Service Marketing

Course ID: MKT350

Section- 1
Semester: Summer 2020
Submitted To: MR Sheikh Mohammad Fauzul Azim.
Date of Submission: 20th September, 2020
Topic: Service Audit of Parkway.

Group Number-8
NAME ID
S M Shariar Pervez 1722299
Rakibul Hasan Mollah 1710637
Ahanaf Akhyer Hossain 1710323
Shahnila Hyder 1720653
Yeasin Arafat Fahim 1721787

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 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

In completing our assignment, we had to take the help and guideline from our respected
faculty who deserves our greatest gratitude. The completion of this assignment gives us much
pleasure.
We would like to show our gratitude to MR Sheikh Mohammad Fauzul Azim, Lecturer,
Independent University, Bangladesh, for giving us a solid guideline for the assignment
throughout numerous consultations. We would also like to expand our deepest gratitude to all
those who have guided us directly and indirectly in completing this assignment. Many
people, especially our team members themselves, have made valuable comments and
suggestions on this assignment which gave us an inspiration to improve our task by a large
margin. We thank all the people for their contribution to our assignment.

Table of Contents
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Company Description..........................................................................................................................4
Service Quality Dimension of Parkway..............................................................................................5
Service Design......................................................................................................................................7
The Flow Chart of Parkway service design.......................................................................................7
Categories of Service:..........................................................................................................................8
People Processing:...............................................................................................................................9
Possession Processing:.........................................................................................................................9
Mental Stimulus Processing:.............................................................................................................10
Information Processing:....................................................................................................................10
Characteristics of Service:................................................................................................................10
Intangibility:......................................................................................................................................11
Perishability:......................................................................................................................................11
Inseparability:....................................................................................................................................11
Heterogeneity:....................................................................................................................................12
Labor, skills and expertise at Parkway Hospital Singapore...........................................................12
Access to shared facilities at Parkway Hospital Singapore.............................................................12
Access and use of network at Parkway Hospital Singapore...........................................................13
Defined spaced and facility at Parkway Hospital Singapore..........................................................13
7Ps at Parkway Hospital Singapore.................................................................................................13
Types of Expectation:........................................................................................................................14
Zone of Tolerance..............................................................................................................................16
Provider Gap......................................................................................................................................17
Listening Gap.....................................................................................................................................17
Service Design & Standard Gap.......................................................................................................18
Service Performance Gap.................................................................................................................18
Communication Gap.........................................................................................................................18
Causes of Problems............................................................................................................................19
Reference............................................................................................................................................20

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Company Description.

Parkway Hospitals, Singapore, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Parkway Pantai Limited, is one

of the leading providers of private healthcare services in Asia. This reputation is the result of
quality clinical outcomes and comprehensive care, made achievable with an extensive
network of hospitals, integrated healthcare facilities and over 40 years of experience in
hospital development.

Parkway Hospitals, Singapore operates 4 hospitals - Gleneagles Hospital, Mount Elizabeth

Hospital, Mount Elizabeth Novena Hospital and Parkway East Hospital, where multi-
disciplinary specialist care is effectively administered in one place. Its medical services and
facilities house more than 1,000 beds and 1,200 accredited specialists. In order to reach out to
an international pool of patients, Parkway Hospitals, Singapore also operates more than 35
patient assistance centers worldwide.

Parkway Hospitals, Singapore seeks to be the global leader in value-based integrated

healthcare. Leveraging on its pursuit for quality excellence, comprehensive clinical programs
and facilities, Parkway Hospitals, Singapore strives to meet patients’ expectations through
quality healthcare.

Service Quality Dimension of Parkway

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Service Quality Dimension is the most dominant element in customer’s evaluation. Research
suggest that customers doesn’t judge a service on a single factor rather they evaluate a service
on a number of factors. Service quality is also known as SERVQUAL. Three researchers (A.
Parasuraman, Valarie Zeithaml and Leonard Berry) came up with the idea of SERVQUAL.

Service quality dimension or SERVQUAL dimension consists of 5 dimensions.

i) Reliability- The ability to perform the promised service dependably and accurately.
Providing the exact service that has been promised to the customer and importantly
delivering the service on time.

In terms of Parkway Hospitals, they always give their customer what they had promised to
them and they try to provide the services on time as this a service in the medical sector.
Sometimes there are some emergency cases where they are very prompt in delivering their
services.

ii) Responsiveness- The willingness to help customers and to provide prompt service.
This dimension is based on the ability of the organization to be responsive to
customer needs. How prompt an organization reacts to their service failure.

Mohammad Imtiaz, the Assistant Manager in Marketing Department said in the interview that
all of the staff members who handles patients are 24/7 ready to take calls from patients. The
staff are very responsive and fast. This is also a case in terms of a service failure, Parkways
Hospitals are very responsive in-service recovery.
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iii) Assurance- The knowledge and courtesy of employees and their ability to convey
trust and confidence. This relies on the employee’s ability to establish trust as well as
to introduce confidence within the customer. This is heavily based on the employee’s
knowledge. There are 4 components of Assurance of a company. i) Competence-
Ability to perform the service. ii) Respect for the customers. iii) Effective
communication. iv) Basic Attitude.

The Parkways Hospitals employees are driven through intensive training to teach them how
to deal with their customers, how to respect their customers emotions, how to communicate
smoothly. Through their service the employees build trust in their customers.

iv) Empathy- The provision of caring, individualized attention to customer. How caring a
company is to their customer. Trying to feel the emotions of a customer and make
them feel special.

Ms. Benhur Zeba, Assistant Manager in Patients Care believes that Empathy is the most
important dimension for Parkway Hospitals because any patient’s journey starts with pain and
if the employee or the health care employee doesn’t understand what the patient is going
through then it’s hard to give the customer the best possible service. She also said that for
Parkway, Empathy is the starting point and the other dimensions comes generally within the
service.

v) Tangibles- The appearance of physical facilities, equipment, personnel and

communication materials. This provide the physical representation or images of a
service that will new customers to evaluate the service.

In terms of tangibles for Parkway, Passport and Visa acceptance is an important aspect. These
are tangible elements associated with the service.

In the context of Parkway Hospitals, they follow all of the service quality dimension for the
betterment of their customers.

Service Design.
Service is a complex process; it does not only depend on the customer is also depends on
other entities as well. Service Design is considered to be known as the Blueprint of the whole
service. The service design looks at the in holistic manner.
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For Parkway, we are going discuss the service design in flow chart.

The Flow Chart of Parkway service design.

Patient takes appointment for consultation in Parkway Bangladesh office.

Visit Parkway office in the given time-slot


Carry all the reports and prescription


The patient care department (Frontline employees)
takes an interview of the patient, what kind of service they want.

After discussing with the patient, the frontline employee
passes the reports and file to the backline employee.

The backline employee sends the report to the desired
hospital which was requested by the patient in Singapore

The hospital staff and the account department analyses
the reports, gives the feedback about the expenditure

This data is received by the frontline employees in Bangladesh office.
They arrange an appointment with the patient again to discuss the expenditure.

When the patient is happy with the costing for the process and medical service,
Parkways takes them passport and all the important information for visa processing.


After getting visa, the patient is off to Singapore for their treatment.


When they reach Singapore, the hospital staff takes care of everything.


Parkway's service is now complete.

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Categories of Service:

There are significant differences among services depending on what is being processed.
Services can process by people’s physical objects; data and the variety of the processing can
be in the form of tangible or intangible. Tangible actions are performed on people’s bodies or
to their physical assets. Intangible actions are performed on people’s minds or to their
intangible assets. At Parkway Hospital since they are a service provider for a renowned
hospital in Singapore, the classification of services that are provided is mostly intangible and
they are categorized in four broad ways. They are people processing, possession-processing,
mental stimulus processing and information processing.

People Processing:
Customers frequently ask for services from the organization that can access them to a
physical location. Parkway Hospital is a medical service provider where they help you access
the information’s for treatments, operations, medical cost & other health care facilities of
individual customer and modify them according to their requirements. Customers often ask
for a place where they can visit and address the issues of their healthcare with the help of
consulting team members. This kind of service often refers to tangible actions where they can
practically visit an office and talk face to face in order to come up with a solution. In order to
get the full-service patients must visit the hospital.

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Possession Processing:
Parkway Hospital gives flexibility in designing services in more cost-effective way. Parkway
provides service that tends customers to be less involved in any sort of medical examination
or tests. They collect medical information, samples etc. of the customers, then they process
all these information’s that are collected and later passed on to the Mount Elizabeth Hospital
in Singapore for further detail information. The involvement may be limited to just dropping
off customer medical health related issues, paperwork’s or collecting the quotation for the
particular treatment. Customer may need to be present during service delivery as these are all
paperwork related. For instance, a fee for consulting with a doctor overseas is done under
Parkway Hospital so hence customers have to pay an amount for this to Parkway, however
customers do not have to present but the object requiring processing must be present so
tangible actions are required.

Mental Stimulus Processing:

This kind of service touches peoples mind and have the potential to structure attitudes and
influence consumer behaviour. Mental stimulus processing services in Parkway Healthcare
include information, professional advice, question answer from doctors, medical and surgery
cost estimations, all these kinds of activities are involved here. Acquiring such kinds of
benefits requires an investment of time and a magnitude of mental effort on the customer’s
mind. However, clients don’t necessarily have to be physically present, just mentally being
mindful of with the information being presented. One thing also affects in the mind of
customers is that when they choose services for their healthcare, they want the best treatment
for themselves, and here Parkway Hospital is associated with the finest hospital in the world
where they provide world-class treatment for patients. As Mount Elizabeth is a very well-
known hospital globally customers may feel inclined to taking the service.

Information Processing:
Information processing often refers to the term ICT where information is passed on through
technology. Technology advancements have shaped the world in a different way where
everything is passed on swiftly with one click. Information is the most intangible form of
service output but it can be reconstructing into a tangible element for example all the
information that are collected by Parkway Hospital is either in form of softcopy or hardcopy.
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The details or reports of patients are passed to Singapore in a form through scanning. Later
when all reports are collected and recommendations are given back to Parkway Hospital and
they print out all the information and passes it down to it patients. Machines at Parkway do
not process all information entirely, professional employee takes all the provided data of the
customers and re-arrange everything in a file and then process it to send it to Mount Elizabeth
hospital.

Characteristics of Service:
Services have grown dramatically in recent years and are growing quickly in the world
economy, becoming more and more important. Service marketing is marketing based on
relationship and value. At Parkway Hospitals they take each service of them into priority and
gives customers the best outcome, they just not only provide a service but they assure with
great customer satisfaction. Marketing services is different from marketing goods because of
the distinctive characteristics of services namely in intangibility, perishability, inseparability
and heterogeneity.

Intangibility:
Since Parkway Hospital is positioned in a hospital industry the intangibility is high because
they do not have a physical representation of a product because their product is the service
they provide to their patients. Parkway Healthcare has high intangible assets that are its good
will and reputation, world-class treatment, high operation success rate and brand recognition.
Hence companies in the healthcare sector are highly intangible because of the promised
service they provide to its customers.

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Perishability:
It is also high as they provide health care services, their services cannot be stored for later
use. Often they have to provide immediate and emergency services to patients at peak time. If
a patient is sick, they have to operate a patient without any delay hence their perishability is
very high. They cannot save their services for later to give in the future. For example, a
critical person who has been into an accident requires immediate medical action, a further
due in his treatment can lose his life. So, at Parkway Hospitals they have to arrange an air
ambulance as soon as possible.

Inseparability:
It refers to when a product or service is produced and consumed at the same time. So, in the
case of Parkway Hospital inseparability is low because consumption of a medical service
takes place simultaneously also a patient acts as a consumer and a patient’s active
participation is required for a medical product. A patient must come to Parkway Hospital first
in order to get the appointment from the representative doctor and hence the patient has to be
present when the service is performed.

Heterogeneity:
It means the quality of being diverse, and having a variability of character, as Parkway
Hospital is in the healthcare industry their heterogeneity is high. In the health care system,
there is a lot of variation in quality and service. There are different kinds of doctors, nurses,
staffs, treatments, medical procedures, facilities, organizational structure and all above the
quality of these vary from health care units to units. In Parkway they not only provide one
kind of treatment or solution to patients for instance if a patient is suffering from heart
problems and he is also a diabetic patient he might also receive complementary treatments
under such conditions. The doctors are very well trained and among the best in the world.

Forms of Rental.

Labor, skills and expertise at Parkway Hospital Singapore

Service industry like Parkway Hospital Singapore always need experienced employees to
serve its customers, as it's all about life and death so it's very important to have medical
related skills and experience to send the patient to the appropriate doctor. Knowing the
customers requirement and delivering them the service they are looking for is the way to
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fulfil their initial requirement. Service industry people need to know the in-depth know how
and they should have proper knowledge.

Access to shared facilities at Parkway Hospital Singapore

Parkway provides all relevant facilities along with medical treatment. Parkway’s Dhaka
office is one stop service facility point from where they can arrange all their travel related
arrangements for treatment purposes. It starts by sending an inquiry for the patient to choose
a relevant doctor and information about the patient's family for treatment related expenditure
and their accommodation in Singapore for treatment purposes, relevant medical specialist's
appointment booking, arranging interpreter, booking slot in advance for surgery at hospital,
arranging bed to bed transfer via Air Ambulance all these facilities given by Parkway’s Dhaka
office.

Access and use of network at Parkway Hospital Singapore

Parkway hospitals arranges visa for their patients and family members. They book hotels on a
corporate rate basis and service apartments for long term staying patients who need to stay in
Singapore for longer time for any lengthy treatment. Patients can issue tickets at special
corporate discount prices for Singapore airlines and all other airlines.

Defined spaced and facility at Parkway Hospital Singapore

Parkway arranges yearly public and medical seminars for their patients and corporate
members. Each year they sponsor a few physicians to travel to Singapore and experience our
hospital and facilities available there. On a quarterly basis under the name Hopelink Parkway
publishes medical magazines and distributes it within their patients and corporate club
members.

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7Ps at Parkway Hospital Singapore
Product: Being a medical health care service provider hospital doesn't have any product to
promote or offer, but Parkway consider our medical specialty and medical services as product
to offer to our clients. For example, they always offer medical specialties to their hospitals to
the patient’s prospects. They offer all sort of treatment that is required for individual
requirements.

Price: Price always depends on the medical condition of the patient. First of all, the doctors
have to recognize the diagnosis of the patient and according to the diagnosis they have to
prepare the treatment plan where the prices may vary treatment to treatment, but there are
some prices that are fixed such as executive health screening.

Place: For place marketing as said main hospitals of Parkway hospitals are situated in
Singapore. Parkway has been operating with more than 40 regional offices all around the
world from where they can send patient to Singapore for their treatment. Singapore is the
main hub for patients to take treatment.

Promotion: In the perspective of promotion there are several things to promote. Parkway
hospitals promotes their medical expertise. The Doctors are experienced in medical
technologies, quality healthcare services and some other treatments that are not available to
many under developing countries. Parkway hospitals usually aware people about the medical
services via SMS, e-mail, WhatsApp, digital platform seminars and telemarketing.

People: Parkway hospitals do not allow any doctor to practice who are below 15 years of
experience. Nursing staff are also well trained. The management system is maintained by the
highly experienced and skillful people so that the whole treatment process is flexible.

Process: Process of this service relies on different segments such as connecting the people to
the hospitals and making sure that the patients are recovering and being healthy.

Physical Evidence: Parkway Hospitals Singapore’s Dhaka branch is in Gulshan, Dhaka.

Where patients can directly come and address their issues of their health care with the
representatives.

Types of Expectation:
Types of expectation defines a customer expectation on a particular product that he/she has
bought during purchase time or after experience. Types of expectation can be divided into
two extremes to the service level. The maximum expectation experienced by a consumer is

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called desired level service and the adequate level service is the benchmark below which is
not granted.

There are various ways from where customer expectation arises to judge the service. For
example: past experience, word of mouth, explicit service promise, implicit service promise
etc. When a customer buys a particular service, he/she go through an experience which direct
that customer next time whether she/he will buy the same service or not. Word of mouth is
something like when someone who is close to the customer and refer to buy that that service.

Desired level: Parkway is a medical service provider from different native country to
Singapore. To know about the customers desired level of service our team had conversation
with couple of customers who had taken services from Parkway. Md Sharif Ullah, one of the
customers of Parkway who had taken service from parkway recently and went to Singapore
about internal medicine treatment. In our conversation, we have discussed about different
issues. What he has said about his desired level was satisfactory enough. We are putting
below only the conversation about desired level:

Team: Sir, could you please tell us about your expectation and reality when you are under
their service?

Customer1: I was referred to take their service from one of my friends. So, I was expecting
my expectation will reach my desired level. Normally people do not bother to wait or
accepting delay in some services because they do not have access to reach that level, medical
sector is one of them. When I contacted in their main office, they replied me back with top-
priority, which really won my mind.

Adequate level: We wanted to cover every criteria of customers’ expectations, that is why
went through different customer experience. Our third customers experience helps to reach
the adequate level of service. Adequate service expectation rises quickly as the service
delivery and promises rise. Our third customer Shafique Hossain falls under perceived
service alternatives. In perceived service alternatives customer obtains service from another
provider. If customers have multiple number of service provider then their adequate level
goes higher. But inn case of our third customer the adequate level gradient goes downwards
because there is not enough medical service provider in Bangladesh like Parkway.

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Besides customers, we had an open discussion with Mohammad Imtiaz Hossain (Asst.
Manager, Marketing, Bangladesh). When we asked him about the adequate service level; he
answered, “Parkway is one of the renowned healthcare providers in the world. Parkway
receives prestigious awards from different authorities. The hospitals under Parkway maintains
the quality service for which it can keep their goodwill all over the world.” Conversation
about the adequate level with one of our customers is given below:

Team: Sir, could Parkway provide you the adequate level of service according to their
company? How did they reach your expectation?

Customer 2: I would say Yes, because they appointed a doctor for me and then I got to know
that my appointed doctor won’t be available on the day I should get my service. But later on,
they had fixed my problem as early as possible with another specialist. I would not say that’s
embarrassing because they could reach my expectation level. But as a patient firstly you
would get frustrated when you receive such a news.

Zone of Tolerance: Extensive theoretical and experimental work has been directed in the
Marketing control to comprehend and clarify the connection between consumer satisfaction
and service quality. The best volume of examination has centered upon the disconfirmation
theory, which holds that fulfillment (disappointment) is reliant upon the size of the
affirmation (disconfirmation) of the service customers' underlying expectations. A same story,
the Gaps Model of service quality, holds that consumer satisfaction depends on view of
service quality comparative with the customers underlying desires.
The more the importance of a factor’s gradient goes upward the narrower the zone of
tolerance is measured to be. Customers do not tolerate the in case of unreliable services. The
more the factor is crucial the expectation of a customer is likely to be higher which results the
narrower tolerance.
Adequate Desired

Expectations

Low Zone of Tolerance High

Price has reflected a great effect on zone of tolerance. If the price is high customers zone of
tolerance gets narrower. When Mohammad Imtiaz Hossain (Asst. Manager, Marketing,

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Bangladesh) was explaining to us about the zone of tolerance, he said, “We are very aware of
our service that should not go below adequate level. Customers should not be dissatisfied.
Most of the time customers talk about a common issue that is price. As Bangladesh is a third
world country where as Singapore is one of the most expensive country in the world. But in
the view of international service provider Parkway is one of the renowned healthcare service
provider and pricing strategies are compatible compare to other countries. Our customers
value is our top-priority where money is just a number.”

Provider Gap

Every company wants to meet their customer’s expectation, understanding customer needs
and fulfilling them according to their expectation can be difficult. Even when a company gets
to know their customers, there is still possibility of the customers not being satisfied with the
service. There can be many reasons to this, maybe the service design is not customer driven
or the staff might be under skilled to provide the service. These are the gaps, where there is a
gap between the Company and the Customer. We found out the gaps in Parkway Hospitals
Singapore and the strategies to reduce the gap.

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GAP 1

Listening Gap
Analyzing Parkway Hospital Singapore’s Gaps, we found out that the healthcare industry is
based upon the

specific needs of the customers. Every customer is different and every customer has different
demands. Parkway Hospital Singapore ensures that they have a minimum layer between the
front-line employees and the employees who are in charge of the service design. This helps
the company to make quick decisions and to actively recover from any service failure. As a
part of their market research Parkway Hospital Singapore holds half-yearly seminars, where
they invite their customers to meet the Doctors who comes from different foreign hospitals.
On the event, the customers get to connect with the Doctors. After every seminar, Parkway
Hospital Singapore conducts a survey within their customer base, where they get to know
there complains, opinions and suggestions to improve their services.

GAP 2

Service Design & Standard Gap

Parkway Hospitals Singapore’s service is a very long process as we discussed earlier in the
Service design section. The process of their service takes days sometimes months to be
implemented. Because there are some uncontrollable issues in processing the service. For
example, the visa processing sometimes might take few days. The step is most time-
consuming step.

In terms of Lack of customer driven standard, there is almost no lack in customer driven
standard. Parkway’s service is very much customer oriented. As this consultancy includes
medical sector, Empathy dimension comes in from the Patient care department for the
customers.

Gap 3

Service Performance Gap

In a service-based company, front-line employees are always expected to be knowledgeable,
polite and understanding with the customer. Parkway Hospitals Singapore hire employees

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who are fit for their roles and responsibilities. Representatives who are willing to listen to the
customer needs and suggesting them the best possible outcomes for their needs. Parkway
Hospital employees also attends the yearly international training sessions with the
international regional office’s staff to always stay updated with the industry.

Gap 4

Communication Gap
Inadequate Horizontal communication means there’s a gap inside the company’s
communication. Every staff member should share their department’s information to everyone
unless or until told otherwise.

In Parkway, sometimes this communication gap occurs when the frontline employee fails to
report the files or the prescription on time to the backstage employees. This gap sometimes
leads to another gap which is overpromising. Due to the communication gap between
employees, Parkways sometimes fails to deliver their service on the time that they had
promised to their customers.

Causes of Problems

This fishbone diagram holds the possible causes for late service delivery or a time-consuming
process. Starting with –

Customers- In the service industry, customers can also hamper the quality of service. In this
case, when a customer is recommended to plan 10days for an operation from starting to
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recovery of the patient. The customer asks to make it a 7day plan, this hampers the patient’s
recovery phase after the operation and in most cases by the 5th day the customer realizes that
they need more time at the hospital. Emergency re-scheduling of plane tickets, hotel rooms
and hospital costs rises at this point making the customer think that service is expensive and it
is time consuming whereas if the customer accepted the 10day play, they would not have to
face all the difficulties

Facilities & Equipment – Office maintenance sometimes clutters the workflow of the
employees, resulting in a late service delivery. Database maintenance, Software issues are
day to day problems Parkway Hospital Singapore needs to overcome.

Front-Line Employees – At times when files add up or even on a busy week, customer
representatives fail to transfer the files to the backstage office on time. Hiring adequate
employees to handle the workload is necessary to bring a smooth workflow.

Procedure- Customers sometimes fail to show up on their given time slot, they might appear
at a busy hour which leads to the late service delivery

Environment- Sometimes plane tickets are not available due to harsh weather conditions,
Parkway Hospitals Singapore sometime fail to provide the tickets on time.

Logistics- Parkway Hospitals Singapore, handles all the customer’s paperwork for them. This
includes processing of Medical Visas, Passport Renewal, Hotel booking. Government
Services are at times very slow to process the travelling documents which makes the whole
process time consuming

Backstage- Employees at the backstage office sometimes misplaces the files which leads to
more time to organize the files and to work on them

Information- As Parkway Hospitals Singapore is partnered with several hospitals, it is hard

to stay updated with their information at all times. Sometimes there are misunderstanding
regarding the information of the hospitals with the customers.

Reference

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Ms. Benhur Zeba
Assistant Manager, Patient Care
Parkway Hospitals Singapore Pte Ltd
Bangladesh Office
Mobile: +88 0197 7770777
Tel: +8802 9850422, Fax: +8802 9854056
Email: zeba@parkwayhealth.net

Mohammad Imtiaz Hossain

Asst. Manager, Marketing, Bangladesh Office HP: +8801971290999
Email: imtiaz@parkwayhealth.net Parkway Hospitals Singapore Pte Ltd
Dhaka Office: Suite B-3, Level 4, House 10, Road 53, Gulshan-2, Dhaka-1212

Sylhet Office: Level – 4, Manru Shopping City, Chowhatta, Sylhet.

Chattogram Office: Level 2, Annex Block, Radisson Blu Chattogram Bay View, Chattogram

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