Service Situation - Transportation by Taxi from Watford to Brentwood - Essay Example

Service Delivery Service The service situation that I recently experienced was transportation by taxi from Watford to Brentwood. A company known as Mini Cabster provided the taxi service and the journey took approximately 55 minutes. Service Characteristics The five service characteristics are intangibility, perishability, inseparability, non-ownership and variability (Fogli, 2006). These are the unique characteristics attributed to services (Fogli, 2006). Individuals value services based on these features that differ from the features attributed to products. However, due to these unique characteristics of services, various challenges are present in service delivery. Perishability This is arguably the most special characteristic of service products and is the most difficult characteristic to appreciate (Hoffman & Bateson, 2009). This is because services are highly perishable as compared to products. The challenge comes when a person asks themselves how, for instance, the services of a taxi company are considered to be more perishable than, say, fresh vegetables and food products. The main reason of this highly perishable nature is the fact that, unlike many physical products, most of the services cannot be stored. For example, if an airline fails to sell some seats on a particular flight, then those seats and subsequently the sales revenue is lost. This is an irreversible loss incurred immediately the plane takes off. Service providers should thus ensure that they sell their services in a timely manner to avoid the risk of them perishing and incurring a loss. Intangibility Physical products are usually displayed in stores for customers to see, touch, weigh or even sniff before making a purchase (Hoffman & Bateson, 2009). For services, however, the physical attributes of the service cannot be experienced (Hoffman & Bateson, 2009). An individual choosing a service, say a massage, cannot feel, touch, or smell the service before making a purchase. The only option that the person has is to make an assessment of the service based on word of mouth, past experience or just take a leap of faith before making the purchase. This intangible nature of a majority of the services gives rise to problems for both suppliers and consumers when selling and buying services. Variability In the production, marketing and selling of physical products, companies can observe and maintain consistency on such product features as packaging and quality to ensure products remain uniform (Hoffman & Bateson, 2009). For example, regardless of one’s physical location, the customer is always assured that the bottle of Pepsi they purchase will not have any variation. In the provision of services, however, there exist high levels of invariability in service delivery (Hoffman & Bateson, 2009). This is because service delivery has a large measure of the human touch/element. When an individual purchases services, therefore, they are purchasing the skills of the service provider. Due to this, it is very difficult for both the consumer and supplier of the service to ensure consistency in the quality of the service product. Inseparability A key distinguishing aspect of service delivery is the fact that the process of service provision/delivery and the service provider are inseparable from the consumer and the service consumption (Hoffman & Bateson, 2009). For instance, an individual cannot take a hotel room for consumption at their home address, but rather must consume the service at the point of delivery or provision. Similarly, for hairdressing services, the hairdresser needs to be physically present for the service to be consumed. The inseparability of a service from the owner results to implications for both the scale of operations and channels of distribution of a service. Non-ownership Services, unlike other physical products lack the ability of a customer securing full ownership (Hoffman & Bateson, 2009). The customers rather pay only to secure the access or use of the service at a particular place and time. The hotel room example is a good example, or banking services in which a customer is given chequebooks and credit cards, which only allow the customer to access the services they are buying: banking services. Classification of the Service The taxi service that I experienced can be classified using the Lovelock’s classification, the servuction model and the services’ marketing triangle. Using the Lovelock’s classification, the nature of the service falls under intangible actions delivered by an object or a thing (Fogli, 2006). The servuction model of classifying services has an interaction of four factors in relation to a customer. These factors are the invisible organisations and systems, service scape, other customers and contact personnel/service providers (Fogli, 2006). Service scape entails the use of physical and inanimate objects in the design of service environments. By this, the car that I travelled in acted as the service scape of the service. The contact personnel in the service that I received was the taxi driver who acted as the service provider. In the service that I received, I lacked contact with other customers who shared the same experience with me as the service occurs in a private and personalised manner. The organization and systems according to the servuction model of service classification are comprised of that part of a company that is responsible for reflecting the rules, processes and regulations, which are responsible for defining the base of the organisation. In the service that I experienced, this is comprised of the management of the taxi firm which is responsible for stipulating the amount of service charge, schedule of drivers and repair and maintenance of vehicles. The service-marketing triangle breaks down the marketing tasks of a service business into various types. Thus, service providers market their services to both their employees internally and customers externally. The internal marketing on the triangle forms the side between the business and the employees. The external marketing forms the relationship between the business, customers, and prospective customers. The interactive marketing mix on the triangle is the side between employees and customers in the business. All these sides of the triangle form the basis in which the company markets and delivers its services. Diagrammatic representation of the various service classification models is provided in the appendix section of the paper. The Interaction Matrix Based on the interaction matrix, the taxi service that I received falls on the first quadrant on the upper left quadrant. This is because the service uses low labour intensity and has low customer interaction and customization. The delivery of the service adopts technology. For instance, I was able to book for the service and get a quote of the service charge via the company’s website. In addition, the driver of the cab that I used assessed the conditions of the travel path before we engaged on the journey. By using Google maps, he was able to inform me that we would experience a ten minutes delay on junction J28 and J24 due to construction. Service Quality The company that provided the taxi service has appropriate measures in place to ensure that their delivery of service maintains a high quality to clients. For instance, through the use of technology, an individual can book for the taxi services in advance by using the company’s mobile application. With the application, a client can book a specific vehicle and one can tell the driver who will take them through the journey. Finally, a client can rate the quality of service that they received through the mobile application or the company’s website. Extended Marketing Mix The taxi company can improve on their service delivery by using the different aspects of extended marketing mix. The marketing mix contains four main elements namely product, price, place and promotion (Fogli, 2006). The company can improve the delivery of their service product to different customers. For instance, the company can add other services that will improve its product mix. They can exploit the company’s resources to ensure that they reach a greater audience. The price of their services is affordable. Based on these prices, the company can adjust them by lowering the price slightly to increase the demand of the service. Price elasticity has a high impact on the demand of service. The company can engage on a survey to establish the customer perceived value of the pricing of the taxi service. The company can also avoid charging their clients extra charges for suitcases and luggage but rather provide this for free since the company’s cars already have trunk space. For the promotion of the service, the company can increase its communication channels to ensure that they reach out to a greater market audience. The company can for instance operate an interactive Facebook page in which Facebook account holders can get information of the company’s services and pricing. The distribution of the service should cater for needs of the client. The best thing about the taxi service is that they offer flexible distribution of their service to clients. The company picks up their clients at their preferred location and drops them at their destination. The company thus has a good performance on the distribution and location of the service based on the flexibility of the nature of service that they provide. References Fogli, L. (2006). Customer Service Delivery Research and Best Practices. Hoboken, John Wiley & Sons. Hoffman, K. D., & Bateson, J. E. G. (2009). Services marketing: concepts, strategies & cases. Cengage Learning Services. Appendix Figure 1: The Lovelock’s Service Classification Scheme Source: http://www.acrwebsite.org/search/view-conference-proceedings.aspx?Id=7537 Figure 2: The Servuction Model Source: https://blogs.biz.colostate.edu/ugrad/2013/11/01/sweet-servuction-discovering-the-business-behind-a-corn-maze/ Figure 3: The Services Marketing triangle Source: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?articleid=862325&show=html Read More