Page 16 - DMGT522_SERVICES MANAGEMENT

Unit 1: Service Operation Management

pass on tokens or small pay-outs to disgruntled customers. Guarantees often seem little more Notes
than your statutory rights, or an “opportunity” to purchase insurance so that, if the product or
service fails, the vendor is not troubled with the problem (and so is unaware of the in-built
problems of their products or services). Service recovery appears to have become reactive, with
staff carefully listening to, sympathizing with, and then paying off the customer but never
sorting out the root problem:
How can we link complaints and failures to organisational improvement?

How can organisational learning develop from mistakes?
How can organisations be proactive in finding and dealing with mistakes before their
customers tell them (or more often don’t tell them)?

What are good service guarantees and how can they be operationalised?
What evidence is there that complaints, guarantees or service recovery drive improvements
within an organisation?

How is learning best captured and applied?
1.2.4 People Management

Despite some excellent additions to the literature in the FIRM area, operations academics need
to retrace their roots and focus on the design of jobs. The problem is not knowing that customers
expect empathy, reliability, assurance etc., but delivering it time after time, month after month,
week after week, day after day, hour after hour. (A recent BBC documentary portrays a
heterosexual male prostitute in Australia providing service to his clients, hour after hour,
sometimes for a week at a time.) We need to understand how all employees can deliver constant
and consistent high levels of service and how we can design jobs and motivate employees to do
this:

What are the key service operational competencies?
How do we develop those competencies?
How do operations managers go about maintaining the energy and commitment of front-
line workers?

How does one ensure that a constant level of service is provided?
1.2.5 Service Design

The service design models used in the literature are strongly based upon product design processes,
yet there is some evidence that product design processes are not used, or indeed applicable, in
service situations. Do we understand how services are designed from conception to consumption
and how existing product-based models can be applied?

What is a service design?
How is a service concept developed into a service?

What is a service concept?
What are the most effective methods of developing a service?
What are good design tools and techniques?
Seamless service is a great idea for a customer but how does one achieve this in most “silo-
based” organisations?

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