Connections between Theatre and Thank Goodness Its Friday - Assignment Example

Services Sector Marketing and Section # of Q1: What are the connections between theatreand TGI Friday's' Is the dramaturgical analogy a good one' There is a strong, simple, yet vague connection between theatre and TGI Friday's. The connection hereby is defined by means of similarity amongst the two. The similarity in this case is of entertainment. TGI Friday's is much beyond only food; it is also about the entertainment that the people get, after a daylong of tiredness. As the case title suggests, its about creating a 'drama' at the restaurant, whereby, the atmosphere created and the acts-and-actions create an 'entertaining drama' for the visitors. A prime example presented in the case is of the waiters singing while delivering the dishes to the table. Having a restaurant and running it is no big deal - people all across the world do that, but not many have succeeded the way that TGI Friday's has done. The business has done a remarkable job in developing its cutting edge over its competitors, doing what others haven't done, bringing up innovation and creativity, that attracts thousands of customers to its outlets all around the world, and has maintained itself and its status as the premier entertaining hang out place, with themed coverage, and instances that create a memorizing impact on the customer, pulling them to come over again and again. Customer attraction and retention is an important phenomenon when devising a marketing plan, and this is where TGI Friday's has been fairly successful in doing a remarkable job. The difference that it has created is what gives it a cutting edge. As mentioned in the company policy, amongst the critical components for the business is the ambience that it wants to create within its environment. And certainly, the business has been successful in the same. Q2: What is meant by a critical incident' How can TGI Friday's identify what constitutes a critical incident and assess whether it has achieved customer satisfaction' Critical incident is a derived form of critical incident technique, in which events and observations are gathered, and these observations formulate the critical incident. Critical incident techniques define process from the point of understanding and witnessing the 'incident' to the fact finding and collecting data from the participants and till the issue is resolved. TGI Friday's can identify what constitutes a critical incident by conducting research in its area or industry specific terms, and it would ultimately lead the business into identifying whether or not it has achieved customer satisfaction. For this purpose, on a general note, businesses hire consultants for rendering their services mainly to identify the variables. Researches reveal that the critical incident here, as also mentioned in the case, would be a busy time at the restaurant. Observing the various aspects related to a busy time and comparing the same to a non-busy time would yield meaningful outcome. Here, observation needs to be done by a neutral person who is neither very defending about the employees nor a very customer centric individual. The various aspects that need to be observed are mainly the delivery time, the professionalism of the servers, and manner of delivery, lag time and other several variables. These aspects should not just be observed but the participants i.e. the customers should also be asked questions about the same. A few observations during busy times, and a few during the non busy timings would definitely yield outcome that have comparative basis and thus can be compared to illustrate whether the business has achieved customer satisfaction or otherwise. Q3: Discuss the relative merits and demerits of 'blueprinting' and 'Servicescapes' as conceptual framework for analyzing the service encounter at TGI Friday's. Blueprinting is defined as a mechanism that portrays in a visual format the procedures and participants that are involved in producing a service, or in other words, it is a visual illustration of how services are produced. Blueprinting is mainly used where processes are complex and a new service is launched. A proper blueprint must identify the steps involved in a service process. The advantages of using this approach would be the fact that firstly, all processes are on paper so its easier to analyze them. Secondly, the print would identify points whereby the customer perceives failure in the process of service production, thus, the business can look forward for its elimination. Another merit is the improvement of quality controls. Lastly, the print would also assist in developing tolerance levels for the respective jobs within the service production process. The disadvantage associated with this approach is that its too time consuming, and is mainly applied to complex situation, as mentioned, though the restaurant situation is fairly simple to analyze and there is a generic service production process that is followed. Servicescape is a description of the prevailing environment where service delivery takes place. The makers of the model, Booms and Bitner, define it as the ideal model to be used for understanding the delivery cycle, combining the points of environment, interaction, communication, particularly in case of a restaurant kind of a set-up. The biggest merit of this approach is that it is made for such a scenario and thereby is highly effective in the same. Its demerit mainly includes the fact that its expectation level is much higher than what would prevail in reality terms, which is why its application becomes difficult at times. Over all, both blueprint and servicescape can be applied to the TGI Friday's case and the significance of either cannot be denied. As a matter of fact, application of these frameworks to the businesses would allow the firm to analyze where and what is going wrong, and ultimately leading to process improvement. In services industries, the process defining is critical since there is no tangibility associated with the outcome; therefore, it becomes critical to have strong and appropriate processes. Q4: Critically assess the importance of 'Servuction' as a conceptual framework on the service provision at TGI Friday's. Servuction is a framework more stressed towards the consumption aspect of the service, and its fundamental is that organizations provide their customers with a bundle of complex benefits, gritted together. The specific relevance of servuction approach comes during the applications whereby there is higher level of input from consumers or the third party producers; thereby, customers have to develop their own bundle of benefits amongst those being offered by the organization - it is more like making your own menu. This model is mainly applied to the marketing practices of towns when it comes to tourism and shopping in particular, whereby, customers define their own bundle offer; in case of shopping, the service providers are different as well. The model, however, has a drawback i.e. its identification can create problems due to large number of interactions between the customer and the service provider. The framework rightly describes the service provided into two ingredients i.e. the visible and the invisible part; the former being the environment and the experience, while the later being the support function that allows the operations to run smoothly. The underlying principle is that any entity that interacts with the customer is, in effect, delivering a service to the customer. There is critical significance associated with servuction as a conceptual framework on the service provision at TGI Friday's. The business can apply this framework to enhance the bundle offerings for the customers. Q5: Using an appropriate customer retention model or framework, suggest how TGI Friday's could improve its level of service quality' A famous quote says: "If you give a team member customer feedback, you focus them for a day. If you teach a team member how to "ask" for customer feedback, you focus them for a lifetime!" Following is a customer retention model, and it is suggested that it is applied to TGI Friday's; the description of the application follows the pictorial representation of the mode. This is a cyclic chain and therefore the starting or end point for it cannot be defined. However, as the illustration depicts, retention model's application initiates from the relationship between the customer and the service team and then moves on towards adding on various other individuals from the management and the organization. It can initiate from a simple question 'how are we doing''; many marketers assume this as a feedback question but others believe that this is the starting point from where customer gets involved. This feedback is then shared across the organization via various mediums such as bulletin boards, etc. and employees are involved on how such improvements can be embedded within the structure of the organization. The culture should be led well and commitment and involvement lead towards a focused direction thereby resulting in change, and the customers should be thanked for their feedback that led to these changes. Embedding the changes that a customer proposes develops the ownership feeling within the customer, thus retaining him and pulling him to come for the service again and again. Beyond this, thanking the customer gives him a feel of happiness whereby he tries to put in further positive and constructive feedbacks so that further improvements take place and the customer gets more chances of being thanked by the business. There on, the cycle moves back to where it started from in this discussion i.e. asking the customer 'how are we doing'' References Customer Retention Model [Internet] Available from [Accessed 14 May 2009] The Service Encounter [Internet] Available from [Accessed 14 May 2009] Read More