Customer Defined Service
Standards
Module 4 - Part 2
Dr. Basavaraj Sulibhavi
IBMR Hubballi
FACTORS NECESSARY FOR
APPROPRIATE SERVICE STANDARDS
The translation of customer expectations into specific service
quality standards
Tasks Behaviors
Customization
Standardization
No varying sequential process Some level of adaptation or tailoring
of the process to the individual
customer
Customer, Not Company, Defined
Standards
Customer-Driven Service Designs
and Standards
INAPPROPRIATE
Physical Evidence and
Servicescape
Absence of Customer Driven Service Standards
Management Perception of
Customers Expectation
Ex: Voice-Activated Telephone
Support System
TYPES OF CUSTOMER-DEFINED
SERVICE STANDARDS
Hard Customer-Defined Standards:
“Hard Standards and measures: things that can be
counted, timed, or observed through audits.”
Hard service standards for responsiveness are set
to ensure the speed or promptness with which
companies deliver products (within two working
days), handle complaints (by sundown each day),
answer questions (within two hours), answer the
telephone and arrive for repair calls (within 30
minutes of the estimated time).
Soft Customer-Defined Standards
• Albert Einstein said, “Not everything that
counts can be counted, and not everything
that can be counted, counts.”
They are opinion-based measures and cannot
be directly observed. They must be collected
by talking to customers, employees, or others.
Soft standards provide direction, guidance, and
feedback to employees in ways to achieve
customer satisfaction and can be examined by
measuring customer perceptions and beliefs.
Soft standards are especially important for
person-to-person interactions.
Hard Customer-Defined Standards Examples
Company Standard Particulars for
measuring
Federal Express On-Time Delivery Number of Packages right
day late
Number of Packages
wrong day late
Number of Missed Pickups
On-Time Delivery On-Time Delivery Ship to Target
Computers Work Properly Missing, Wrong and
Damaged Rate
Universal Credit Cards Access Calles Answered within 20
Seconds
Abandon rate lower the
3% of incoming Calls
Soft Customer-Defined Standards Examples
Company Standard Particulars for
measuring
General Electric Interpersonal Skills of Taking ownership of the
Operations : call and Following
through with promise
Tone of Voice made.
Problem Solving
Action Understanding
customers problems
and request.
Nationwide Insurance Responsiveness Human voice on the
line when customers
report the problems.
DEVELOPMENT OF CUSTOMER-DEFINED
SERVICE STANDARDS
• Turning Customer Requirements into Specific
Behaviors and Actions
• The general process for setting customer-
defined service standards.
WHAT IS PHYSICAL EVIDENCE?
Customers often rely on tangible cues, or physical
evidence, to evaluate the service before its
purchase and to assess their satisfaction with the
service during and after the experience.
Physical Evidence from the Customer’s Point of View
SERVICESCAPE
Organization’s physical facility (the Servicescape) as well as
other forms of tangible communication. Elements of the
physical servicescape that affect customers include both
exterior attributes (such as signage, parking, and the
landscape) and interior attributes (such as design, layout,
equipment, and decor).
TYPES OF SERVICESCAPES
Categorizing service organizations on two dimensions that
capture some of the key differences that will affect the
management of the servicescape.
1. Servicescape Usage
2. Servicescape Complexity
SERVICESCAPE USAGE
“whom the servicescape will affect”
That is, who actually comes into the service
facility and thus is potentially influenced by its
design customers, employees, or both groups?
Typology of Service Organizations Based on Variations in Form
and Use of the Servicescape
SELF-SERVICE ENVIRONMENT
In which the customer performs most of the activities
and few if any employees are involved.
Organization can plan the servicescape to focus
exclusively on marketing goals such as attracting
the right market segment, making the facility
pleasing and easy to use, and creating the desired
service experience for the customer.
REMOTE SERVICE
Little or no customer involvement with the servicescape.
The facility can be set up to keep employees motivated
and to facilitate productivity, teamwork, operational
efficiency, or whatever organizational behavior goal is
desired without any consideration of customers because
they will never see or visit the servicescape.
INTERPERSONAL SERVICES
Placed between the two extremes and represent situations in
which both the customer and the employee are present and
active in the servicescape.
In these situations, the servicescape must be designed to attract,
satisfy, and facilitate the activities of both customers and
employees simultaneously.
Special attention must also be given to how the servicescape
affects the nature and quality of the social interactions between
and among customers and employees.
SERVICESCAPE COMPLEXITY
• Some service environments are very simple, with
few elements, few spaces, and few pieces of
equipment. Such environments are termed LEAN.
• For lean servicescapes, design decisions are
relatively straightforward, especially in selfservice
or remote service situations in which there is no
interaction among employees and customers.
• Very complicated, with many elements and
many forms. They are in such an elaborate
environment, the full range of marketing and
organizational objectives theoretically can be
approached through careful management of the
servicescape termed elaborate environments.
STRATEGIC ROLES OF THE SERVICESCAPE
The servicescape is frequently one of the most important elements used
in positioning a service organization
1. PACKAGE: the servicescape and other elements of physical
evidence essentially “wrap” the service and convey to consumers an
external image of what is “inside.” The physical setting of a service
does the same thing through the interaction of many complex
stimuli.
STRATEGIC ROLES OF THE SERVICESCAPE
2. FACILITATOR: Serve as a facilitator in aiding the
performances of persons in the environment. A well-designed,
functional facility can make the service a pleasure to
experience from the customer’s point of view and a pleasure to
perform from the employee’s.
3. SOCIALIZER: The servicescape aids in the socialization of
both employees and customers in the sense that it helps convey
expected roles, behaviors, and relationships.
IMP: Role of Employee and Customer in service process.
STRATEGIC ROLES OF THE
SERVICESCAPE
4. DIFFERENTIATOR: The design of the physical facility can
differentiate a firm from its competitors and signal the
market segment that the service is intended for. Given its
power as a differentiator, changes in the physical
environment can be used to reposition a firm and/or to
attract new market segments.
FRAMEWORK FOR UNDERSTANDING
SERVICESCAPE
EFFECTS ON BEHAVIOR
1. The Underlying Framework:
• The framework for understanding servicescape effects on
behavior follows from basic stimulus–organism–response
theory.
• In the framework the multidimensional environment is the
stimulus, consumers and employees are the organisms that
respond to the stimuli, and behaviors directed at the
environment are the responses.
2. Behaviors in the Servicescape: That human behavior
is influenced by the physical setting in which it occurs
is essentially a truism (Saying).
a. Individual Behaviors: Individuals react to places with
two general and opposite forms of behavior: approach
and avoidance.
Approach behaviors include all positive behaviors
that might be directed at a particular place, such as a
desire to stay, explore, work, and affiliate.
Avoidance behaviors reflect the opposite a desire not
to stay, to explore, to work, or to affiliate.
b. Social Interactions: the servicescape influences the
nature and quality of customer and employee
interactions, most directly in interpersonal services.
The “physical container” can affect the nature of social
interaction in terms of the duration of interaction and
the actual progression of events.
3. Internal Responses to the Servicescape: Employees and customers respond to
dimensions of their physical surroundings cognitively, emotionally, and
physiologically, and those responses are what influence their behaviors in the
environment
They are clearly interdependent: a person’s beliefs about a place, a cognitive
response, may well influence the person’s emotional response, and vice versa.
a. Environment and Cognition: the servicescape can be viewed as a form of
nonverbal communication, imparting meaning through what is called “object
language.”
b. Environment and Emotion: the perceived servicescape can directly
elicit emotional responses that, in turn, influence behaviors. Just
being in a particular place can make a person feel happy,
lighthearted, and relaxed and vise versa.
c. Environment and Physiology: Physiology directly influence
whether people stay in and enjoy a particular environment.
d. Variations in Individual Responses: Personality differences as well
as temporary conditions such as moods or the purpose for being
there can cause variations in how people respond to the
servicescape.
Environmental Dimensions of the
Servicescape
• Ambient Conditions: Include background characteristics of the
environment such as temperature, lighting, noise, music, scent, and
color.
• Spatial Layout and Functionality: Spatial layout refers to the ways
in which machinery, equipment, and furnishings are arranged; the
size and shape of those items; and the spatial relationships among
them. Functionality refers to the ability of the same items to
facilitate the accomplishment of customer and employee goals.
• Signs, Symbols, and Artifacts: Signs displayed on the
exterior and interior of a structure are examples of explicit
communicators. symbols and artifacts may communicate
less directly than signs, giving implicit cues to users about
the meaning of the place and norms and expectations for
behavior in the place.
GUIDELINES FOR PHYSICAL EVIDENCE
STRATEGY
• Recognize the Strategic Impact of Physical Evidence: Physical
evidence can play a prominent role in determining service quality
expectations and perceptions.
• Blueprint the Physical Evidence of Service: Everyone in the
organization should be able to see the service process and the
existing elements of physical evidence. An effective way to depict
service evidence is through the service blueprint.
• Clarify Strategic Roles of the Servicescape: Clarifying the roles
played by the servicescape in a particular situation will aid in
identifying opportunities and deciding who needs to be consulted in
making facility design decisions.
Clarifying the strategic role of the servicescape also forces
recognition of the importance of the servicescape in creating
customer experiences.
• Assess and Identify Physical Evidence Opportunities: Once the
current forms of evidence and the roles of the servicescape are
understood, possible changes and improvements can be identified.
• Update and Modernize the Evidence: the servicescape, require
frequent or at least periodic updating and modernizing. Even if the
vision, goals, and objectives of the company do not change, time
itself takes a toll on physical evidence, necessitating change and
modernization.
• Work Cross-Functionally: In presenting itself to the consumer, a
service firm is concerned with communicating a desired image, with
sending consistent and compatible messages through all forms of
evidence, and with providing the type of service evidence the target
customers want and can understand.
End of Part 2
