Designing and Managing

Service Processes
Developing a Blueprint – Some Basic Advice

 Identify key activities in creating and

delivering the service
 Distinguish between front stage (what
customers experience) and back stage
 Chart activities in sequence
 Show how interactions between customers
and employees are supported by backstage
activities and systems
 Establish service standards for each step
 Identify potential fail points
 Focus initially on “big picture” (later, can drill
down for more detail in specific areas)
Service Blueprinting: Key Components

1. Define standards for front stage activities

2. Specify physical evidence
3. Identify principal customer actions
4. ------------line of interaction (customers and front stage personnel)--------
5. Front stage actions by customer-contact personnel
6. ------------line of visibility (between front stage and backstage)--------------
7. Backstage actions by customer contact personnel
8. Support processes involving other service personnel
9. Support processes involving IT

Where appropriate, show fail points and risk of excessive waits

 Simplified Example: Blueprinting a Hotel Visit
(extract only)

Physical Hotel exterior, lobby, Elevator, corridor,

Evidence employees, key room, bellhop
Stage

Make Arrive, Check-in Go to

Customer reservation park at reception room
Line of
Actions
Interaction
Employee Doorman Receptionist
Front

Actions greets, valet verifies, gives

Face-to-face takes car key to room

Phone
Contact Rep.
records,
confirms
Line of
Visibility
Valet Make up
Backstage

Parks Car Room

Enter Register
data guest data
Improving Reliability of Processes
by Failure Proofing

 Analysis of reasons for failure often reveals opportunities for

failure proofing to reduce/eliminate risk of errors
 Errors include:
 treatment errors—human failures during contact with customers
 tangible errors—failures in physical elements of service

 Fail-safe procedures include measures to prevent oversight

of tasks or performance of tasks
 in wrong order
 too slowly
 not needed or specified

 Need fail-safe methods for both employees and customers

Process Redesign: Principal Approaches

 Eliminating non-value-adding steps

 Shifting to self-service
 Bundling services
 Redesigning physical aspects of service processes
Customers as Co-Producers:
Levels of Participation in Service Production

 Low – Employees and systems do all the work

 Medium – Customer inputs required to assist provider
 Provide needed information, instructions
 Make personal effort
 May share physical possessions

 High – Customer works actively with provider to

co-produce the service
 Self Service Technologies (SSTs)

 Self-service is ultimate form of customer involvement in

service production
 Customers undertake specific activities using facilities or systems
provided by service supplier
 Customer’s time and effort replace those of employees

 Concept is not new—self-serve supermarkets date from

1930s, ATMs and self-serve gas pumps from 1970s
 Today, customers face wide selection of SSTs to deliver
information-based services, both core and supplementary
 Many companies seek to divert customers from employee
contact to Internet-based self-service
Service Firms as Teachers:
Well-trained Customers Perform Better

 Firms must teach customers roles

as co-producers of service
 Customers need to know how to
achieve best results
 Education can be provided through:
 Brochures
 Advertising
 Posted instructions
 Machine-based instructions
 Websites, including FAQs
 Service providers
 Fellow customers

 Employees must be well-trained to

help advise, assist customers
Managing Customers as Partial Employees
to Increase Productivity and Quality

1. Analyze customers’ present roles in the business and

compare to management’s ideal

2. Determine if customers know how to perform and have

necessary skills

3. Motivate customers by ensuring that he/she will be

rewarded for performing well

4. Regularly appraise customers’ performance; if

unsatisfactory, consider changing roles or termination
The Problem of Customer Misbehavior –
Identifying and Managing “Jaycustomers”
What is a jaycustomer?
A customer who behaves in a thoughtless or abusive
fashion, causing problems for the firm itself, employees,
other customers

Why do jaycustomers matter?

 Can disrupt processes
 Affect service quality
 May spoil experience of other customers
What should a firm do about them?
 Try to avoid attracting potential & jaycustomers
 Institute preventive measures
 Control abusive behavior quickly
 Take legal action against abusers
 BUT firm must act in ways that don’t disaffect other
customers
Six Types of “Jaycustomer”

 Thief – seeks to avoid paying for service

 Rule breaker – ignores rules of social behavior and/or procedures for
safe, efficient use of service
 Belligerent – angrily abuses service personnel (and sometimes other
customers) physically and/or emotionally
 Family Feuders – fight with other customers in their party
 Vandal – deliberately damages physical facilities, furnishings, and
equipment
 Deadbeat – fails to pay bills on time