Assignments

Services Marketing and Management

There are four assignments given here. Do any two.
All assignments carry equal marks (20).
 Submissions may be made ONLY in the form of MSWord documents, sent as attachments by
email [printouts neither necessary nor accepted].
 Please note that there is a word LIMIT of 750 words on all assignments.
 All assignments are due by midnight of 19 Jan 2020
 Points will be cut for (a) exceeding word limit, and/ or (b) missing the due date.
 Plagiarism will be immediately notified to PGP office, no discussion will be entertained.
 Please submit only two assignments. If you submit any more, I will mark only the first two.
I will NOT mark all of them and take the 'best two'.

Assignment 1
Interview 10 customers of any service/ business and report on their key determinants of satisfaction
with respect to that business. Please note, this is about expectations or determinants of satisfaction,
not a satisfaction survey.
You need to identify a suitable business, locate customers and develop a relevant interview guide.
You could take the IIMU as a whole, PGP, the Hostel Mess, ... or select a business outside IIMU
too. Your choice.
Include your interview guide as an appendix (not counted for word limit).

Assignment 2
Describe a service experience you had (good or bad) … 75 words max
How could this experience have been ‘consciously managed’? (don’t concern yourself about
whether it was actually managed or not)
Example: “I had an issue, and called the call centre for some clarifications. The person said
they would investigate and call back in 2 hrs. And without me following up, they called
back within 2 hrs with a clarification, resolution and explanation”
How could they be consciously managing this?
- Issue tracking system in place.
- Individual KPIs include a metric on whether the issue was resolved within deadline in
the tracking system.
- … and so on

Assignment 3
Identify a provider that you would give a rating of ‘average’.
1
How can that provider get a better rating from you next time?
Be specific, no “motherhood” statements please.
Example: If you say “They should focus on service improvement”. or “They should have a
feedback system in place” you will get zero marks.
Get specific, and go deep under the tip of the ice.
In the context of that provider and you as a customer, what could they do to get a better
rating from you?

Assignment 4
Consider a provider you have been a customer of for a good length of time (i.e. not a one-off
transaction).
Take one specific aspect of your experience as a customer, and write a note on your point of view
relating to that aspect.
Then write what you believe the provider’s point of view could be, related to that aspect.
Example: You could take IIMV, say the Library?
Your point of view could be that you want to be able to access the library at any time,
especially late night as that is the time you are doing referencing, studying etc.
… and then, what do you think the IIMV point of view may be?
Are the two similar? Different? ….