Service marketing assignment
Company in order to impress customers by its service is not easy to achieve. It is difficult to provide single service to different group of consumers. The service encounter has been defined as ‘a period of time during which a consumer directly interacts with a service’ (Shostack, 1985). Some scholars said that service encounters usually is interpersonal exchange between customers and service providers and these interpersonal exchanges can strongly influence customers; satisfaction. There are a lot of elements found at a service encounter may affect the customer’s service experience ultimately.
The negative service encounter I have experienced is a Chinese restaurant in Newcastle Town, called YummiYummi, where provides Sichuan spicy food and Karaoke. It is not impressive because the products (the food) are too spicy. Karaoke is not what I expected despite it is opened up till morning. Also, the decoration of the restaurant has been drawn a bad attention, for example, red wall painting and delicate light, and it makes customers feel uncomfortable. The service from staffs is not superior, which staffs do not interact with customers.
For the positive service encounter, there is a Chinese restaurant, which provides Chinese food. It is a small business and there are just four female staff and 1 manager. The restaurant, Furama Place, where is near the 24 hours Tesco. It offers Chinese food, Chinese Hotpot and recently Korean Barbecue (BBQ). Usually, Chinese students like to go there for Hotpot and Korean Barbecue because of its price are offered 15 pounds to get unlimited food including meat, seafood, vegetables and noodles. The normal Chinese food is seemed as others Chinese restaurant, for instance, Chicken, pork, beef, lamb and seafood and so on. In the restaurant, the place is enough for 50 people maximum and also, there is a big room for Karaoke. In spite of the fact that Furama need more improvement on its service, however, it is impressed when I first went there with my friend for lunch. I recommend to my friends and try different food in there. Furama never disappointed their customer. There are always full of surprise and added up features such as Hotpot and Korean Barbecue. Manager always improve its service in order to please customers and staff would interact with us.
To extend its service encounter, Furama is using ‘blueprinting’ and ‘servicescape’ for business decision based upon theory of service marketing. Blueprinting can clearly show all steps in a service process, that is, all contacts or interactions with customers (Palmer, p.97). Furama may use blueprinting to identify their service, greeting customers, obtaining table, taking order, deliver the meal and paying the bill and all these can be marked down and calculated the level of afford should be input. Also, it can sort out problems where a new service is launched with identifying the critical incidents. Korean BBQ is a new service in Furama. Manager should be cautious what service they are providing, for instance, proper food for barbecue and cooking tools for customer self-barbecuing. These elements of service should be sufficient to satisfy customer needs. When a critical incident occurs and service recovery is used, manager are supposed to sort out problems as soon as possible, for example, Furama does not has enough heated iron for barbecue, manager offers the Hotpot instead and explain to customer the new BBQ tools will be arrived soon.
According to Keillor and Lewison, ‘ servicescape has been defined as the firm and the customer interact’ and ‘customers will be also be influenced by how they receive the service.’ Booms and Bitner recognize ‘high-load’ and ‘low-load’ environments
, which can be fitted into particular emotional states. For high load environment, Korean BBQ and Karaoke are novelty for customer. For low-load environment, customer can have normal Chinese food in its neat and clean place. Furama’s manager managed to make two different places for two types of customers. British customers are more willing to have a quiet place for dinner; however, Chinese customers would prefer a lively dinner. Manager has separated the restaurant into two area by double glazing, so that, Chinese customers can enjoy their meal while British customers will not be bothered by crowd and noise.
Creating a customer experience is now increasingly used by companies. Customers may be attracted by experience of surprise, delight and excitement. According to number of authors, that consider the factors to give a special experience to customers are the physical setting, quality product design, service delivery process and supporting relationships. Furama keeps inform to customers who like Karaoke and BBQ, especially for Chinese students, they like having joyful time for dinner with their peers. Manager has updated the information what Furama will do in the future and what features they will add up. For instances, the upper floor of the restaurant is empty and manage decide to decorate as more spaces for Karaoke. It gives excitement and expectation for its customers.
Furama also improves its productivity involving customers more fully in the production process, followed by Palmers’ process of service industrialization of service: replacing human inputs with machines-based inputs. It uses self-service technologies such as Korean BBQ and hot pot by providing food, which customers actually cook by themselves, and manager can focus more on customers who only have normal meal. In other words, Furama is flexible in its service which they deliver different service to different groups of customers and fulfil their needs. Despite of the location of Furama is not as convenient as the other restaurant in town, Furama has car park which is easy to access.
In order to understand what customers want from the services, Furama’s manager talks to customers by asking questions face to face when customers finish the dinner. This may improve their service quality. Furama does not have much promotion or advertising (pull strategy) to customers. Customers often come because of they take word of mouth recommendation. Furama gives a friendly emotion and attitudes to customers and decisions are all depended on manager (push strategy), so that, it is important to impress customers for once. Also, Palmer states that culture background of some individuals can predispose them to seek a particular kind of accessibility. In other words, Furama can develop or increase the accessibility of its service for different culture background customers. There are number of models of consumer buyer behaviour to find out how buyers actually make choices. However, some small company such as Furama may not be affordable to examine buyer behaviours. Manager in Furama can design comment cards and put it on every table and recommend customers to fill in. Comment cards can either gather quantitative and qualitative information from customers, so that, Furama can develop and fine tune its marketing mix and achieve desired responses. Palmer suggests that company use segmentation method by demographic or geographic analyze can help Furama to build up a profile of customers of the service, especially for new service development. Furama also can contribute it to pricing policy, for example, how could Furama charge for Karaoke?
Building up an on-going relationship with customers may benefit Furama while it can identify what segment of target customers actually desire from the service. Manager treats Chinese customers differently, offering different service to Chinese customers, for example, favourite sauces (Satay sauce and Garlic with soy Sauce) and the dressing (eggs in raw) are accompanied for Korean BBQ and Hotpot. Manager can record which customers’ favourite in food and deliver the product to customers without requiring. This can retain the existing customers. Manager is using
Just-In-Time
technique to let customer to pre-order some special food, for example, fresh crab or fresh fish. Customers can taste food differently and even make them feel different from other customers. In a short term marketing strategy, Furama can offer financial incentives such as discount offer occasionally to customers for promotion. For some loyal customer, manager may offer drink on the house. The case of Furama, the owner of the restaurant will sit down, has drink with and talk to customers. This can achieve high levels of satisfaction of customers. However, the measurement of loyalty is difficult to compare the performance of a marketing plan. Furama’s manager needs to beware the level of resource to input in order to gain loyalty from customers.