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Unit 10: Role of Employees and Customers in Service Delivery
marketer orient more towards customisation and veer away from standardisation. Adding to Notes
the challenge of mass customisation is the fact that the groups of customers tend to interact
amongst themselves, influencing each others experience of the service.
Example: In a restaurant there could be two families whose adult members are having a
quiet dinner while, simultaneously, there could be a group of noisy collegians intent on having
their brand of fun. The restaurant manager would have to give the best customer satisfaction to
both the groups. The two groups could create images of the restaurants themselves. The adult
family group might get disturbed and irritated and come to the conclusion that the restaurant
patronizes the college crowd; conversely, the youthful diners, seeing the adult group, might
perceive the restaurant to be not a cool place.
Similar would be the case for an airline or a bank when it strives to serve a wide cross-section of
customers. The language of communication (for example, in a bank) and the product-mix on
offer (like vegetarian and non-vegetarian food for airlines) are just two examples that might
challenge service providers.
Compatibility management is all about the process of managing a variety of customer segments
that might be radically different from each other in profiles. Martin and Pranter defined it thus:
It is the process of first attracting homogenous consumers to the service environment, then actively
managing both the physical environment and customer-to-customer encounters in such a way as to enhance
satisfying encounters and minimize dissatisfying encounters.
A service marketer should seek homogenous audience, and serve distinctive segments separately.
The segment that Kishore Biyani is targeting through Pantaloons is different from that of Big
Bazaar. Customers can also be made to adhere to certain norms and code of conduct like
adhering to Silence and No Smoking instructions.
Customer Acquisition, Education and Training and Appreciation
Customers should be recruited with clear-cut role enunciation, and their confirmation of the
same. They can then be trained with instructions on what their script and action should be.
Before the flight, air stewards give a mime performance to airline passengers about safety
devices, precautions and contingency actions to be taken. Customer handbooks and instruction
booklets or service literature, also go a long way in customers educating and preparing them
well about and their roles in the service process delivery. Service firms can then reward customers
through the right responses, through incentives, time-savings, thereby achieving better control
on the service process.
10.2.2 Dealing with Difficult Customers
The quality of service transactions, surprisingly, depends to a great extent also on the
characteristics and traits of the customers:
1. Education and background - like profession, skills, experience, family background, social
circle, etc.
A customer who is a professional, like a chartered accountant, will be in a better position
to understand the savings account opening norms in a bank than an illiterate farmer. The
latter would most probably require detailed explanations, in his mother tongue, and
assistance in filling up all the forms. These would undoubtedly make the service transaction
more time-consuming. In addition, the service delivery would suffer, if the provider was
not conversant with the language of the customer or was incapable of coming down to the
comprehension level of the customer.
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