Professional Documents
Culture Documents
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Importance of Service Personnel
Service personnel provide a sustainable competitive
advantage
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Customer’s perspective: encounter with service staff is
most important aspect of a service
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Many routine transactions are now
conducted without involving frontline staff,
e.g.,
ATMs (Automated Teller Machines)
IVR (Interactive Voice Response)
systems
Websites for reservations/ordering,
payment, etc.
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Boundary spanners link the organization to outside
world
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Boundary spanners – the front stage employees who link an
organization with its customers. They represent the service in the
customers’ eyes.
Job situations requiring employees to come in direct contact with the public or
employees of other firms.
“a person who's role was linking people in organizations, across the "boundaries"
of departments, and across the boundaries if companies themselves. The "linking"
is really information exchanging, relationship building, and using boundary
objects” as a focal point to create shared meaning and trust across "boundaries".
Daft, R. L. (1989). Organization Theory and Design (3rd ed.), New York: West Publishing Co.
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“The act of expressing socially desired emotions during service
transactions” (Hochschild, The Managed Heart)
It refers to the process by which workers are expected to manage their
feelings in accordance with organizationally defined rules and guidelines.
Workers are required to display cheerful disposition, genuine concern and
unrelenting care toward the customer, no matter what the worker’s true
feeling
Performing emotional labor in response to society’s or management’s display
rules can be stressful and mentally challenging
Good HR practice emphasizes selective recruitment, training, counseling,
strategies to alleviate stress
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Organization vs. Client: Dilemma whether to follow
company rules or to satisfy customer demands
This conflict is especially acute in organizations that are not
customer- oriented
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Leads to feelings of roles stress
√ dissatisfaction
√ frustration
√ turnover intention
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Costuming Needs Should:
Provide evidence by adding a measurement of
tangibility
Send a message by projecting the desired image
Reduce risk by establishing credibility and
identification
Ensure consistency by having each employee dress the
same
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Cycles of Failure,
Mediocrity, and Success
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The employee cycle of failure
Narrow job design for low skill levels
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The customer cycle of failure
Repeated emphasis on
attracting new customers
Customers dissatisfied with
employee performance
Customers always served by
new faces
Fast customer turnover
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Costs of short-sighted policies, LT financial effects on
cost & revenues are ignored:
Constant expense of recruiting, hiring, and training
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“Openness” of Service Sabotage Behaviors
Covert Overt
Routine Customer-Private
Customer-Public Service
Service Sabotage Sabotage
e.g., Waiters serving smaller e.g., Talking to guests like
servings, bad beer, or sour young kids and putting them
“Normality” of wine down
Service
Sabotage
Behaviors Sporadic-Private Service Sporadic-Public Service
Sabotage Sabotage
e.g., Chef occasionally e.g., Waiters spilling soup onto
purposefully slowing down laps, gravy onto sleeves, or
orders hot plates into someone’s
Intermittent hands
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Most commonly found in large, bureaucratic organizations
that are frustrating to deal with
Service delivery is oriented towards
Standardized service
Operational efficiencies
Promotions with long service
Rule-based training
Narrow and repetitive jobs
Successful performance measured by absence of mistakes
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Broadened job descriptions with empowerment
practices enable frontline staff to control quality,
facilitate service recovery
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Human Resources
Management –
How to Get it Right?
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Main functionalities of human resource management -
Recruitment, selection, training, motivation, and
retention of employees.
√Hire intelligently
√Train intensively
√Monitor incessantly
√Reward inspirationally
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The old saying ‘People are your most important asset’ is
wrong.
Jim Collins
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• Create a large pool: “Compete for Talent Market Share”
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Employ multiple, structured interviews
Use structured interviews built around job requirements
Observe behavior
Hire based on observed behavior, not words you hear
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Conduct personality tests
Willingness to treat co-workers and customers with courtesy,
consideration, and tact
Perceptiveness regarding customer needs
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Empowerment is the management practice of sharing
information, rewards, knowledge, and power with
frontline service employees so that they can better
respond to customers’ needs and expectations.
The need for service improvisation - Workers are given
freedom to creatively adapt to various service situations
Benefits of Empowerment
Costs of Empowerment
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Quicker responses to customer needs during service
delivery
Quicker responses to dissatisfied customers during
service recovery
Employees are more satisfied with their jobs and
themselves
Employees will act more warmly and enthusiastically
with customers
Empowered employees are a great source of ideas
Great word-of-mouth communication and retention
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Greater monetary investment in selection and training
Higher labor costs
Slower or less consistent service delivery
Possible violations of fair play
Giveaways and bad decisions
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Empowerment is most appropriate when:
Firm’s business strategy is based on personalized, customized
service, and competitive differentiation
Emphasis on extended relationships rather than short-term
transactions
Use of complex and non-routine technologies
Service failures are non-routine
Business environment is unpredictable
Managers are comfortable letting employees work independently
for benefit of firm and customers
Employees seek to deepen skills and have good interpersonal
and group process skills
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Empowerment systematically redistributes the following:
Information about operating results and measures of competitive
performance
Knowledge/skills that enable employees to understand and contribute to
organizational performance
Power to influence work procedures and organizational direction (e.g.,
quality circles, self-managing teams)
Rewards based on organizational performance (e.g., bonuses, profit
sharing, stock ownership)
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Service employees need to learn:
• Organizational culture, purpose, and strategy
Promote core values, get emotional commitment to strategy
Get managers to teach “why,” “what,” and “how” of job
• Product/service knowledge
Staff’s product knowledge is a key aspect of service quality
Staff must explain product features and position products correctly
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The Power of Teamwork in Services
Facilitate communication among team members and knowledge
sharing
Higher performance targets
Pressure to perform is high
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Use full range of available rewards effectively, including:
• Job content
People are motivated knowing they are doing a good job
• Goal accomplishment
Specific, difficult but attainable, and accepted goals are strong
motivators
• Monetary rewards
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Challenge is to work jointly with unions, reduce
conflicts, and create a service climate
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Service Leadership
and Culture
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Charismatic/transformational leadership:
Change frontline personnel’s values and goals to be consistent
with the firm
Motivate staff to perform at their best
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Necessary in large service businesses that operate in
widely dispersed sites
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