Introduction to Services and General Class Items
Be sure you have read the Class Direction prior to starting.
Menu for Learning Module 1
Reading Material for Learning Module 1
Note: The reading materials for Learning Module 1 provide a general background for the discussion of services management that will be useful throughout the course. It may be helpful, from time to time, as you are reading in other Modules, to come back and re-read portions or all of these general background service issues.
Services operations management issues exist in two broad organizational contexts:
1. Service businesses, the management of organizations whose primary business requires interaction with the customer to produce the service. These include such familiar services as banks, airlines, hospitals, law firms, retail stores, and restaurants. Within this category, we can make a further major distinction:
Technology has allowed for the transfer of many facility-based services to field-based services. Dental vans bring the dentist to your home. Some auto repair services have repair-modules. Telemarketing brings the shopping center to your TV screen.
2. Internal services, the management of services required to support the activities of the larger organization. These services include such functions as data processing, accounting, engineering, and maintenance. Their customers are the various departments within the organization that require such services. Incidentally, it is not uncommon for an internal service to start marketing its services outside the parent organization and become a service business itself. [1]
While we will generally, in this course, refer to services in the first way, service businesses, it is important to remember that virtually all the priniciples we consider are equally applicable to internal services.
Different views of services:
Seven Generalizations about Services:
1. Everyone is an expert on services, including you... and me. We all think we know what we want from a service organization, and, by the very process of living, we have a good deal of experience with the service creation process. Therefore, as a customer of services, we each are the expert, for those transactions, but, not for all transactions.
2. Services are idiosyncratic - what works well in providing one kind of service may prove disastrous in another. For example, consuming a restaurant meal in less than half an hour may be exactly what you want at Hardee's but be totally unacceptable at an expensive French restaurant.
3. Quality of work is not quality of service. An auto dealership may do good work on your car, but it may take a week to get the job done, for example. Service quality has many dimensions, as we will see later.
4. Most services contain a mix of tangible and intangible attributes that constitute a service package. This package requires different approaches to design and management than the production of goods. There is a very wide range of variation in the service package, from largely tangible to totally intangible.
5. High-contact services are experienced, whereas goods are consumed. The degree of customer contact is one important measure used in services management. How we evaluate the experience of this service will relate directly to customer satisfaction.
6. Effective management of services requires an understanding of marketing and personnel, as well as operations. The three are tightly interwoven. However, in this course, we will focus on the operations aspects of services management. Services Marketing and Human Resources issues are primarily dealt with in those courses, offered here at ESU.
7. Services often take the form of cycles of encounters involving face-to-face, phone, electromechanical, and/or mail interactions. (The term encounter, by the way, is defined as "meeting in conflict or battle" and hence is often apt as we make our way through the service economy.) [1] One of the service design issues we will examine in more detail, later in the course, is what is the most effective and efficient mode of service delivery, for that particular service, under certain specified conditions.
Distinctive Characteristics of Service Operations:
These characteristics issues will appear time and time again as we explore services management. They are what make looking at services different from looking at manufacturing issues, for example.
Understanding the Competitive Environment of Services
Service industries compete in an economic environment that is difficult because of the following reasons:
We should keep these factors in mind as we move through the various issues developed during this course, especially as you do your projects and consider the issues of your journal article.
The service package is defined as a bundle of goods and services provided in some environment. It is experienced by the customer and forms the basis of his or her perception of the service. This bundle consists of four elements:
1. Supporting facilities. The physical resources that must be in place before a service can be offered. Examples include a golf course, a ski lift, a hospital, and an airplane.
Criteria for evaluating supporting facilities: Architechtural appropriateness; interior decorating; facility layout; supporting equipment, for instance.
2. Facilitating goods. The material purchased or consumed by the buyer or items provided by the customer. Examples include golf clubs, skis, food items, replacement auto parts, legal documents, and medical supplies.
Criteria for evaluating facilitating goods: Consistency; quality; selection, for instance.
3. Explicit services. The benefits that are readily observable by the senses and consist of the essential or intrinsic features of the service. Examples include the absence of pain after a tooth is repaired, a smooth-running automobile after a tune-up, and the response time of the fire department.
Criteria for evaluating explicit services: Training of service personnel; comprehensiveness; consistency; availability, for instance.
4. Implicit services. Psychological benefits that the customer may sense only vaguely or extrinsic features of the service. Examples are the status of a degree from an Ivy League school, the privacy of a loan office, and worry-free auto repair, for instance.
Criteria for evaluating implicit servcies. Attitude of service personnel; privacy and security; convenience; atmosphere; waiting; status; sense of well-being, for instance. [20]
These are term/elements and criteria you will want to keep in mind as you carry out your other readings and projects, throughout this course and your career, as well as personal life. We each provide a service. Many people now consider their career as a service business. Do you?
One approach to a service concept [20] has suggested there are both structural and managerial issues to consider:
Structural:
| Delivery System | Location |
| Facility design | Capacity planning |
Managerial:
| Service encounter | Managing capacity and demand |
| Quality | Information |
These also suggest a number of the issues we will be covering in this
course.
Complete WebQuest.
NOTE: By completing Assignment 1-1 and sending it in, you are consenting to having the web page materials you create as part of this course posted to the Internet, for this and each subsequent assignment throughout the course.
The Congratulations Letter, or, The Complaint Letter
Most service problems are solved by direct communication between the server and the customer at the moment of service. Occasionally, however, a customer may be motivated to communicate some thoughtful and detailed feedback to a service provider after the encounter. This assignment should be initiated this week, but, the conclusion will come later on, as noted below.
Choose an incident of service you have received, personally. Write a Congratulatory letter or a letter of Complaint to the service provider. Either is fine. Send a copy of the letter to the instructor as Assignment 1-2-1. If possible, you may choose to use the feedback opportunity in the Web site of the service provider. Otherwise, write your letter on your wordprocesser, save a copy, and send it to the service provider by mail.
Send a copy of your Congratulatory or Complaint letter to the instructor, including full address of the service provider, subject: MG 505 - Assignment 1-2-1. Try to get these out in the first week (or earlier), if possible. Your letter may be sent as an attachment, or, copy and paste the contents into an e-mail message.
When a response is received, save it, reproduce it as best you can, by retyping in your wordprocessor, probably, and send a copy, including your own comments in response to the response, to the instructor, subject: MG 505 - Assignment 1-2-2. This part of the assignment is due a few days after the response is received, of course.
Write a paragraph or two about your personal work (or volunteer work) experience in a service operations setting. This will be in addition to your WebQuest information (that is what you like and use, not where you do or have worked). Here, I want you to briefly discuss each job you have had, or now have, that involves elements of service as explained above.
Send this note to the instructor, subject: MG 476 - Assignment 1-3-1.
NOTE: By completing Assignment 1-3-1 and sending it in, you are consenting to having your written materials posted to the Internet, for this and each subsequent assignment throughout the course.
I will be posting your comments so that we can all share each others' experiences. Watch them come up and read them. Communicate by e-mail with at least one other class member who you have not previously met, but have something in common with, based on information from the postings. If you have nothing in common, just pick someone. Don't stop at one. Send a personal e-mail note to each other class member, if you wish. Developing an ease of communication and comfort level with e-mail is the point of this exercise. It will also help prepare you for the CI Team Project.
Send a brief note to the instructor, subject: MG 476 - Assignment 1-3-2. In about one screen, tell me what you did (who you wrote to, etc.), why it fit the instructions, and any responses or other thoughts you had about this assignment.
William
L. Smith Teacher Home Page Service Management Home Page Emporia State University
If you have comments or suggestions, email me at smithwil@emporia.edu
This page last updated April 22, 1999.