Page 189 - DMGT510_SERVICES_MARKETING

Services Marketing

Notes  Transaction: A highly trained and skilled provider will be able to deliver high quality
service. The quality of transaction will have minimal service failures; and if there are such
unfortunate incidents, then there will be scope for swift service recoveries.
The customer now has his service experience to help him in differentiating the particular
service firm from others - in the offer design and service delivery. The quality of service
transaction is also dependent on the moods, involvement, orientation and experience of
the internal customers. The customer encounters ‘Moments of Truth’ and carries home the
experience as the evidence of quality of the service firm.

Consistency: Only a highly trained cadre of internal customers would be able to consistently

deliver the service at all levels and at all times. The consistency is not only in the individual
provider’s performance; say Monday through Saturday, but also amongst all other
providers of the service firm.
Everyone seems to possess the same high skills in uniformity that makes it hard for the
customer to detect any change in the service delivery. This goes a long way in putting the
customer in comfort zones, preventing him from having any feeling of fear, anxiety or
dissonance.

10.1.1 Boundary Spanning Roles

The service providers are unique (when compared with those in the goods industry) in the sense
that they are continuously interacting with their internal as well as external environment. They
receive information from the external non-members of the service organisation and transfer
them inside for it to react and respond positively. They also interact with the outside world as
representatives of the service firm, almost as its spokespersons. They are the service firm. In this
way, service providers adopt roles that span a wide boundary, helping link their service firm
with the environment.
Is there only one type of provider who has boundary-spanning roles? No, because in the service
industry, internal customers range from being professionals to non-professionals. The implication
is that in a service firm, non-professionals have the roles of information transmitters as well as
that of representing the service organisation. Similarly, even the professional internal customers
also don the same two mantles: that of information transmitter and a representative of the firm.
The difference lies in the reaction of the customers to the two: they acknowledge the expertise of
the former because of their educational qualifications (surgeons, lawyers, accountants, bankers
etc.) while for the latter (waiters, receptionists, bell-hop, drivers), the customer hardly takes
them into consideration for their purchases or consumptions.

!
Caution The internal customers suffer through various types of conflicts due mainly to
their boundary-spanning roles and the difference in the (inequity of) roles, responsibility
and respect between two different types of providers.

10.1.2 Different Roles Played by Internal Customers

As mentioned in the previous section, by virtue of over dependence on people, internal customers
play a variety of roles that stretch beyond the expected boundaries. V C Judd has developed a
2x2 matrix that leads to four categories of roles played by employees of a service firm. The
matrix is based on the frequency of customer contact that employees have with customers and

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