1 Part two: Managing Service Quality Service blueprinting and internal service processes (internal service quality)

2 Service blueprinting Service bluprinting is a ”tool” to illustrate and make explicit the exteranal and internal service processes to guarantee and standardise quality of service in each service encounters. Companies are interested in service blueprinting since it gives the company a possibility to copy the service concept to be fulfilled in different units. Service blueprinting aims at uniforming the service quality in each unit and by each service employee. Service blueprints have become more complex since nowadays there exist multiple customer interfaces (face-to-face, voice-to- voice, face-to-screen) which all have to been included in service blueprints. Difficulty in service bluprinting is that customers’ action is always unpredictable

3 3 Service blueprinting Customer actions Line of interaction Employee actions Line of visibility Employee actions Line of internal interaction Support processes

4 Creating service and quality mindset inside the service organization Internal marketing – The employees are the first market for the company’s offerings to external customers as well as for its external marketing programmes – An emphasis on the need to view people, functions and departments internal to the company as internal customers to whom internal services have to be provided in the same customer-focused manner as to external customers 4

Defintion of internal marketing Internal marketing is a planned effort using a marketing like appraoch to overcome organizational resistance to change and align, motivate and interfuctionally co-ordinate and integrate employees towards the effective implementation of corporate and functional strategies in order to deliver customer satisfaction through a process of creating motivated and customer oriented employees (Rafiq & Ahmed 2000) 5

Internal marketing approaches and definitions (achieving a service mindset among employees) Employee recruitment phase Employee motivation and satisfaction phase Customer orientation phase Strategy implementation phase Identifying the main elements of internal marketing concept 6

Internal marketing activities Providing a clear corporate visioin and mission Organizational structure Interfuctional coordination Management and leadership Reward system Service standards and measures Empowerment Training and development Developing systems and technology support Internal communications 7

8 Internal service processes and internal customers Service provider Customer Service provider External customer Internal External External service OutputInputOutputInput Output Feedback Service process 8

9 External and internal service quality Correlation External customer perceived service quality Internal customer perceived service quality 9

10 Empowerment of service employees – Service is perceived in ad hoc situations, hence customer needs should be handled by employees who face the customers (e.g service recoveries) – Empowerment has different forms What? How? When? – Low empowerment (service factory) – High empowerment (professional services) – Medium empowerment (mass service and technological services) 10

Service employee’s role stress (see article Broderick 1998) Role conflict – Service employees may feel conflicted since at the customer interface they serve ”two masters”: the customer and the superior” – Sometimes the customer wishes and management orders may be conflicting – How to avoid role conflict? Role ambiquity – Service employees may feel role ambiquity since they may get surprising wishes from customers at the customer interface and thay are not aware how to act upon them – How to avoid role ambiquity? 11

12 Service Culture Adopting a service logic and implementation of a service strategy requires the full support of top managers, middle management and employees Corporate culture called a service culture could be defined in the following way: – A culture where an appreciation for good service exists, and where providing good service to internal as well as external customers is considerd by everyone a natural way of life and one of the most important values

Thank you for your attention looking forward for the next lecture Your readings for the next lecture: Gronroos, C. and Ojasalo, K. (2004) Service profitability and Rindell et al. (2010) Image-in-use 13