Brijesh Yaduvanshi (Roll No.- 92053) Q9. A friend of yours is setting up a math tutoring service.

She has asked you, "Do all services need to offer customer guarantees"? Explain your answer. Then explain why or why not she should or should not offer a customer service guarantee.
Ans) No, not all service required guarantee. Cases where guarantee is not required a) Existing service quality in the company is poor- Before instituting a guarantee, the company should fix any significant quality problems. A guarantee will certainly draw attention to the failures and to poor service quality, so cost of implementing the guarantee could easily outweigh any benefits. b) A guarantee does not fit the companys image- If the company already has a reputation for very high quality and in fact implicitly guarantee its service than a formal guarantee is most likely unnecessary. c) Service quality is truly uncontrollable- Service provider can encounter situation in which service quality is truly uncontrollable. For e.g It would not be a good practice for university to guarantee that all MBA students will get the job they want immediately upon graduation. Similar is the case of Maths tuition class as a lot depends on the individual capacity to learn and the kind of papers the students get in exam. d) Potential exists for customer abuse the guarantee- Fear of opportunistic customer behaviour including customer cheating or fraudulent invocation of service guarantees is common reasons firms hesitate to offer guarantee. e) Customer perceive little risk in the servicef) Customer perceive little variability in service quality among competitors

Q10. What kind of a guarantee is a dentist giving that guarantees patients will wait no more than 15 minutes past their appointment or they will be given $5? Explain
Ans) Service guarantees can be unconditional satisfaction guarantee or service attribute guarantees. For example Hampton Inn Hotel guarantee is an unconditional satisfaction guarantee. If clients are unhappy, they do not pay for the services. Similarly firms offer guarantees of particular attributes of the service that are important to customer as is the case of dentist since waiting is part of service so dentist is offering service attribute guarantees if his patient is waiting for consultation is more than 15 mins.

Q11. What does a typical service blueprint depict? Explain with an example

Ans) A service blueprint is a picture or map that portrays the service system so that the different people involved in providing it can understand and deal with it objectively, regardless of their role or their individual points of view. A service blueprint visually displays the service by simultaneously depicting the process of service delivery, the points of customer contact, the roles of customers and employee and the visible elements of the service. It provides a way to break a service down into logical components and to depict the steps or tasks in the process, the means by which the task are executed and the evidence of service as the customer experience it. The key component of blueprint includes customer actions, onstage / visible contact employee action, backstage/ invisible contact employee actions and support process. The customer action area encompasses the steps, choices, activities and interactions that the customer perform in the process of purchasing, consuming and evaluating the service. The total customer experience is apparent in this area of blueprint. In a legal services e.g the customer actions might include a decision to contact an attorney, phone calls to the attorney, face to face meetings, receipt of documents and receipt of bill. The steps and activities that contact employee performs that are visible to the customer are the onstage/ visible contact employee action. In legal services setting, the action of the attorney that are visible to client are for e.g the initial interview, intermediate meeting and final delivery of document. Those contact employee action that occur behind the scene to support the onstage activities are the backstage/ invisible actions. E.g anything attorney does behind the scene to prepare for the meeting or to prepare final document comes under this section of blueprint.

Q12. Imagine you are the manager of an electrical contracting company that does repair work, remodeling and new construction for homeowners. You understand that you need to set customer-defined standards in order to close the gap between customer expectations and what your company is now delivering. List and define the two major types of customer-defined standards and give an example of each. Ans) Q13. Human behavior is influenced by the physical setting in which it occurs. How does the servicescape influence the individual behavior of consumers and employees? Give examples Ans) Servicescape can have a profound effect on the customer experience. This is true whether the experience is mundane (e.g bus ride), personally meaningful (e.g church wedding) or spectacular (e.g a week long travel adventure). In all cases the physical evidence of the service will influence the flow of the experience, the meaning customer attach to it, their satisfaction and their emotional connection with the company delivering the experience.

There are three types of servicescapes. At one extreme is the self-service environment, in which the customer performs most of the activities and few if any employee are involved. E.g of self service environment include ATMs, movie theatres, self service entertainment such as golf and theme parks and online internet serviced. The organization can plan the servicescape to focus exclusively on marketing goals such as attracting the right market segment, making facility pleasing and easy to use and creating the desired service experience. At the other extreme of the use dimension is remote service, which has little or no customer involvement with the servicescape. Telecommunication, utilities, financial consultants, editorial and mail order service are examples of services that can be provided without the customer ever seeing the service facility. In remote services the facility can be set up to keep employees motivated and to facilitate productivity, teamwork, operational efficiency or whatever organizational behaviour goal is desired without any consideration of customers because they will never see the servicescape. Interpersonal services are placed between the two extreme and represent situation in which both the customer and the employee are present and active in the servicesacpe. Eg hotels, restaurants, hospitals, educational settings and banks. In these situations the serviceescape must be planned to attract, satisfy and facilitate the activities of both customers and employees simultaneously. Q14. Describe how ski resorts manage traditionally seasonal supply and demand fluctuations. Ans) These are the few steps for matching the seasonal supply and demand fluctuation a) Promoting Off-Peak Demand

Creative use of off-peak capacity results from seeking different sources of demand. One example is use of a resort during the off-season as a retreat location for business or professional groups. Or resort can becomes a staging area for backpacking during the summer.
b) Cross-Training Employees

Some service systems are made up of several operations. When one operation is busy, another operation sometimes maybe idle. Cross-training employees to perform tasks in several operations creates flexible capacity to meet localized peaks in demand.
c) Using Part-Time Employees

When peaks of activity are persistent and predictable, such as ski resorts, part-time help can supplement regular employees. If the required skills and training are minimal, then a ready part-time labor pool is available from high school and college students as well as others who are interested in supplementing their primary source of income.
Q15. How are competing for employees and competing for customers similar?

Ans) Competition is a contest between individuals, groups, animals, etc. for territory, a niche, or a location of resources. It arises whenever two and only two strive for a goal which cannot be shared. Competition occurs naturally between living organisms which co-exist in the same environment. Business is often associated with competition as most companies are in competition with at least one other firm over the same group of customers for promoting there products. Companies hire employees from, and lose employees to, various recruiting markets. A recruiting market is the segment of the national labor market from which a company hires its employees. To define recruiting markets, an organization should identify the relevant industries, company sizes and geographics that represent the employers with which it competes for talented employees. Different jobs may be benchmarked against different groups of competing employers depending on the recruiting market and role a particular job or class of jobs fills in the organization. Therefore, the job being evaluated is the one to consider to define the relevant recruiting market. For example, compensation for executive jobs tends to vary according to industry and company size as opposed to geography. Geography, however, is often the primary influence of compensation levels for many lower-paid jobs. Compensation professionals identify the market range of pay for a company job by analyzing available survey data for the specified recruiting market. Further analysis predicts the market value necessary for the employer to attract and retain employees with the desired qualifications of the job. A company uses such analysis to arrive at its competitive pay policy and to assess its competitive standing. Competitive standing is a measure of an employers compensation levels compared to those employers within its recruiting market. As a fairness criterion, competitiveness (external equity) implies that the employer compensates employees at levels that correspond to prevailing external market rates.

Q16. Define total relationship Marketing? Explain with an example

Ans) Relationship marketing was first defined as a form of marketing developed from direct response marketing campaigns which emphasizes customer retention and satisfaction, rather than a dominant focus on sales transactions, As a practice, relationship marketing differs from other forms of marketing in that it recognizes the long term value of customer relationships and extends communication beyond intrusive advertising and sales promotional messages. With

the growth of the internet and mobile platforms, relationship marketing has continued to evolve and move forward as technology opens more collaborative and social communication channels. This includes tools for managing relationships with customers that goes beyond simple demographic and customer service data. Relationship marketing extends to include inbound marketing efforts, (a combination of search optimization and strategic content), PR, social media and application development. Relationship marketing is a broadly recognized, widelyimplemented strategy for managing and nurturing a companys interactions with clients and sales prospects. It also involves using technology to organize, synchronize business processes, (principally sales and marketing activities), and most importantly, automate those marketing and communication activities on concrete marketing sequences that could run in autopilot, (also known as marketing sequences). The overall goals are to find, attract and win new clients, nurture and retain those the company already has, entice former clients back into the fold, and reduce the costs of marketing and client service.

Q17. Discuss how service firms can minimize non-monetary purchase costs.

Ans) In recent years economists have recognized that monetary price is not
the only sacrifice consumers make to obtain products and services. Demand, therefore, is not just a function of monetary price but is influenced by other costs as well. Non-monetary costs represent other sources of sacrifice perceived by consumers when buying and using a service. Time costs, search costs, and psychological costs often enter into the evaluation of whether to buy or rebuy a service, and may at times be more important concerns than monetary price Ways to reduce non-monetary costs First, a service firm may be able to increase monetary price by reducing time and other costs. E.g. a services marketer can reduce the perceptions of time and convenience costs when use of the service is embedded in other activities (such as when a convenience store cashes checks, sells stamps, and serves coffee along with selling products). Second, customers may be willing to pay to avoid the other costs. Many customers willingly pay extra to have items delivered to their home including restaurant mealsrather than transporting the services and products themselves. For reduced waiting time in a professionals office (as in so-called executive appointments where, for a premium price, a busy executive comes early in the morning and does not have to wait).

Many other services save time, thus actually allowing the customer to buy time. Household cleaning services, lawn care, babysitting, interactive cable shopping, personal shopper service, home banking, home delivery of groceries, painting, and car pet c1eaning of these represent net gains in the discretionary time of consumers and could effectively be marketed that a that allow the customer to buy time are likely to have monetary value for busy consumers

Q18. Describe how airlines utilize revenue management to enhance profitability.

Ans) In the passenger airline case, capacity is regarded as fixed because

changing what aircraft flies a certain service based on the demand is the exception rather than the rule. When the aircraft departs, the unsold seats cannot generate any revenue and thus can be said to have perished. Airlines use special software to monitor how seats are being reserved and react accordingly, for example by offering discounts when it appears that seats will remain unsold. Another way of capturing varying willingness to pay is to attempt market segmentation. A firm may repackage its basic inventory into different products to this end. In the passenger airline case this means implementing purchase restrictions, length of stay requirements and requiring fees for changing or canceling tickets. The airline needs to keep a specific number of seats in reserve to cater to the probable demand for high-fare seats. The price of each seat varies inversely with the number of seats reserved, that is, the fewer seats that are reserved for a particular category, the lower the price of each seat. This will continue till the price of seat in the premium class equals that of those in the concession class. Depending on this, a floor price (lower price) for the next seat to be sold is set.