Page 82 - DMGT522_SERVICES MANAGEMENT

Unit 3: Nature/Characteristics of Services

offer, process, rules and norms. Otherwise the learning curve of the customer tends to be longer, Notes
delaying the service transaction and lowering the service quality.
The consumers affect the transaction due to the following differences amongst themselves:

Varying socio-economic backgrounds like income, education, family of orientation, etc.
moods, involvement, orientation
experiences
In a post-graduate college, in a certain course, students could have different demographic profiles.
Some could have had schooling in the vernacular medium while others could be from convents
or English-medium schools. Again, some could be from the science stream while others could
have a humanities background. All these make them adopt a different approach and orientation
to the transaction, making the teaching a high quality or low quality transaction as the case
might be. To put it differently, twisting the Pygmalion experiment, if a professor has a class of
only the top thirty, the teaching encounter would definitely be of a much higher standard as
when compared to a situation where he taught a class of only the bottom thirty. In the latter case,
he would have had to come down to their level, slowed his pace and would have resorted to the
tutorial mode more often.

A banker in the course of his daily transaction would have had customers who are business
executives, well-versed with banking norms; housewives, who desire more courtesy, attention,
care; students who would like to spend the least time in the bank premises; and the illiterate
who might require detailed explanations, translations and form-fillings. He would require
different time and effort to complete the same kind of business transaction amongst the different
types of customers.

Note Services are inherently intangible, are consumed simultaneously at the time of
their production, cannot be stored, saved or resold.
Therefore the organisation can also attempt trying to train the external customers in the
transaction process. It would definitely enhance the quality of transactions. Thus, students
admitted to business courses are given a fortnight of orientation and basic foundation teaching
and training. It could also imply literacy training for illiterate customers. State Bank of India has
a Social Banking Department whose main job is to try and improve the literacy of rural customers.
With them becoming literate they would then be able to attempt writing cheques and deposit
slips on their own and thus save a lot of valuable time for the bankers in making the service
transaction better.

Automation

The third way to improve homogeneity and standardization is to go for large-scale automation
in the service transaction process. Automation will bring consistency in the service delivery and
transactions. Thus banks are going in a big way for ATMs (Automated Teller Machines). Within
a bank branch there are note counting machines; retail stores have the infra-red bar code scanners,
Electronic Data Capture (EDC) machines through which credit cars are washed/polished; hotels,
airports, railway stations and many apartment hotels have got touch-screen enquiry systems;
Indian Railways have bookings done through the Internet, and tickets are validated by coupon
validating machines, etc. Automation to a great extent attempts to overcome variability and
introduce homogeneity.

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