As the name indicates, the capacity closely follows the demand patterns. Constant Capacity strategy would be disastrous if customers are not willing to wait and if competitors are available nearby. The operations manager would need flexibility in his capacities with respect to demand. * Fast Food Restaurant ( Use of Part-time employees ) * Cross Trained Employees in Banking industries for Single Window Services. Strategy with Demand Smoothening In this strategy, the operations manager should attempt to smooth customer demand throughout the time period by inducing more customers to avail the service during the period of low demand. . Offering price discounts during late night flights, 2. Offering discounts in early morning Cinema shows, 3. Using Extra T. V. or large size LCD sets to attract customers during Cricket match in a Restaurant. Designing Services Processes Three generic approaches can be used for designing service processes. These approaches depend upon the extent of customer involvement in the service processes. 1. Designing high customer contact and low customer contact operation separately : It is possible to identify parts of operations having high and low levels of customer contact. 1.
The Research paper on A Note on the Growth of Research in Service Operations Management
... Narasimhan, 1998, Reengineering service operations. Soteriou, 1998, Linking the customer contact model to service quality. Simons, 1999, Process design in a down-sizing service operation. Smith, 1999, ... queues in a service system. Laguna, 1998, Applying robust optimization to capacity expansion of one location in telecommunications with demand uncertainty. Lewis, 1998, ...
In Fast Food Restaurant, the service counter has very high level of customer contact, for placing of order, payment of bill in advance and go for self- service themselves. All the remaining operations like production of dishes, procurement of raw material hardly involves any direct customer contact. This decoupling of different portions of service operations is useful for running low cost operations as a factory within the service system. 2. In a Laundry, the collection and delivery of clothes from/to the customers are high customer contact operation, while the actual laundry work is a low customer contact operation. . In a Airlines , the issue of boarding passes, baggage collection and directing passengers to board planes are high customer contact operations, while the back-end operations as aircraft maintenance, catering, cleaning cabins and baggage handling/delivery are low customer contact operation. There is a need to have efficient communication between the “de-coupled” low and high customer contact operations, e. g. , 1. The front-office of a laundry should be in continuous communication with the back-end operations about the status of work according to the delivery schedules. . The front-office of a Restaurant ( Delivery Counter ) should be in continuous communication with the back-end operations ( Kitchen ) about the status of delivery of items. 1. Designing through an assembly line approach : An assembly line is a system in production set-ups for assembling various components and parts for building a final product. It is constituted by work-stations one after the other in the sequence of assembling jobs to be performed. The workers manning these stations use specialized tools and equipments.
This approach to service design can be used if the service provided to customer are of little variety and the customer is looking forward to a quick, efficient, standard quality and low-price service, such as at Pizza-Hut, Pizza-Corner, Nirula’s & McDonalds. In this kind of service design, there is a little scope for personalized service as the employees are given a standard set of tasks to be performed in a well-defined sequence. This ensures uniform service experienced by the customers. The concept of division of labour is fully exploited in this service design for achieving operational efficiency from the employees. . Designing service with technological interfaces : The recent technological advances have made it possible to shift all customer contact function to technical interfaces, with the customer controlling the various dimensions of the service through these interfaces on their own. 1. ATM machines 2. Air-travel portals allow customers to choose from a variety of air travel options on the desired routes with a comparative listing of fares. In most situations, the automation improves productivity. It takes sometimes to educate customers about a new technology as a replacement for human service providers.
The Business plan on Customer Service Essay
Excellence in customer service is the objective of all organisations wishing to be successful. However, there is often a gap between customer expectations and management perceptions of customer expectations. Organisations often fail to get close to their customers and correctly read their expectations. Customers expect certain things when they walk into a business, and those with the highest level ...
Over a period of time, the customers become self-reliant in the usage of such interfaces and start taking a very active role in the provision of a service. Service Blueprinting It is a special type of flow-charting for service operations. The term blueprint has been derived from architectural drawings, which use blue lines on charts to show the shape, size and other dimensional specifications of various parts of a building. The service blueprints are different from other forms of flow charts as these demarcated the operations in the visibility of the customer and the back-office operations ( invisible to the customers ).
A line of visibility is created between these sets of operations. This helps in identifying those points of encounter with the customer which result creating the impression about the service quality. In the blueprints, small circles/ovals with F written inside are used to identify potential points of Failures so that effective measures ( poka-yokes ) may be planned to avoid such failures. Similarly, small triangles with W written inside are used to identify those points ( in the visibility of customers ) , where the customer has to wait.
For certain operations, which are critical to the good service quality, a standard time duration or a time range is mentioned in the service blueprints. Components of Service Blueprinting There are five components of a typical service blueprint. * Customer actions include “all of the steps that customers take as part of the service delivery process. ” * Onstage/visible contact employee actions are the actions of frontline contact employees that occur as part of a face-to-face encounter with customers. Backstage/invisible contact employee actions are non-visible interactions with customers, such as telephone calls, as well as other activities employees undertake in order to prepare to serve customers or that are part of their role responsibilities. * Support processes are all activities carried out by individuals in a company who are not contact employees, but whose functions are crucial to the carrying out of services processes. * Physical evidence represents all of the tangibles that customers are exposed or collect to during their contact with a company.
The Essay on What is Service Blueprint?
As the name suggests it is concerned with the service process and described as the tool for operational planning giving guidance on following aspects such as how it will be provided, staff actions, physical evidence and most importantly how it is needed to be delivered to its channels. In other words it is describing and developing the service process. Let the blue print be in any form, Flow ...
