Course Information

Course Title: Service Marketing

Course Code: BUS457

Term: Spring 2021

Submitted to

Nafees Imtiaj Ahmed

Senior Lecturer, BBA Coordinator

University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB)

Submitted by

Md Faysal Sarker (162011068)

Mobasshir Ishraq (172011076)

Nowsheen Mubashira Rodela (172011077)

1. Service Category:
The service that we are planning to project is an online-based cleaning service. This cleaning
service is basically a possession processing service which consists of floor cleaning, furniture
cleaning, curtain/blinds cleaning, toilet cleaning, water/septic tank or reservoir cleaning,
staircase/elevator cleaning, garden cleaning, and swimming-pool cleaning. These are the core
services of Premium Cleaning Services, Dhaka. As it is something we clean that is at the direct
possession of the service taker, we can easily consider it as a “Possession Processing Service”.
We also do disinfection/sanitization right before/after entering the house. There is also cashless
payment methods available for a comfortable customer experience. These are our supplementary
services.

For most of the possession processing services, the service takers are tend to go to the service
providing firm. But ours is such a possession processing service that includes customers’ direct
possessions, like their households and premises and customers do not necessarily need to visit
our office to book the service. They can simply book their desired cleaning service/s online from
home via our website, application, hotline and SMS.

2. Service Marketing Mix (7P):

The service marketing mix consists of 7 Ps. These 7 Ps consists of different components that
help the company to portray their service to the prospects in different ways through different
medium by using different kind of tactics to achieve competitive advantages for sustaining in the
industry. The 7 Ps for the Premium Cleaning Services, Dhaka are briefly explained below.

a. Product: The products for PCSD are the different deep-cleaning services that are offered by
the company. The cleaning services are only provided for residential areas which are- floor
cleaning, furniture cleaning, curtain/blinds cleaning, toilet cleaning, water/septic tank or
reservoir cleaning, staircase/elevator cleaning, garden cleaning, and swimming-pool cleaning. By
booking this service, customers are consuming the cleanliness of their possessions with hygiene
insurance. Along with the core products, our company also offers complementary
disinfection/sanitization before/after entering the house and cashless digital payment methods as
supplementary services. We are going to provide necessary tips to maintain our deep cleaning
service as well. After we provide our deep-cleaning service, we will manage and recycle (if
possible) the wastes and make fertilizer and other possible-reusable products for them. These are
also complimentary services offered by PCSD.

b. Place: The core service provided by PCSD usually takes place at the service-takers’
possessed places. As we are going to provide the service only for the residence at the beginning
of the business, the service encounters are going to take place inside the flat or the whole
apartment. It can even be the garden which is in front of the house or the swimming pool in the
backyard. Also the service encounter time will be set by a negotiation of both parties right after
we receive the service request. However we receive the request, we will ask them calling if they
have time to talk over the phone call and confirm the service request. Consumers’ preferred time
for the service encounter will always be prioritised.

c. Promotion: There will be different tactics to promote our services. But firstly, to let
everybody know why this hygiene factor, the principle focus of our company, is so important in
our everyday life, our promotional activities will be held online as a report by We Are Social
says that the internet user of Bangladesh in 2021 has increased by 7.7 million (+19%). Though
most of our prospects are from higher and middle income-class families in Dhaka metropolitan
city in the beginning, there’s no harm in educating the mass people about the importance of
hygienic cleanliness. Our prompt customer services are also going to impact positively in
consumers’ mind. Different public relation campaigns are going to be organized affiliating with
detergent and disinfectant companies by expressing the values of keeping your households clean
for educating the prospects about the hygiene factors to live a healthier life. One of the punchline
for our PR campaigns will be “PCSD for your PTSD” which will mean “Premium Cleaning
Services Dhaka for your Post Traumatic Stress Disorder”. We will also launch short ads on
social media platforms right after the PR campaigns of our company which will be on educating
the consumers how user-friendly it is to operate our app for requesting the service. Because a
report by We Are Social reveals the information that 27.2% of our total population use social
media platforms in 2021.
d. Price: The prices are going to be set as par company policy. To ensure that the traditional
pricing tasks are managed well, there is a short list of our pricings for each of our offered
services below-

No. Service Names Price/Unit in BDT

1 Floor Cleaning 100/Room

2 Furniture Cleaning 1500/All

3 Curtain Cleaning 200/pc

4 Blinds Cleaning 500/Blind

5 Toilet Cleaning 750/Room

6 Water/Septic Tank Cleaning 4500/Tank

7 Reservoir Cleaning 5000/Tank

8 Staircase/Elevator Cleaning 2500/Whole

9 Garden Cleaning 50/Sq. Ft

10 Swimming-Pool Cleaning 8000/Whole

There will also be some additional expenditures for our company. The transportation
service for our cleaning-team and the supervisor with them will be provided by PCSD. It
will charge us an extra cost. Whenever an unwanted situation arrives at the customers’
residence, our supervisors are always going to be there to handle it carefully and may
instruct the cleaning-team to provide the same service repeatedly. It costs the labours the
double effort for single service. At times, both cleaning-team and the supervisor might
 need to keep themselves super-calm outside even if they’re burning inside just not to have
a negative impact on customers’ mind about PCSD. But our pricing policy is also fixed
considering all these unwanted/extra expenditure factors.

e. Physical Environment: The physical environment for the service is usually called the
“Servicescape”. As ours is an online based company, there will be a very low contact of
the consumers with the frontline employees while requesting and accepting the service
request. So, eventually our servicescape is going to be the website that customers visit
and the application that the customers download. So, by making the website and the app
user-friendly so that the customers enjoy the service-requesting process from the
beginning till the end of receiving our service. It is going to be one of the major reasons
for grabbing more customers and booming in the industry.

f. Process: As a cleaning service provider, our process of service delivery must be

very hygienic and health-conscious. The cleanliness that we are going to provide cannot
be measured by a scale. So, the service must produce a sign of hygiene and health-
security so that the whole service process ensure the prospects to totally rely on us in the
specific field. There will be a supervisor present with every cleaning-team to ensure that
the whole service is handled without causing any hassle to the customer. So, the
supervisors must be trained so well that s/he can provide solution for any possible-raised
problem instantly by managing both the customers and the cleaning-team.

g. People: PCSD’s human resources will consist of our own employees, and
outsourced employees. As the outsourced employees will be mainly our cleaning teams
thus we do not need to recruit them, whereas to recruit our other employees such as
supervisors, managers, and customer care employees we will use LinkedIn to inform
potential candidates, later call them for an interview if they match the requirements, and
only hire the candidates who are fit for the job. The recruitment process will be split in
 two; in the first round we will observe their behaviour, and in round two we will give
them a scenario and asked them how they would have performed in that situation.

Recruited employees will later be trained to help them understand their job better as well
as develop their interpersonal and technical skills. We will also hold orientation sessions
for our new employees so that they can learn more about PCSD’s culture, goals, internal
environment, and strategies. Apart from that, we also plan on holding briefs with our
cleaning teams, and inform them about our policies and regulations.

Our employees, and our cleaning teams are the soul of PCSD thus we must make sure
they are motivated, we will praise them for their hard work, and dedication. We are aware
of how exhausting it can be to provide services continuously so we will be allowing our
employees as well as the cleaning teams to take breaks in between work. We intend to
encourage our employees to share their ideas with us so that they feel motivated to work
as a team player not just as an employee. Apart from these, we will also be providing
nutritious snacks to our employees and cleaning teams so that they feel energized
throughout the day.

When it comes to reward, we will want to reward every one of our employees as well as
cleaning team members no matter how impossible it may seem. We would reward them
with food and clothes on holidays because of how hard they all will be working
throughout the year. We would also be glad to reward them with extra day-offs based on
how many hours they have worked.

We want to diminish competition within PCSD so that each, and every person working
for us to see each other as team players rather than competitors working towards their
own personal goals. We need to ensure a friendly work environment to our employees so
that they feel encouraged to work as teams, and help each other doing daily tasks.

3. The Servuction system for PCSD: The servuction system simply means how the whole
operation part works for both internal and external organisational environment. We can divide
the whole servuction system for PCSD in three major sections. They are briefly explained below-
a. Service Operation: This section contains both front stage and back stage operation.
Customers are free to request their desired service/s via SMS, call on hotline number,
application, and website. After we receive the service-request from the customers, we are going
to confirm them via an automated SMS that we have received their request. After confirming the
customer, a customer-care representative from our end will shortly contact them. Negotiating
about the service level, the service delivery place and the service delivery time, we are going to
ask the customer about their preferred payment method. All these information are going to be
included in the invoice for the convenience of both the service taker and the service provider.
After the negotiation between the service taker and the customer-care representative, this same
customer-care representative is going to assign a team of expert cleaners for that service delivery
place at the decided time. In the meantime, a separate supervisor for the cleaning team will also
be assigned with the name of the equipment the cleaning team will need.

b. Service Delivery: It only covers the front stage of the service encounter. The supervisor
takes the necessary equipment from PCSDs inventory, hops into our service car, picks the
cleaning team up, then arrives at the service taker’s chosen place to deliver the requested
service/s. The supervisor along with the whole cleaning team will sanitize themselves before
entering the service encounter place. They will also disinfect the whole service encounter place
after entering it as a supplementary service. If the service taker decides to be at the service
encounter place, we will also facilitate them with goggles, face masks, PPEs to avoid any kind of
toxicity caused by the cleaning detergents. After the whole process, the supervisor will ask the
service taker to check out whether they have received their requested service or not. If not, the
cleaning team will be instructed by the supervisor what to do about that complain.

c. Service Marketing: Service marketing is also the front stage as it mostly promotes the
service to the customers in the most efficient way. Maintaining maximum manners and respect,
both the supervisor and the cleaning team are going to promote our services. After a team
finishes the job, the supervisor is going to mark this job “Done” in the app or on the website to
let the back-end know. After the job is done, a customer-care representative will call the
supervisor first to check out whether any unwanted situation arrived at the job or not. Then the
same customer-care representative is going to call the service taker to listen to their part of the
story. This part is the most important as the customer feels in safe hands when the service
provider instantly wants to know about the quality of the service directly from the service-taker.
The customer-care representative will also want to know if there is any complain from their end
about anything at all. This part encourages the customers to complain more as it helps the
company to improve their services.

4. Justification behind the degree of contact – high/low and why so?

As it is a possession processing service, service takers do not necessarily need to stay in high
contact with the service provider. The degree of contact for our cleaning service will be medium
with the customer. But whenever it comes to a point of trustworthiness, we provide face masks,
face shields, goggles and PPEs as safety precautionary equipment in case service takers choose
to stay at the service encounter area.

5. Basic Focus Strategy for PCSD: The focus strategy for our services is market focused as
PCSD offers a wide range of cleaning services, but to a comparatively narrow market. Since our
services will be provided only in certain areas of the country, it has narrowed down our market
segment to an extent, but we will make sure our services are unmatched. Our skilled-trained
cleaning teams that will work under the supervision of our experienced supervisors, we will have
cleaning equipment as well as tools (our own as well as rental), and structured cleaning activities
to ensure squeaky-clean services to our clients.

6. Identify Core & Supplementary services

7. PLACE & TIME decisions of deliveries: The place of the service delivery must be as the
consumer wants. Because we are going to provide such a cleaning service that will clean
something owned by the service-taker. So it must be somewhere that the service-taker demands
and knows of. After we receive the service-request from customer, we are going to confirm them
via an automated SMS that we have received their request and someone from our end is shortly
going to contact them. After we call them and start the discussion, place and time of the service
delivery will be decided by asking the customers. Because the cleaning service must be
favourable to the service-takers as our service is provided to the customers’ possessions to satisfy
their need of cleanliness. We will prioritise customers’ preferable time the most as we are open
24/7 to take service-requests (Customer care services and Hotline numbers).

8. Overcoming the intangibility factor service in communication, how?

9. Possible Service development scope in future-

Project based- comparatively bigger Residential and Commercial space cleaning, Pest
Control.

10. Achieving customer delight, beyond customer satisfaction: When a customer pays for
cleaning service/s provided by PCSD, they are not only paying for the cleaning service itself, but
also for the experience.

a) Responsiveness: We will have customer care employees to manage phone calls 24/7,
when our customers reach out to us regarding any kind of query or simply seeking help so
that we can immediately look into the matter, and come up with a solution instantly. Our
customer care employees’ are ought to be knowledgeable, enthusiastic, and have a warm
personality who are great at handling customer complaints, and help-seeking customers
which as a consequence will lead to customer satisfaction, and sometimes customer delight
as the customers will feel valued.

b) Prioritizing Existing Customers: Existing customers can easily be converted into loyal
customers if we involve them in the process of how we can improve our services in order to
provide better experience in future. We may ask our existing customer to give feedback on
any particular service of ours that needs to be improved, and based on their feedback we shall
reward them.

c) Improve User Experience Online: Technology may not be everyone’s forte which is
why we are leaning towards simple templates for our website and mobile app, so that our
 customers can easily browse without any problem. As simple as it may be, it is sometimes a
very effective formula to achieve customer delight.

d) Motivate Frontline: We will prioritize motivating our frontline as their dynamic

performance will have a great impact on our customers’ experience with our service, as
motivated the frontline will be the better experience our customers will receive. If we
continuously motivate our frontline, they will be responsible for building a good relationship
with our customers which will help our customers to understand how much we value them
and in return they will be delighted with our service.

e) Apologize and Compensate: If there’s a situation where there’s been a mistake which
caused any damage to the customer or they complaint to us about their unpleasant experience
of our service then we will immediately look into it with a positive attitude, and apologize
immediately as well as ask them how we can make up for the damage or do something on our
own to make it for the damage. We believe this kind of attitude will lead to customer delight
as they will be giving us a chance to redeem ourselves.

11. What strategies will you use to reduce customer complaint barriers?

References:

https://www.dhakatribune.com/bangladesh/2021/04/26/bangladesh-charts-9m-new-social-media-
users#:~:text=There%20were%2047.61%20million%20internet,at%2028.8%25%20in
%20January%202021.