Page 197 - DMGT510_SERVICES_MARKETING

Services Marketing

Notes
Example: An educated housewife could be helpless inside an ATM kiosk, if there was a
“system fault” and would have to resort to ‘manned’ banking procedures.
2. The mood, attitude and personality of the customer, which might prevent a smooth service
transaction.

Example: In a popular restaurant positioned for the family, when some rowdy non-
family group disturbs the peaceful atmosphere, the service provider fails in delivering the
promise.
The demeanour of the ill-mannered group is markedly different from the orderly behaviour
of the rest of the family-type customers, and although they are smaller in number, they
manage to ruin the experience of all other customers. This is also an uncontrollable factor
for the service marketer.
Service transactions and the quality of service delivery depend a lot on both the provider
and the customers carrying out their roles seamlessly as designed by the blueprints of
operations. While it can to a great extent be possible to manage the quality of the
performance of the internal customers, it becomes a challenge to extract compliant
behaviour from the customers.
The customers of the same service firm and offer are different from each other due to the
following:
Differing backgrounds of education, family, occupation, income;

Differing skills, attitude and aptitude;

Differing moods, involvement, experience, awareness and perception.

If the service has to be delivered with consistent quality — and customers’ participation is taken
as mandatory for the service delivery – then the differences in the characteristics of the customers
have to be taken into account by the service marketer. The customer has to be managed, which can
be attempted in the following ways:
Training and education of the customer;

Choosing the appropriate segment of the customers that are desirable and manageable by

the service marketer.
Training and Education of the Customer: As mentioned before, airline staff pantomime and
give verbal instructions on flight safety procedures before takeoff to the passengers. Package
tour operators give detailed instruction booklets and other information brochures to their
customers and make them sign many clauses of conduct and disclaimers.
Targeting the chosen Segment: Citibank took the lead followed by other foreign banks and then
later by most private banks, to keep a high minimum-balance-maintaining clause for its account
holders. In the process they got to avoid the vast mass-banking crowd who were not only
unprofitable (from their point of view) but also greatly differed in their quality of service
participation.

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