Service Marketing Course Outline - April 2011

SERVICE ECONOMY : How Indian economy has grown in services, explanation of growth based on Maslow’s theory of needs, mfg depends on machines and services depends on people, how does service business evolve ?
 
EVOLUTION OF SERVICE PRODUCTS : sustainable evolution is either due to price increase (catering to more complex service tasks or catering to high end people or reducing the cost of transaction by using technology and low wage people ). New service products are dependent on better understanding what solutions people want ( courier service used existing structures and systems, comparative pricing websites), better ways of connecting people who need talent and who have talent (BPOs), making people more productive ( reducing downtime by automatic call distribution), by engaging customers in co-creation (CLI, computers, filling a salad bowl, DIY facility of ECG) , using unutilized talent clusters ( BPOs) .
 
YOU ARE NOT SELLING EITHER PRODUCTS OR SERVICES : Customers buy solutions whereas you may be selling products. Who then offers the services – someone who is local, who is expert, who can assemble the solution and provide pre-during-after service.  The continuum. From business perspective the key is how quickly can you scale up? Vehicle loan is not a service (although classified as service by economists) whereas a tailored jacket is largely a service because it cannot be scaled up quickly.
 
PARTNERING : How are services delivered – by independents or franchisees ? Criteria that come into picture … list of services provided by the trade
 
CONSUMER BEHAVIOR AND TYPING : What do the customer expect – concept of service product (design), service delivery (servequal), service process and servicescape. The 3 logics : technical, customer and employee. 


SETTING UP A SERVICE LOCATION : STP and 7S. 
 
COSTS AND PROFITS IN SERVICE BUSINESS : Link to satisfaction
 
DRIVING IMPROVEMENT THROUGH FIRST LEVEL SERVICE MANAGERS : Iceberg model. Short term symptomatic  approaches and long term strategic approaches. Using hot spots and touch points as tools for improvement. Normally what are the problems and the concept of “employee tools”.
 
DRIVING IMPROVEMENT USING THE GAP MODEL : Dissatisfaction is common in service because of the vagueness that prevails. How to drill down and find causes. Use it as an audit model.
 
DRIVING IMPROVEMENT THROUGH EMPLOYEE MOTIVATION :