Marketing Strategy Assignment On Service Management & Relationship Marketing

Question

Task:
Tasks To Be Covered In The Marketing Strategy Assignment:

Task 1: The gap model (1500 words)
In order for the service company to be able to close the customer gap (gap 5), the company must close the four supplier gaps and keep them closed.

Discuss

the reasons why such service gaps occur
how the service company can close the gaps.

Substantiate your discussion with other relevant literature from the syllabus

Task 2: Service Profit Chain (max 1000 words)
Service Profit Chain shows that the internal environment and employees 'customer-oriented behavior can influence customers' perceptions of service quality.

Explain the connection between the internal environment and the external environment in the Service Profit Chain
Discuss the following statement: The service company is most profitable when the employees are satisfied.

Task 3: Service error and fairness (max 800 words)

Discuss the following statement: Customers are fairly rewarded and treated fairly when service failures occur.

Answer

Marketing Strategy Assignment Task 1: The Gap Model
a) Poor service design, a lack of client-oriented standards, insufficient task standardization, insufficient goal setting, and improper physical evidence and service atmosphere are all explanations for this gap. If a consumer enjoys every engagement with just a service or company, he or she is less common with young people in favor of a rival. As per the views of Siagian (2019), there's a better possibility the buyer will get more connected only with marketing, maybe even becoming a "spokesmodel" or "advertising enthusiast." Delivering world-class service and increased value is something that every organisation should be worried about and strive for. Even with high-quality items, a company's customer service would make it tough to keep consumers satisfied and retain them in today's extremely competitive industry. In order to detect and address customer service gaps, businesses must put together procedures and technologies.

At every level of the relationship and during each encounter, the process would include detecting gaps between that and what customers anticipate and the actual service offered by the organisation. From the moment of truth, it has been found that Customer happiness and devotion increased, decreased, or remained unchanged. As stated by Tölkes (2020), these pivotal moments present a chance to establish trust, improve quality, boost loyalty, and establish brand identity. In most circumstances, poor interaction with the firm will have an impact on the entire engagement. Customer service gaps develop and recur in a plethora of ways. The most serious flaw would be a failure to comprehend customer requirements. It's harder to tell what consumers want at any one time since business is fundamentally ephemeral, and demands alter according to consumer requirements and reactions of consumers.

Amongst the most effective consumer gaps is a lack of timely delivery business. Failure to select the appropriate initiatives and requirements, on the other hand, is regarded as one of the huge customer communication gaps for the associated business; these are considered as service gaps. According to Shokouhyar et al. (2021), some other cause of service breakdowns is when a firm fails to evaluate customer demand appropriately and, as a function, would be unable to establish sufficient service quality objectives. This difficulty in perceiving requirements despite comprehending them might be due to the company's reticence to go further, failure to adhere to unshakable benchmarks, and lack of commitment to improving standards.

Service gaps are defined as the failure to offer superior customer value and the inability to deliver the correct initiatives and specifications, and they are very similar to the moment of truth. As per the views of Moist et al. (2021), the first gap inside this Gap Model of Service Quality is the cognitive disparity, which reflects the perception by the customers and top management comprehension of those objectives. That is, the business has no idea what consumers want, which is why these consumer gaps emerge so frequently.

As suggested by Batt and Tong (2020), the gap between quality specification and service delivery can create the issue of customer satisfaction gap. In this case, the instances of showing a promising high-quality product, as well as services, are provided by the organisations. While on the other hand, during providing that services for product delivery, the quality does not maintain as per the previous specifications. On the other hand, it has been proposed by Batt and Tong (2020), that lack of showing consistency, as well as reliability to the service, can create the issue of performance gap or customer satisfaction gap in which a customer gets a good quality product or service from a specific organisation while they cannot get the same service after some time. Lack of efficiency among service delivery and external communication can also create this issue of customer satisfaction gap as in many times it has been seen that organisations specifically promise to provide the best quality services for their clients in their brochure as well as in advertisements while they cannot fulfill the requirements or expectations of their customers effectively.

Along with this, it can also be suggested that insufficient communication among the managers and employees can create issues of gaps in customer satisfaction as well as employee management. As Hasibuan (2020) mentioned, without having a strong communication strategy in an organisational structure, the authorities would not be able to get their accurate project management and employee retention and customer satisfaction effectively. It can be suggested that without addressing the aims and objectives of an organisation, the employees would not be able to perform as per the requirement of their authorities. At the same time, it has been seen in many cases that authorities of a hospitality sector promise to provide the best quality room service as well as some specific features. On the other hand, their employees do not provide those features to their clients, which can create the issues of customer gaps.

b) Ways to Close the Gaps
The organisation's top leaders must know the client and associated requirements. This will require an analysis of the market. Top-level interactions in organisations must maintain relationships between employees, managers, and customers, as well as too many connections involving contact individuals and managing directors. According to Haming et al. (2019), managers should develop a customer panelist, engage in internal and external interactions with consumers, and continue to investigate customer problems and staff input in order to build connections with consumers. Changes should be made to close gaps in consumer expectations.

Create training materials and new monetisation strategies to educate business employees. Return and exchange rules, as well as other corporate policies, should be updated. The quality of business-main staff members' ability to provide help to company consumers will play a role in determining the greatest service quality. Customer experience relates to an industry's inability to deliver on its promises, whereas customer service relates to repaying and recouping the harm that has been done. As per the views of Hasibuan (2020), it's critical to determine whether own business personnel are conscious of what would be wanted of them since the contact centre process. This will allow users to control when someone in the company is knowledgeable of their allocated roles and knows the goal behind the segment of consumer loyalty. Experience the Customer Journey 'Up Close and Personal'; this may be a massive eye-opener for business owners since it provides a real opportunity to detect potential flaws in company present procedures. It may also compare its customer journey to that of the competitors.

With brand loyalty on the decrease, businesses must work much harder than ever to keep customers pleased. To successfully assist them in doing this, closing the gap between their expectations and experience should be a fundamental focus of your company and marketing strategy. As stated by Hole et al. (2018), reduce the gap and enhance customer happiness, study, comprehend and execute improvements. Establishing a customer complaints questionnaire containing questions mostly on companies’ products, goods, workers, exchange and distribution regulations, and even user experience is crucial to determining what the company can do to enhance its service. This is one technique to address the associated support imbalance and require payment that the corporation has offered. Although a corporation may believe that it has the customer service down, it might be shocked at what consumers really complained about.

On the other hand, customers will never cease expecting, and their requirements will never be constant. They believe customers will not be managed correctly in the event of a service encounter. Therefore, once they do accept blame, they must consider the scenario and indeed the client and show remorse in making people feel handled honestly. Businesses must assure operational excellence and a 360-degree focus on consumers in order to maximize customer happiness, retention, and brand advocacy. According to Dong and Sivakumar (2017), only by recognizing and accepting that customer support gaps exist will a company be able to provide excellent customer service and assist clients in achieving their business objectives while also enhancing its competitive economic standing. Relationship quality is considered as a broad idea in which the most noteworthy levels of all features of a relationship characterize its quality. As a result, all quantifiable components of inside relationship formation will decide the whole degree of the inside environment. As suggested by Mach-Król and Hadasik (2021), with the help of addressing the communication gap, the authority of an organisation can be able to mitigate the issues of customer satisfaction at the same time customer retention. On the other hand, it can also be proposed that the authorities of this organisation promote training and development programs to their employees so that they may know the aims and objectives of their organisation and solve the issues in case of providing the services to their customers.

Marketing Strategy Assignment Task 2: Service Profit Chain
Service Profit Chain Shows That The Internal Environment And Employees 'customer-Oriented Behaviour Can Influence Customers' Perceptions Of Service Quality
The service profit chain has been credited with the victory of neighborhood ventures and has acted as a street outline to benefit a number of businesses. It ties monetary execution and long-term competitiveness to a benefit organisation's relationship with its clients and staff. According to Hogreve et al. (2021), originally, they demonstrated consolidated human components as well as strategies to extend client benefit as well as representative resolve and satisfaction. The service profit chain was extended in advance to underline the connection between staff ideal models and critical benefit characteristics that affect add up to benefit quality and client maintenance.

a. Explain The Connection Between The Internal Environment and The External Environment In The Service Profit Chain
Representatives are included within the, to begin with, a few stages of the Service Profit Chain. According to Lee et al. (2021), a company can, as it were, be effective in the event that it contributes to its personnel. This implies that a secure work environment ought to be created, that representatives ought to be included in choice-making, and that they ought to work together in a wonderful workplace. An enterprise may do this by contributing to its individuals by providing help, preparing, and contributing to their growth. To a few degrees, enlisting, compensation, and advancement approaches are all noteworthy components of this, to begin with, stage. New staff with the correct attitude can offer assistance to progress the quality of inside administrations.

Employees are driven to be effectively locked in within the association when they are rewarded. Employees are more likely to be completely committed to a firm when they have got to prepare, instruction, and course possibilities. According to Mikalef et al. (2021), employee bliss will take after as a result of the service profit chain. To fulfil and hold labourers, the same degree of consideration must be paid to them as is appeared to customers.

The quality of inner connections is decided by the inner environment, inner quality, representative joy, worker commitment, worker maintenance, and productivity. The benefit chain of benefit giving incorporates an assortment of characteristics and interrelationships between the firm's promoting work and HR management. According to Turishcheva et al. (2020), HR administration will be centered on making the most prominent environment conceivable for specialists to achieve their best work. Inside marketing will be utilized to help the HR office in this endeavor. Internal relationship showcasing will ensure that the proper climate is given to empower extraordinary association building.

External environment criteria included within the introductory service profit chain show were outside benefit quality, client bliss, and client loyalty. External relationship quality angles incorporate outside social quality, outside relationship quality, client bliss, and client commitment as a result of the overhauled model's relationship focus. According to Mahmoud et al. (2020), the quantifiable parts of outside connection development will characterize the full degree of quality of outside connections. Organisations depend considerably on buyer information, and inquiries within the service profit chain have demonstrated that ventures that centre on the outside are more successful. Furthermore, the company must be client-oriented in arranging to have got to data concerning buyer wants.

The idea of the outside environment, which may help businesses make higher shopper value The most critical component of the external environment is the client interaction prepare, which provides value for clients within the frame of way better benefit introduction. According to Hameed et al. (2021), A few researchers have found that knowing client requests increments the service profit chain and innovation. Furthermore, human characteristics like invitingness, preparation to assist, and so on have a considerable effect within the external environment on service profit chain exercises that influence the quality of benefit provided to clients. The customer center is having a quick impact on both client benefit and hierarchical innovation. This implies that organisations must be able to construct and maintain strong client associations in arrange to create esteem and persistently renew their associations.

b. Discuss the Following Statement: The Service Company is Most Profitable When the Employees Are Satisfied.
Productivity, the number of clients overhauled, the degree to which the objective is met, and other components may all be utilised to decide trade success. According to Kurdi et al. (2020), in any case of how victory is surveyed, all businesses need to do well and thrive, and this is often genuine whether the commerce is for the benefit or not. Thus, associations make standards and measures for client benefit, quality, fabricating, and other themes to keep shoppers returning and the company's reach expanding. However, one issue that's more often than not overlooked within the journey to extend corporate execution is worker joy.

Without a given group, no firm can accomplish its objectives. According to Ali et al. (2021), with the particular case of a number of tiny enterprises possessed by one individual who is additionally the company's sole worker, businesses depend on a well prepared and gifted staff base to provide services. Because upbeat people are superior workers, a company will never be as successful because it may be unless steps are put input to help construct and maintain representative satisfaction. Employees that are enthusiastic about coming to work and willing to go the extra mile for their managers do so since they appreciate their work and need to assist the firm to accomplish its objectives.

Companies that highlight these records are habitually the foremost productive companies that are right now giving their administrations. According to Top and Ali (2021), numerous long-term researches have appeared that associations with placated representatives as often as possible raise their incomes year after year. Employee happiness has commonsense results, which eventually lead to higher benefits and victory for a firm. Employee turnover, for case, is essentially lower in businesses where workers report a tall degree of work satisfaction. A moo turnover rate indicates that the most excellent workers are remaining and the number of unused learners is being lowered. The time spared in preparing new staff exchanges, specifically into extra time, went through on other measures that can boost a company's performance.

Marketing Strategy Assignment Task 3: Service Error and Fairness
Companies really like to keep clients, keep them coming back, and have them overspend over longer. As a result, whenever a client feels aggrieved, businesses must attempt to rectify the situation. The first objective of every business is to restore client pleasure. Customers are likely to be disappointed if they believe the service quality is poor. As per the views of Uthira (2018), and if they're unhappy, the firm runs the danger of losing workers. Customers should be informed about both the outcome and indeed the process of the service rehabilitation program in an outstanding service recovery programme.

When the recovery is quick, and an apology is given, compensation may not be necessary, at least whenever the negative disconfirmation does not result in monetary losses to the customers. Customers are more likely to be satisfied and cost-effective if the plan concentrates on a rapid recovery with an apology. According to Tran et al. (2019), if an on-the-spot restoration is not feasible, payment will be necessary to restore the consumers' trust properly. It's critical to try and replicate the business recovery procedure to the operation breakdown when one occurs. For instance, if a firm employee is unpleasant to a consumer, all they have to do is apologise.

Suppose a consumer spends time and money as a result of customer dissatisfaction. In that case, the firm must consider exactly how they would reimburse them materially in some other way, such as recouping their money or providing another one for unrestricted in the hereafter. As opined by Li et al. (2020), the employer must re-establish the consumer's belief that they were handled fairly. Following a service breakdown, a successful service recovery approach may have a substantial impact on loyal customers' views and behaviour intentions. Non-loyal clients, who are more affected by convenience and cost in service exchanges, are more likely to understand their connection with the service provider differently than loyal customers. Recovering management for loyal customers appears to be more critical since they demand special attention unavailable to other customers. As opined by Yilmaz (2018), consumers that are loyal are more likely to be worried about their long-term connection with service providers, which is facilitated by essential social contacts that provide emotional support and a sense of belonging.

There really are no ifs or buts in this situation. A consumer just shouldn't feel as though their concerns are not even being appropriately addressed. Clients must be assured knowing the organisation has been doing all necessary to resolve the issues as promptly as feasible. As a result, they could emphasise positive characteristics such as the comfort and precision with which issues are handled, the forthrightness with which closeness is made, and so on. An addition or a complimentary might help balance over broken sentiments and rebuild the connection if they have had a lot of problems. As opined by Batt and Tong (2020), customer service refers to an industry's inability to deliver on its promises. In contrast, customer service relates to repaying and recouping the harm that has been done. Simply put, a service failure occurs when a service provider fails to satisfy a customer's needs and wants.

As illustrated by Li et al. (2020), simply put, a service failure occurs when a service provider fails to satisfy a customer's needs and wants. Some customers prefer to complain to a third party rather than directly to the supplier, instead of spreading unfavourable information about the firm to friends, relatives, and coworkers. This unfavourable word of mouth may be exceedingly harmful since it can reinforce the customer's negative feelings and spread that negativity to others.

Furthermore, unless a direct protest to the firm backs the unfavourable word of mouth, the company has no hope of recovering. A perceived by the consumer utility is sometimes stronger with their pre-failure relative benefits, depending on the strength of something like the servicescape—customer loyalty and brand. As per the views of Siqueira et al. (2019), when a consumer has faith in a company, that person believes the company will give outstanding experience, which translates to the company earning loyal consumers. There are certain steps that are considered to be effective in treating the customers in a better manner and providing them with better quality

Take action right away.
Allow no time for the consumer to rant about the situation.
Please accept apologies.
Solve the task as quickly as possible.
Keep in touch with the consumer.

Making apologies is a way of justifying a mistake. It might be as straightforward as a tearful apology, a close communication, or a modest donation or gesture of respect. When a problem happens, the first reaction is to waive the fee or give the consumer something like that for free. While these tactics are effective, they are but to a certain amount. According to Mondal et al. (2017), the consumer, in most cases, expects to be given special treatment.

References:
Ali, B.J., Saleh, P.F., Akoi, S., Abdulrahman, A.A., Muhamed, A.S., Noori, H.N. and Anwar, G., 2021, May. Impact of Service Quality on the Customer Satisfaction: Case study at Online Meeting Platforms. In Ali, BJ, Saleh, Akoi, S., Abdulrahman, AA, Muhamed, AS, Noori, HN, Anwar, G.(2021). Impact of Service Quality on the Customer Satisfaction: Case study at Online Meeting Platforms. International Journal of Engineering, Business and Management (Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 65-77).

Batt, R.J. and Tong, J.D., 2020. Mean Service Metrics: Biased Quality Judgment and the Customer–Server Quality Gap. Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, 22(5), pp.975-995.

Dong, B. and Sivakumar, K., 2017. Customer participation in services: domain, scope, and boundaries. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 45(6), pp.944-965.

Hameed, W.U., Nisar, Q.A. and Wu, H.C., 2021. Relationships between external knowledge, internal innovation, firms’ open innovation performance, service innovation and business performance in the Pakistani hotel industry. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 92, p.102745.

Haming, M., Murdifin, I., Syaiful, A.Z. and Putra, A.H.P.K., 2019. The application of SERVQUAL distribution in measuring customer satisfaction of retails company. The Journal of Distribution Science, 17(2), pp.25-34.

Hasibuan, C.F., 2020, December. The measurement of customer satisfaction towards the service quality at XYZ wholesale by using fuzzy service quality method. In IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering (Vol. 909, No. 1, p. 012053). IOP Publishing.

Hogreve, J., Iseke, A. and Derfuss, K., 2021. The Service-Profit Chain: Reflections, Revisions, and Reimaginations. Journal of Service Research, p.10946705211052410.

Hole, Y., Pawar, S. and Bhaskar, M.P., 2018. Service marketing and quality strategies. Periodicals of Engineering and Natural Sciences (PEN), 6(1), pp.182-196.

Kurdi, B., Alshurideh, M. and Alnaser, A., 2020. The impact of employee satisfaction on customer satisfaction: Theoretical and empirical underpinning. Management Science Letters, 10(15), pp.3561-3570.

Lee, C.M.J., Che-Ha, N. and Alwi, S.F.S., 2021. Service customer orientation and social sustainability: The case of small-medium enterprises. Journal of Business Research, 122, pp.751-760.

Li, C., Pan, R., Xin, H. and Deng, Z., 2020, June. Research on Artificial Intelligence Customer Service on Consumer Attitude and Its Impact during Online Shopping. In Journal of Physics: Conference Series (Vol. 1575, No. 1, p. 012192). IOP Publishing.

Mach-Król, M. and Hadasik, B., 2021. On a Certain Research Gap in Big Data Mining for Customer Insights. Applied Sciences, 11(15), p.6993.

Mahmoud, A.B., Grigoriou, N., Fuxman, L., Reisel, W.D., Hack-Polay, D. and Mohr, I., 2020. A generational study of employees’ customer orientation: A motivational viewpoint in pandemic time. Marketing strategy assignment Journal of Strategic Marketing, pp.1-18.

Mikalef, P., Pateli, A. and van de Wetering, R., 2021. IT architecture flexibility and IT governance decentralisation as drivers of IT-enabled dynamic capabilities and competitive performance: The moderating effect of the external environment. European Journal of Information Systems, 30(5), pp.512-540.

Moist, J.A., Anitsal, I. and Anitsal, M.M., 2021. The Customer Value Model and Mobile Banking: Evaluation of Technology-Based Self Service (TBSS) Gaps. Atlantic Marketing Journal, 10(2), p.2.

Mondal, S., Das, S., Musunuru, K. and Dash, M., 2017. Study on the factors affecting customer purchase activity in retail stores by confirmatory factor analysis. Revista Espacios, 38(61).

Shokouhyar, S., Shokoohyar, S. and Safari, S., 2020. Research on the influence of after-sales service quality factors on customer satisfaction. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 56, p.102139.

Siagian, V., 2019, December. Reviewing Service Quality of UBER: Between Customer Satisfaction and Customer Expectation. In Abstract Proceedings International Scholars Conference (Vol. 7, No. 1, pp. 1283-1292).

Siqueira Jr, J.R., Peña, N.G., ter Horst, E. and Molina, G., 2019. Spreading the word: How customer experience in a traditional retail setting influences consumer traditional and electronic word-of-mouth intention. Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, 37, p.100870.

Tölkes, C., 2020. The role of sustainability communication in the attitude–behaviour gap of sustainable tourism. Tourism and Hospitality Research, 20(1), pp.117-128.

Top, C. and Ali, B.J., 2021. Customer satisfaction in online meeting platforms: Impact of efficiency, fulfillment, system availability, and privacy. Amazonia Investiga, 10(38), pp.70-81.

Tran, X., Arneault, G. and Clark, C., 2019. Social Media and the Gap Model of Hotel Service Quality. Changing the ‘Rhythm’of Marketing: Are We Listening?, p.93.

Turishcheva, T., Akhmadeev, R., Bykanova, O. and Nastasyuk, N., 2020. Methodological Support for Internal Control of Autonomous Institutions. International Journal of Applied Exercise Physiology, 9(4), pp.53-61.

Uthira, D., 2018. A diagnostic study of the cab aggregation industry using the serviqual gap model. International Journal of Marketing and Technology, 8(6), pp.59-84.

Yilmaz, I., 2018. Service quality and marketing. In The Routledge Handbook of Destination Marketing (pp. 92-99). Routledge.

Tags: marketing strategy critical analysis management marketing service management

NEXT SAMPLE