service blueprint is an efficient way of managing operations management and it also allows us to see and rectify any mistakes being committed in operations management. Organization blueprinting grants the catching of component methods outwardly (Bitner, Ostrom and Morgan, 2008) in a visual manner which makes it easier for the operations manager and also the employees to understand since it is simple. This essay is divided in to many sections but its mainly divided into two sections. In the first section I will be explaining my service blue print which can be seen in figure 1. The blue print is for luxury hotels which generally target rich customers and I am going to give my opinion on how well the operations manager has used it depending on my personal experiences. The second section will consist of an explanation about the service blue print it self and how it can be helpful to the operations manager in efficient managing of the staff and how demand based pricing is going to help that and service blue printing can operate without shutting down the entire chain of command
I have selected the service blue print of a luxury hotel because when I travel with my parents I stay in luxury hotels and when I travel alone I stay in a less fancy place but the thing I always notice is the difference between one other, other than cost is that in luxury hotel the quality, presentation and etiquette is always better in the luxury hotels and they have to be since they are trying to attract rich clients and they expect good quality and level of mistakes to be as low as possible so this service blue print will help him to have a overview of the tasks that ought to be completed by the staff and service blue print is easy to understand and all the members of the staff can easily understand their roles and start working accordingly to them, this will also help save time for operations manager as he doesn’t need to explain staff their jobs . service blueprint also helps the operations manager to identify the costs that are required for services. Service blue print allows to identify the mistakes taking place and the week links in the chain and it allows operations manager to take more action in that area. It also helps mangers identify channel and quality improvement effort put in by the employees not only those who are in front line but also those who are in support teams. The interaction between the employees and the customers may lead to suggestions left by customers and the operations manager can take advantage of this and find where the customer feels quality and try to increase that specific experience more. There will be interdependence and the service blue print shows it which makes it easier for employees to know what they are doing and what protocols they have to follow in specific situations which in-turn improves the quality. Service blue printing also makes it easy for the advertising agencies since they can select which part of the service they want to highlight and what message they want to send. The line of visibility in the service blue print may influence the decision making of the customers as they might appreciate seeing how its done.
Service blue print is a supply chain diagram and according to Sampson (2012) supply chain diagrams are useful for demonstrating relationships between the different players that participate in a given procedure as it makes it easy for everyone in the staff to understand.
At a principal level, Service Blueprints separate between administration process steps that customers can see— “over the line of visibility” — and those they can't see (Sampson, 2012) you can only order room service and you see it being served to you but you do not see the process of making your food and processing your order, Hence the actions taken by the employees after you give a specific order can be called going over the visibility line. If maybe you could see the over the line of visibility you would appreciate the work of the employees and maybe even pay more for the service or you might feel its not worth it but it defiantly will change the way you think. That’s some service providers take advantage of this and keep open kitchen or see through kitchen which ensures you that it is fresh and you might change your opinion about the service.
The person responsible for smooth operation is operations manager and this blue print will help him in running operations smoothly as the blue print will show all the tasks that are to be completed by employee. All parts of the affiliation should be revolved around the common goal of making a coordinated, memorable and positive customer experience (Bitner, Ostrom and Morgan, 2008) One of the main reasons for service blue print is customer satisfaction because customer is the reason that they are working, only if the customer is happy will he recommend the hotel to others or re-visit it when possible. So the operations manager should accept suggestions given by the customer and make changes to the service blue print where necessary so that it benefits the customer and also make sure operations run smoothly. Service blue print is a lot more customer friendly than other process oriented design techniques and tools (Bitner, Ostrom and Morgan, 2008) which means that operations manager should choose service blue printing over the others. Since the subject of every procedure step is inferred by the position on the diagram, the procedure steps can and ought to dependably begin with verbs, advising us that we are concentrating on chains of procedure steps (Sampson, 2012) you do this because only actions can lead to other actions which in turn lead for the whole service blue print to activate. Doing the customer actions was pretty easy as it is the thing that I usually I do when ever I go into a hotel but I had to remember the physical evidence as I had not paid attention at details and took a while to remember them. What was interesting to me was what happens beyond the line of invisibility as I had never seen it before and I had to make certain assumptions and these assumptions had to have a visible effect which would let me know they were true. Working beyond the invisibility line is hard. All I had to do was go to the hotel’s website and check the convenient to me and book a room and pay for the room, but for people working beyond the line of invisibility they have to check if the room is available at that time and if there were already guest in that room they have to make sure sure the room is tidied up before the next customer come’s in and check’s-in. all this keeps happening everyday and operations manager has to keep an eye on all of that’s going on and make sure that there are no problems and service blue print helps the operations manager a lot in this as he can directly attack a problem in a specific section .
Incredible contrasts exist between different classifications of services and demand-based pricing is not appropriate to every one of them (Calabrese and De Francesco, 2014) demand based pricing is focused solely on customers so according to this the price of the service is decided by the customers but this method is not widely followed so most of the companies price their services according to the competitor and the value they have added to the service.
In the current competitive environment, demand-based pricing is a promising methodology for upgrading profitability of service organizations (Calabrese and De Francesco, 2014) but there is a lot of risk involved since there is a chance that the employers may not get a profit for there service they had offered and due to the uncertainty they tend to stick to value based pricing and competitor based pricing but there are services that are taking the risk but they are in small numbers but a lot of services are thinking of switching.
In order to apply demand-based pricing effectively a company has: to be aware of its services’ value; to employ an effective interaction of such a value to customers; to know customers’ expectations and perceptions about its services (Zeithaml et al., 2006, cited in Calabrese and De Francesco, 2014) to be able to shift to demand-based pricing is not easy but a lot of research should have been done, if it is suitable for the company and also learn what the customer thinks about the service and predict how it might go if they were to shift to demand based pricing
Service blue printing divides each part of the work into sections and there are n number of things that go wrong on a regular day but you don’t need to stop working of all the other sector if one has had problems in a particular sector the problem can be solved there itself without stopping the work in other sectors. service blue printing permits the catching of element procedures in a visual way (Bitner, Ostrom and Morgan, 2008) it is simplified into a visual manner with color full boxes and the lines make it easy to identify the next step in the process and identification and rectification of mistakes is made easy.
To conclude this essay, I have shown my blue print for luxury hotel and I have explained with examples on how my service blue print is useful to the operations manager of a luxury hotel. I explained how the operations should use the service blue print and how they will have to make changes to the blue print because of the customers and their comforts and since it is luxury hotel the level of comfort and professionalism they will be expecting will very high and the operations manager has to make sure everything is running smoothly. He even has to manage everything when it goes wrong without making the whole hotel stop working instead he can spot where its gone wrong only shut down that chain. Latter I explained how service blue print is made and how it is used and why it can be useful for operations manager as well as the advertising agencies. Then I spoke about demand based pricing and why its gaining popularity and what are the barriers of it and why it is risky. At the end A well-designed service that is requesting to experience can give the firm a key purpose of separation from contenders (Bitner, Ostrom and Morgan, 2008) which I think can be achieved with service blue print as it is visual and can easily be understood by everyone.