Service Blue Print for ABC Pharmacy - Case Study Example

SERVICE BLUE PRINT FOR ABC PHARMACY (Student Name) (Course No.) (Lecturer) (University) (Date) Service Blue print for ABC PHARMACY Physical Retail Location Insurance Card Payment Evidence Signage State ID Receipt -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Customers Action ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Front stage Action Back stage Action Support Services Introduction The service blueprint refers to as an operational planning tool which normally shows how a particular service would be provided. It shows the paths followed in the provision of services and the various areas points of the provision of such a service. This blueprint details the path followed by a client until services are received. Organisations use this tool to show a pictorial layout of the directions, units of services and the paths followed in the provision of a service. Normally, an organisation has various structures and protocols. A client needs to be aware of some of the necessary directions to be followed within the organisation so as to access some of the basic services. The various personnel who operate in such organisation are also departmentalized into different regions (Schmutz et al. 2010). The significance of a service blueprint at this stage is to offer a snapshot description of the various regions and sections within the organisation. These service points and personnel are normally the people charged with the mandate of performing or carrying out essential activities within the organisation. In some complex structures, the service blueprint appears to be quite difficult to understand to a layman. This is due to several activities interconnected together to form the core basis of the organisation (Kumar 2010). This paper details the service blueprint of ABC pharmacy. This organisation deals with basic pharmacy roles of receiving client, performing basic diagnostics and receiving reports from physicians regarding a patient. The facility consists of a team of professionals who are designated to perform various duties. One essential feature of this organisation corresponds to its main goals of ensuring that the patients receive the right prescription and prompt medication service (Laws 2004). Therefore, the service blueprint details some of the necessary stages where a patient go through, various units where the transactional process follows and various support facilities that aid in effective operations of this pharmacy. This firm majorly receives retail services involving a client walking in and receiving immediate services; it usually witnesses queues of clients seeking to be attended to, verified and to whom prescription of the drugs remains their primary reason for visiting the facility (Kalakota & Robinson 2004). Some of the services captured within this service blueprint include the Customer actions, front stage actions, back stage actions and the support services in the facility. The main reason for blue printing these services is to offer a snapshot pictorial assessment of the various roles and functions carried within the firm, the various stages involved in accessing the basic functions, the personnel in here of carrying out various functions and the path to be followed. Essentially, the services captured in this blueprint are the main services within the domain of the firm. Therefore, the service blueprint seeks to offer a view and description of various services carried out in the organisation with a view of offering the quick view of the organisation. Also, the blueprint captured some of the support services which are essential for running the functions of the firm. These support services operate in unison with the major roles carried out in the firm to underscore the goals of the firm (Schmutz et al. 2010). BODY SECTION A The customer actions depicted in this blueprint carry a heavy role in determining the general goals of the firm. The first important action of the customer is to be able to access the pharmacy and walk-in to receive the services. Secondly, the customer must ensure that the pharmacist can fill the prescription script on time. The role of the pharmacist at this point is also to assign costs to the contents of the script. This enables the customer to determine whether he would wait and come to pick the filled script or otherwise (Hesselbach & Herrmann 2011). The second activity of the customer is to queue once again for the purpose of picking the script. The significance of this activity is to retrieve the filled script with the various costs of drugs assigned by the pharmacist. This enables the customer to engage in the next important activity of payment for the drugs(Frauendorf2006). At this point, the customer uses the verified information, the cost assignment and any other significant information to make a settlement for the drugs ordered. Thirdly, the customer exits the pharmacy holding the prescription given. This is normally the last activity for the customer. It aims at ensuring that the customer successfully receives the relevant services and prescriptions from the firm. Additionally, it aims at ensuring that the payment is made correctly and to the correct individual according to the cost script. This further aims at advancing the transparency in the firm (Frauendorf 2006). These customer actions are very significant to a successful firm since they determine the kind of stages and phases through which a customer moves so as to get the relevant services. Essentially, these actions determine the speed and time taken by a customer. Therefore, a successful organisation will tend to ensure few service action points so as to make customer services flow expeditiously (Wegener 2014). SECTION B The first front stage contact employee action in this firm corresponds to the collection of the verified scripts, insurance and identification information of the customers. It’s normally the duty of the customer to reach the first desk of the pharmacists which then looks and fills the script as well as verifies the identification of the customer. Later, this information and documents are sent to the front office stage of the firm. At this firm, the personnel in charge receive the information (Salvendy &Karwowski 2010). The other significant front stage contact employee action relates to providing back the script to the customer who ten precedes to the payment region. However, the duty of this employee action is to ensure that the customer gives the correct information before picking the script. Therefore, the employee undertakes to ask for the identification information of the customers, verify them and later gives the script back. This normally comes after the script has been further verified, the prescription has been made, and the costs have been assigned to the various prescriptions on the script (Kalakota & Robinson 2004). The third front stage contact employee action relates to ensuring that the copy of the prescription plus the payment receipt goes for verification. Therefore, this employee takes the copy of the prescription and payment receipt. This information is put in the back and sent to the customer care. Essentially, this employee at this point is mandated to ensure that the firm maintains full records of every activity. This implies that the copy of the prescriptions and payment of the receipts will be taken for further recording and verification by the accounts department at a later stage (Ellinor 1987). These roles are beneficial to any successful organisation since they interface the customer with the firm. The information received from the customers and the payment records are taken and collected at this level. This helps the organisation maintain a robust accounting system for purposes of transparency (Rao2007). SECTITION C One of the elements of the physical evidence relates to the location signage. This is a physical sign intended to offer a location direction to the customers. Every person who visits this facility needs to be assisted in identifying its location. The physical signage such as a signpost offers directions to the customer regarding the exact location of the firm. Besides, it ensures that the customers save on time otherwise lost in tracing a facility which has no location signage. The other physical evidence regards the Insurance card and the state ID. These are some of the personal information required at the initial desk of the pharmacist. Whenever a customer visits the facility, the first stage of verification requires physical evidentiary materials. These are aimed at identifying the customer and also helping through the process of services. The insurance card and the identification card are essential for the customer visiting the then facility (Lau et al. 2013). The other physical evidence regards the payment receipt. This is an evidence of the payment that has been made by the customer. The production of this document verifies the payment process. The firm came up with this material of evidence for purposes of proper accounting practices. Also, the receipt allows for easy movement of the customer through other stages without lacuna (Schmutz et al. 2010). These physical evidence materials help improve the customer experience in the firm. They help in giving the directions to the customers, enabling the customer have accurate personal details in the system and also boosting the accountability practices for the customers’ activities. This helps improve confidence in the firm (Gustavsson et al. 1991). SECTION D One of the possible areas of fail points within this blueprint concerns the phase where the customers come again to queue so as to get the verified script before making the payment. At this point, the customer had made an earlier queue at the very beginning (Walker 2010). The implication of this step is that the customer is subjected to a second queue point. Suppose the customer was sick and required immediate assistance, subjecting such a person to a second queue would be trivial to his health. Therefore, it’s possible that this stage in the blueprint adds up to further complication on time taken before the customer receives the due assistance. This impact poorly on the desire to cut down on the length of time intended to carry out the activities in the firm (Frauendorf 2006). The other are of fail in this blueprint regards the role of the front stage action in delivering information to the POS for purposes of verification. The blueprint provides a sequence where the front stage employee picks the documents of the customer such as the copy of the prescription and the receipt and hands them for verification. This stage is normally a critical stage within the layout and the management of a pharmacy firm such as ABC. The reason is that the there exists a lot of loopholes in the management of such records. For example, suppose the employee fails to deliver all the receipts for payment, it would imply that there is a possibility of collusion between the recipient of payment and the employee at this stage (Kalakota & Robinson 2004). The collusion could easily create a wide avenue for loss of money meant for the firm. The role of collecting the receipts and passing for verification normally falls in the hands of one individual. This easily creates a possibility for unwarranted loss in the firm. Lastly, this blueprint suffers from a lack of automation of essential services. Most of services and activities captured in this blueprint are relatively manual. He employees undertake to perform manual duties beginning from the collection of patient information to the delivery of receipts. However, the Internal Inventory Management section integrates various technological functions that help in servicing the insurance and supplier information. The other areas of this blueprint remain in the hands of manual employees who conduct most of the services manually. This pose as one of the faults associated with this service blueprint (Sakao &Lindahl 2009). SECTION E This section concerns the recommendations beneficial to the operations of the services within ABC Pharmacy. The following are some of the possible recommendation for solving some of the faults raised in section above; The first recommendation concerns the reduction of customer action activities in this service layout. Essentially, the speed within which the customer service operations move depend on the level of service points within this level. The more the service points, the longer the service period for the customers. The service points followed before the customer ultimately pays for the prescription need to be reduced. This paper recommends that the second queue at which the customer’s scripts are given back need to remove. Instead, the employees need to have an internal coordination process to ensure that they reach out to the customers at the waiting bay to give them the already processed scripts. This would help reduce much time wasted at the queues (Schmutz et al. 2010). The other recommendations concern the front stage employee charged with the role of delivering the customer information and receipts for verification. This point within the service template needs to be automated. Automation of this function would imply that the payment receipts are emailed directly for verification of the physical copies filed. This helps in reducing the possibility of missing documents (Albrecht & American Society for Training and Development 1999). Lastly, this paper recommends that the services within this firm need to automate. For example, the payment method, customer verification and receipt verification need to be automated. This will reduce time wastage and also enhance transparency in the activities of the pharmacy (Kalakota & Robinson 2004). Conclusion Service blueprint remains as one of the essential tools in determining the flow of activities within an organisation. It provides an overview of the various services, the personnel in charge and the points of services. This paper was concerned with the services at ABC pharmacy. The service blueprint in the first page depicts some of the essential operations within this firm. Besides, this paper focused on the description of various contents of this service blueprint (Rama 2011). The development of this paper has helped in learning the relevance of coming up with a typical service blueprint, the various practical components of this tool and the recommendations to improve the service delivery in a typical operational environment. Further, it has contributed to expanding the body of knowledge regarding the activities within the service sectors (Ellinor1987). References Albrecht, K., & American Society for Training and Development. 1999. Service management, 2000. Alexandria, VA: American Society for Training & Development. Ellinor, D. S. 1987.The service blueprint: Architecture for service management. Frauendorf, J. 2006. Customer processes in business-to-business service transactions. Wiesbaden: DeutscherUniversit̃ts-Verlag. Gustavsson, B. O., Edvardsson, B., Gummesson, E., & Brown, S. W. 1991.Service quality: Multidisciplinary and multinational perspectives. Lexington, Mass: Lexington Books. Hesselbach, J., & Herrmann, C. 2011.Functional Thinking for Value Creation: Proceedings of the 3rd CIRP International Conference on Industrial Product Service Systems, Technische Universität Braunschweig, Braunschweig, Germany, May 5th - 6th, 2011. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg. 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