology: volume, temp, air quality, lighting can cause physical
discomfort or pain
d. Variations in individual response:
i. Personality differences: arousal seekers vs avoiders, environmental
screeners
ii. Purpose for being in servicescape: business/pleasure,
utilitarian/hedonic
iii. Temporary mood state
e. Environmental dimensions:
i. Ambient condition: affect the 5 senses (could be subconscious)
ii. Spatial layout and functionality: size, arrangements, furnishings,
seating comfort
iii. Signs, symbols, artifacts: explicit or implicit communication of meaning,
often culturally embedded; important in forming first impressions
5. Guidelines for physical evidence strategy
a. Recognize the strategic impact of physical evidence
b. Blueprint the physical evidence of service
c. Clarify strategic roles of servicescape
d. Assess and identify physical evidence opportunities
e. Update and modernize evidence
f. Work cross-functionally
Employees - 4/4, 4/6
1. Critical importance of service employees:
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a. They are the service
b. They are the org in the customer’s eyes
c. They are the brand
d. They are the marketers
e. Their importance is evident in: the marketing mix, the service-profit chain, the
services triangle
2. The service marketing triangle:
a. Parts:
i. Top- Company (mgmt)
ii. Right- External mktg: getting new customers; making the promise;
advertising, PR, direct mktg, etc
iii. Bottom right- Customers
iv. Bottom- Interactive mktg: delivering the promise; social media,
customer service center, etc
v. Bottom left- Providers
vi. Left- Internal mktg: enabling the promise; vertical and horizontal
communications
b. Aligning the triangle: orgs that seek to provide consistently high levels of
service excellence will align all 3 aspects of the triangle
c. Ways to use the triangle:
i. Overall strategic assessment:
1. How is the org doing on all 3 sides?
2. What are strengths and weaknesses?
ii. Specific service implementation:
1. What is being promoted and by whom?
2. How will it be delivered?
3. Are the support systems in place to deliver the promised service?
3. Promises:
a. Making them:
i. Understand customer needs
ii. Manage expectations (don’t let them get too high)
iii. Traditional mktg communications
iv. Sales, promotions, ads, website communication
b. Keeping them:
i. Service delivery (5 dimensions, recovery, etc.)
ii. Face to face, online, phone
iii. The customer experience
iv. Customer interactions with business partners
v. Critical incidents
c. Enabling promises:
i. Hiring the right people and training them
ii. Employee empowerment
iii. Support systems
iv. Appropriate technology
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Document Summary
Soft standards: stand with left hand over right, closed mouth smile: hard standards: appointment available within one day of customer"s requested day, vehicle service right on first visit. Influences perceptions: facilitator: facilitates flow of service delivery process. Facilitates the ordering process (how does this work?) Facilitates service delivery: socializer: facilitates interaction between, customers and employees, customers and other customers, differentiator: sets provider apart from competition in mind of consumer, understanding servicescape effects on behavior, stimulus organism response theory: Size and flexibility: internal responses to the servicescape, cognition: env can affect beliefs about the products and the people found in that place. Physiology: volume, temp, air quality, lighting can cause physical discomfort or pain: variations in individual response: Personality differences: arousal seekers vs avoiders, environmental screeners. Temporary mood state: environmental dimensions, ambient condition: affect the 5 senses (could be subconscious) Spatial layout and functionality: size, arrangements, furnishings, seating comfort.
