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Services Marketing
Notes losing an existing customer as well as bad publicity for the company by the dissatisfied customer.
The longer the company takes to resolve a customer complaint, the greater will be the damage.
Moreover, the slow recovery process reduces the chances of retaining a customer dissatisfied
with its service.
14.2.3 Adequate Training to Front Line Employees
Organizations should educate employees about the need to serve customers to their satisfaction.
They should be trained adequately to offer error-free services consistently. And they should
also be trained to deal with those precarious situations when their efforts to offer quality
service to customers fail.
Employees should be in a position to notice any problems or mistakes that occur in the service
process as soon as possible, bring that to the notice of concerned person, and initiate the service
recovery process. If the customers blame them for delays or flaws in service, they should not
take it personally and get miffed, but should politely accept their responsibility for the
inconvenience caused. They should assure the customers that the mistake will be rectified and
any losses incurred by them will be compensated.
Self Assessment
State whether the following statements are true or false:
5. Service recovery strategies aim at dealing with difficult customers.
6. Service firms should attempt to know if any customer is dissatisfied with their service or
any other aspect of the firm.
7. Companies should encourage their customers to complain to them in case they face any
problem in the quality or delivery of service.
8. The customers who complain actually give a second opportunity to the organisation to
correct its mistake.
14.3 Managing Demand, Supply and Productivity
The first step towards managing demand in services is to understand and sketch a pattern of
demand variation. It is also important to understand the reason for greater demand in some
market segments when compared to others at particular time.
An organization has to track and sketch the demand level for its services at specific time periods.
If an organization maintains a customer database and a record of varying demand levels over a
period of time, this can be done with ease and accuracy. Companies which do not have a
computerized database can adopt more informal methods. Companies should track the demand
levels regularly viz., daily, weekly, and monthly.
The demand level for some services varies seasonally; therefore, organizations should gather
and record information on a periodic basis to predict the future demand levels. In some cases, it
might be relevant to observe the demand levels even on an hourly basis.
Example: Tracking the demand for a restaurants or a fast food centres services on an
hourly basis might be useful in understanding the demand patterns.
There are some services for which demand patterns can be easily predicted, while patterns for
some other services can be understood only after drawing the demand levels on a chart.
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