Service Failure Experience at Gloria Jeans Coffee House - Case Study Example

RUNNING HEAD: Service Encounter Report: Service Failure Experience at Gloria Jean’s Coffee House. Service Encounter Report: Name Course Institution Date The Manager, Gloria Jean’s Coffee House, Newcastle Dear Sir/Madam RE: COMPLAINT ABOUT SERVICE DELAY AT GLORIA JEAN’S, NEWCASTLE I would like to air my complaints regarding substandard services which I experienced at Gloria Jean’s Newcastle coffee house on 10 August, 2012. I was extremely disappointed with the slow service delivery, the long queues, congestion and even the failure of the service employees to respond to our needs. I am a regular customer of Gloria Jean’s and have long enjoyed the quality of coffee and refreshments served. It is my wish to continue enjoying your services but this is contingent on the management addressing these issues which I have pointed out in this letter that have ruined an otherwise pleasant dining experience. I anticipate a quick response and speedy resolution of the issues raised. Yours Sincerely A.N Other Service Encounter Report: Service Failure Experience at Gloria Jean’s Coffee House Table of Content Executive Summary 4 Introduction 4 Background 5 Service blueprint of customer’s experience 7 Service Failure Experience 8 Conclusion and Recommendations 11 References 13 Executive Summary This report examines a negative service encounter that I had at one of Gloria Jean’s Coffee houses in Newcastle. The negative service encounter was basically as a result of service delays. From the extended service encounters I have had with this coffee house, I noted that although it offers high quality and unique coffee products, the coffee house has a flawed service blueprint. Some of the key weaknesses of Gloria Jean’s service blueprint are that it lacks convenient physical service environment that can effectively meet the needs of its consumers. The coffee house also lacks an effective approach of managing service employees and technological platforms or systems that can help speed-up its operations. In order to address these issues, this report recommends that the company should focus on expanding its space and instituting training programs that will equip their service employees with relevant skills and knowledge that will enable them to serve customers efficiently. In addition to this, the company should invest in procuring advanced and updated technological platforms or systems. Introduction A service encounter can be considered as a period that a customer interacts with visible elements of the service provider such as service employees, automated systems, machines and physical facilities. A customer’s interaction with a service provider may be brief or extended. A considerable number of research studies show that the quality or nature of a customer’s service encounter with a particular service provider determines customer perception or loyalty towards a service provider (Jayawardhena, Souchon, Farrell & Glanville, 2007; Noone, & Matilla, 2009). Therefore, service failures can have a negative impact on the customer’s behavioral response or perception towards a service provider (Tax & Brown 2000). Nevertheless, Mattila (2001) and (Vargo and Lusch (2004) observe that service failures are inevitable due to various factors that affect the course of service co-creation. This report will examine a negative service encounter that I had at Gloria Jean’s Coffee House in Newcastle. Foremost, this report will present a brief background describing Gloria Jean’s Coffee house, its services and the nature and scope of its operations. Furthermore, this report will present a service blue-print of customer experience detailing possible areas of failure. The subsequent section of the report will describe the negative service encounter that I had at Gloria Jean’s Coffee House. In addition, this report will provide a set of recommendations that the company can implement in order to provide their customers with quality service encounters. Background Gloria Jean’s Coffee is an Australian based multinational coffee company operating in over 39 countries with over 1,000 coffee houses. The company operates in the coffee industry and its business model is based on a franchising system where franchise owners are responsible for managing the operations of the coffee house based on the guidelines set out by the company. In Australia, there are over 460 Gloria Jean’s coffee franchises in various regions (Gloria Jean’s Coffees 2012b). The focus of this report will be on Gloria Jean’s Coffee house next to Callaghan Campus, Newcastle. This coffee house serves a wide range of high quality coffee, tea and chocolate drinks ranging from Caffé Latte, Cappuccino, Caffé Americano, Espresso, Macchiato, Vanilla Latte and Mocha among many others. In addition to this, the coffee house sells coffee accessories, cold drinks and pastries (Gloria Jean’s Coffees 2012). Basically, Gloria Jean’s coffee house incorporates a self-service service model. This service model requires customers to queue and pay for their orders first. After payment, the customers are directed to a different counter where they get their orders and subsequently head to the sitting area or take away their orders. Customers visiting this coffee shop mainly come into contact with the cashiers and waiters. The cashier and waiters are responsible for front stage operations which mainly centre on customer service. Back stage operations in the coffee house are mainly run by baristas and cheffs who are responsible for the actual making coffee products, special teas, cold drinks and pastries. Moreover, the coffee house has two service levels. The first service level comprises of eat-in customers whereas the second service level comprises take-away customers. Eat-in customers are those that prefer to consume their orders within the premises of coffee house. Eat-in customers are entitled to in-house services such as comfortable sitting areas, washrooms and attendance from waiters. On the other hand, walk-in or take away customers are entitled to proper packaging of the orders that they take away. Most customers who frequent Gloria Jean’s coffee house next to Callaghan Campus, Newcastle are mainly coffee lovers who prefer to have their coffee within the house. The coffee house also attracts walk- in customers who are usually in rush and would rather take away their coffees, muffins or pastries. Service blueprint of customer’s experience …………congestion Delay Delay Delay Key Red star represents possible instances of service failure This service blueprint represents customer’s experience in Gloria Jean’s coffee house next to Callaghan Campus, Newcastle. When the customer’s enter into the coffee house, in most cases they find a queue leading to the cashier. In some instances the queue may be long or slow, thus some customers may consider this as a service failure. At the cashier, customers are expected to pay for their orders and subsequently get a receipt showing the list of products that they have purchased. After payment, the customers may find another queue leading to the service point. The queue can be long or slow depending on the magnitude of orders at the service point. As a result, some customers may consider this as a service failure due to the delays experienced. When customers reach the service point, they present their receipt to the barista who in turn makes their orders as they wait in line. At this point, some customers may also consider this as a service failure due to the delay experienced. After getting their orders at the service point, customers may choose to head towards the sitting area and enjoy their coffees, teas or pastries in the coffee house. In some instances, the sitting area could be congested thus it may be difficult for customer’s to find ample room where they can comfortably sit and enjoy their orders. Consequently, some customer may consider this as a service failure. Customers also have the option of taking away their orders. In such a case, the baristas have to carefully wrap and package the customer’s orders. Service Failure Experience I have visited Gloria Jean’s coffee house in different states across the country on several occasions. In general, I have come to enjoy their products. Gloria Jean’s has a wide variety or offers a selection of high quality coffee products. They have unique blends of coffee that cannot be found in most coffee shops. On the various occasions, I have visited the coffee house, their services have been fairly good. However, on August 15th 2012, I experienced rather substandard services. On this material day, my friends and I visited Gloria Jean’s coffee house next to Callaghan Campus, Newcastle. We found a long queue but this didn’t deter us from entering the coffee since we expected the queue to move very fast. Perhaps our expectations were too high but it is a norm for queues in self-service coffee shops to move very fast. To our dismay, the queue leading to the cashier was moving very slow. Apparently, the cashier was experiencing some technical problems with the system thus it was difficult for him to process customer’s orders quickly. After standing in the queue for about 15 minutes, some customers who were queuing behind us started to walk out of the coffee house. We queued for another five minutes before getting to the cashier. I noted that the cashier’s computer system was a bit slow and it gave him a hard time when keying in our orders. After getting our receipts we were directed by one of the waiters to the service point where we found a fairly short queue. However, the customers queuing in front of us had a long list of orders. Some of these customers had ordered pastries and doughnuts in bulk for party or a social event hence it took a long time for the baristas to process and package their orders. While waiting at the service point, I noticed that some waiters were idly walking around the coffee house while the few baristas struggled to process and package bulky customer orders. At the service point, we established that some of the orders we had paid for at the cashier, had run out thus we had to take alternative orders. For instance, I had particularly wanted a vanilla coffee Latté and a chocolate doughnut. However, I was informed by one of the baristas that they had run out of vanilla cream thus they could not process my order. Alternatively, I was offered a Café Latte and coconut doughnut. After getting our orders, we headed to the sitting area which was a bit crowded. Initially, it was difficult to find sitting space but after pacing around for some time we were able to find an empty table. I was appalled that, although there were several waiters pacing around they did not offer any assistance to us when it came to finding sitting space. Generally, on this particular occasion, my service encounter with Gloria Jean’s coffee house was very disappointing. I felt that I wasted a lot of time and I did not get value for my money. My perception of value is embedded on being able to get quality products or services in a timely manner. I personally think that the pricing of services at Gloria Jean’s coffee house is based on the quality and uniqueness of the products that they offer. Ardent coffee drinkers are able to identify the quality and uniqueness of their coffee products hence increasing the demand of the product and services offered at Gloria Jean’s coffee house. On a daily basis, the coffee house experiences a high customer turnout, this goes to show that their services are in demand. I believe that the demand of their products and services has also impacted on the pricing of their services (Hoffman et al 2010). The company’s integrated marketing communications (IMC) mix mainly targets ardent coffee drinkers, young and middle aged adults who want to identify themselves with the company’s brand. The company IMC also incorporates the use of electronic media platforms such as television and the internet. The company uses this platform to promote its brand. I believe that the goal of the company’s IMC mix in the prepurchase, consumption, and postpurchase stages is to highlight the quality and uniqueness of its brand. However, using this IMC mix has not propelled the company’s brand to greater heights due to the fierce competition in the market. The promotion of the company’s brand is mainly based on word of mouth. For instance, prior to my initial service encounter with Gloria Jean’s coffee house, I heard about their services by word of mouth (Hoffman et al 2010). The organisation’s physical evidence plays a critical role in propelling the Gloria Jean’s brand. The design layout, the décor and furnishings of the coffee house are not only identity markers but also significant visual markers of what to expect from the brand in terms of service. As a service provider, Gloria Jean’s coffee house employs a stimulus-organism-response (SOR) model that incorporates the use of sensory stimuli. For instance, the coffee house has several signs, symbols and artefacts such as the large, colorful and vibrant images on the overhead menu or strategically lining the walls of the coffee house. These trigger emotional responses such as pleasure from customers as recipients such as arousing their appetites (when they are hungry or thirsty) for the particular coffee brands or the pastry on offer and in turn condition a positive response such as making initial or repeated orders and purchases for coffee or pastry. Conclusion and Recommendations Based on the findings of this report, it is evident that Gloria Jean’s Coffee house has a strong brand equity and presence in the market. Nevertheless, due to the company’s franchising business model and the nature of its service operations, service failures are inevitable. This report has particularly focused on one negative service encounter I had while at Gloria Jean’s Coffee house next to Callaghan Newcastle. From the extended service encounters I have had with this coffee house, I have noted that although it offers high quality and unique products, the coffee house has a flawed service blueprint. One of the weaknesses evident in the company’s service blue print is that it lacks convenient physical service environment that can effectively meet the needs of its consumers. The coffee house has a high customer turnout. However, it lacks a suitable physical service environment that can enable customers to get quality and fast services. Secondly, this coffee house lacks an effective approach of managing service employees. In addition to this, the coffee house lacks technological platforms or systems that can help speed up its operations. As a result of these factors, customer’s service encounters or experience at this coffee house are characterized by long queues and delays. In order to address these issues, the company should; Create suitable and convenient physical service environment that can effectively support a high customer turnout and minimize tedious processes. The company should focus on expanding its space such that it can incorporate several cashier points and service points. This will help to minimize long queues and congestion at service points. Furthermore, the company should focus on expanding the capacity of its seating area so as to accommodate a larger capacity of people. The physical service environment of a service often exerts a powerful influence on customer’s response to a particular service provider (Wall & Berry, 2007). The management of Gloria Jean’s Coffee house should also focus their attention towards effectively managing service employees. The company should institute training programs that will equip their service employees with relevant skills and knowledge that will enable them to serve customers efficiently. The company should also invest in procuring advanced and updated technological platforms or systems that will enable efficient and effective delivery of services. References Gloria Jean’s Coffees (2012). Our Products. Retrieved on September 13 2012 from Gloria Jean’s Coffees (2012b). Our Story. Retrieved on September 13 2012 from Hoffman, K.D. Bateson, J.G, Elliot, G & Birch, D.P (2010). Services marketing: concepts, strategies & cases. New York :Cengage Learning. Jayawardhena, C. Souchon, A. Farrell, A. & Glanville, K. (2007). “Outcomes of service encounter quality in a business-to-business context”. Industrial Marketing Management 36, 575–588. Mattila, A. (2001). ‘The Impact of Relationship Type on Customer Loyalty in a Context of Service Failures.’ Journal of Service Research 4(2):91-101 Noone, B.M. & Matilla, A. (2009). “Consumer reaction to crowding for extended service encounters.”Managing Service Quality, 19 (1), 31 – 41. Tax, S. & Brown, S. (2000). “Service Recovery: Research Insights and Practices, ” In Handbook of Services Marketing and Management. Swartz and D. Iacobucci, eds. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 271-86. Vargo, S. L. & Lusch, R. F. (2004), “Evolving to a New Dominant Logic for Marketing” Journal of Marketing 68 (1), 1-17. Wall, E.A. & Berry, L.L. (2007). “The combined effects of the physical environment and employee behavior on customer perception of restaurant service quality.”Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly, 48 (1), 59-69. Read More