EMPLOYEES ROLE IN

SERVICE DELIVERY
The Critical Importance Of
Service Employees
 Key focus on customer contact service employees because:
 They are the service

 They are the organization in customer’s eye

 They are the brand

 They are the marketers

 Their importance is evident in:

 The Services Marketing Mix (People)

 The Service-Profit Chain

 The Services Triangle

 The Service Triangle
Company
(Management)

Internal External
Marketing Marketing
enabling setting
promises promises

Employees Interactive Customers

Marketing
delivering promises
 The Service Triangle

External Marketing: includes anything or anyone

that communicates to the customer before service
delivery

Interactive Marketing: its the real time marketing

were promises are kept

Internal Marketing: management aids the

providers in their ability to deliver the service promise-
recruiting, training, motivating, rewarding, and providing
equipment & technology
Ways to Use the Services
Marketing Triangle
Overall Strategic Specific Service
Assessment Implementation
 How is the service  What is being promoted and
organization doing on by whom?
all three sides of the  How will it be delivered and
triangle? by whom?
 Where are the  Are the supporting systems in
weaknesses? place to deliver the promised
 What are the service?
strengths?
Why Internal Marketing?
 Satisfied employees make for satisfied customers
 Unless service employees are happy in their jobs, customer
satisfaction will be difficult to achieve
 Employees directly influence all 5 dimensions of service quality

Service Profit Chain

Boundary Spanning Roles

 The frontline service employees are referred to as

boundary spanners because they operate at the
organization's boundary

 They provide a link between external customer and

environment and the internal operations of the
organization

 They serve as a critical function in understanding,

filtering, and interpreting information and resources to
and from the organization and its external constituencies
 They vary from the least skilled, lowest paid employees like
order takers, front desk employees, delivery people to well
paid highly educated professionals like doctors, lawyers

 These positions require extraordinary levels of emotional

labor, frequently demand an ability to handle interpersonal
and inter-organizational conflict

 Emotional Labor arises from the discrepancy between the

way frontline staff feel inside and the emotions they are
expected to portray in front of customers
Sources of Conflict
 Personal/ Role Conflict: conflict between what
their job requires and their own personalities,
self perceptions, and beliefs

 Organization/ Client Conflict: dilemma of

whether they should follow the company’s rules
or satisfy customer demands.

 Interclient Conflict: conflict between customers.

Eg: speaking o mobile phone in a cinema hall,
noisy guests in a restaurant
 External Environment

Internal Environment

Boundary Spanners Interact with Both Internal and External Constituents

Strategies for Delivering Service
Quality Through People
Strategies for Internal Marketing: To build a
customer-oriented, service-minded workforce, an
organization must:
 Hire the right people
 Develop people to deliver service quality
 Provide the needed support systems
 Retain the best people
 Hire for
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Pr e t
te t
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s Technology Qu
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Hire the Right People
Compete for the best people
 Identify the people and compete with other organizations to
hire them

Hire for service competencies and service inclination

 Service competencies are the skills and knowledge necessary
to do the job
 Service inclination means their interest in doing service
related job

Be a preferred employer
 Provide career and growth opportunities, excellent internal
support, attractive incentives etc
Develop People to Deliver
Service Quality
Train for technical and interactive skills
 Ongoing training in necessary technical skills like cash
machine procedures, accounting systems in hotels
 Interactive skills allow employees to provide courteous,
caring, responsive, and empathetic service

Empower employees
 Empowerment means giving employees the desire, skills,
tools, and authority to serve customer
 Frontline providers need to be empowered to
accommodate customer requests and to recover on the
spot when things go wrong
 Employees need the knowledge and tools to be able to
make these decisions
 Positive benefits of empowerment: reduction in job
related stress, improved job satisfaction, greater
adaptability, and better outcomes for customers

Promote teamwork
 Teamwork enhances the employees’ abilities to deliver
excellent service
 Build an interactive community of coworkers who help
each other
 Encourage the attitude- “everyone has a customer”
 Team gals and rewards also promote teamwork
Provide Needed Support
Systems
Measure internal service quality
 Internal customer service audits can be used to implement a
culture of internal service quality

Provide supportive technology and equipment

Develop service-oriented internal processes

 Internal processes should be designed with customer value
and customer satisfaction in mind
 Go for “process engineering” (i.e. total redesign of system)
Retain The Best People

Include employees in the company’s vision

Treat employees as customers

 Make them feel valued and take care of their needs
 The products that the organization has to offer its
employees are a job (with assorted benefits) and quality
of work life

Measure and reward strong service performers

Service Culture

To move an organization towards service excellence, we

need a strong service culture that is continuously reinforced
and developed by the firm’s management.

“A culture where an appreciation for good service

exists, and where giving good service to internal as
well as ultimate, external customers, is considered a
natural way of life and one of the most important norms
by everyone in the organization.”