Marketing of Services
Description of Assignments
Company Complaint Letter and Response
Objective: To provide you with the opportunity to give feedback to a service firm, as well as
help you understand and evaluate the customer service and recovery aspects of a specific firm.
Complaint Letter: Write a letter to any company from whom you have received bad or at least
less than satisfactory service. If you must, you can use a service you received prior to starting the
course but it must be very recent. You don’t have to be extremely upset to complain about poor
service. It may be that your expectations simply weren’t met (you may take this from your
journal if you want).
Obtain the name/address of who to write (this may be difficult to do so prepare well in advance)
and write a formal letter of complaint. In the letter, complain about what has happened and
suggest an action the company could take to “recover”. Give the firm a specific time frame to
respond and then follow up if they miss your deadline. Don’t state you are doing this for a class
project or you won’t get a good response. Your letter should be mailed as soon as possible in
order to give the company a chance to respond before end of term.
Requirements: Analysis of Company’s Response: By the end of the term, turn in a copy of the
letter, the company’s response and a description of any other response (notes about phone calls,
emails, etc). If you haven’t received a response, note this.
Include also a short (3-4 pages) double spaced paper analyzing the situation that led to your
complaint, the nature of your complaint, what you expected the firm to do and how you now feel
about the firm. If the firm did respond, you should a) describe the response and b) discuss its
adequacy from your opinion as a consumer. If they didn’t respond, you should a) discuss why
you think they didn’t and b) write a letter to yourself (on behalf of the company) that addresses
what you believe the firm should have done. NOTE: What they should have done is not
necessarily what you expected or wanted them to do.
Finally, conclude your paper with what you learned from the experience. This “reflection” should
take about half of the total space.
Concise, clear writing in the letter/paper are “expected.”
Service Encounter Journal
Objective:
To become more aware of critical aspects of the service encounter from a customer’s perspective.
Directions:
We all have a number of such encounters each week, including restaurants, banks, airlines, dry
cleaners, doctors, dentists, libraries, tutors, travel agencies, theaters, phone companies,
mechanics, insurance companies, accountants, instructors. You are to keep a journal of your
service encounter experiences. The purpose of this journal is to identify sources of customer
satisfaction and dissatisfaction with services.
Requirements:
You are asked to complete 5 journal entry forms. One blank copy is attached. Each entry will
correspond to one service encounter that you have during the term. Your journals should be
typed. Be sure to completely answer the questions in your form.
Try to record an assortment of encounters from a variety of industries…don’t do all restaurants
for instance. Also, include good encounters if you want – you don’t have to only write up bad
encounters. The BEST way to do this assignment is to fill out the journal immediately following
an encounter rather than doing this all at the end.
You are asked not to complete these journals as amateurs. You need to “analyze” the encounter
and use key course concepts and terms in your write-up – in other words, do these entries as
students of services marketing. For instance, you will talk about expectations, the source of those
expectations, positioning, consumer behavior, the 7Ps of service marketing, emotional labour,
etc.. Journals that simply describe what happened are not the objective, I am hoping you will
analyze these encounters, not just describe them. Please ask me to explain further if you aren’t
sure what I mean, OK?
I will post some exemplars of great journal entries on my website for you to review.
Service Encounter Journal Form
Your name
Name of Firm:
Date of Encounter:
Journal Entry Number
Type of Service
Time of Encounter
What specific circumstances led to this encounter (be brief)?
What did the firm/employee do or say (be brief)?
How would you rate your level of satisfaction with this encounter? (scale of 1-7 where 1 is
extremely dissatisfied and 7 is extremely satisfied)
Assess the underlying service concepts that are at play in this encounter: You might include
issues such as your expectations, their sources, how you evaluated the service quality, etc. If
appropriate, use consumer behavior in services, the expanded services marketing mix, etc.
What could the employee/firm have done to make you more satisfied with the encounter? With
the issue in general?
How likely is it that you will go back to this firm? (scale of 1-7 where 1 if very unlikely and 7 is
very likely).
Major Assignment
For 2011-2012 you have the option of choosing your major assignment in this course. You may
choose to do a case, a blue-print or you can choose to “co-produce” a learning experience in our
class. More information on each of these options is noted below.
Option One - Case Writing:
Objective: This assignment should model a case that we’ve done in class, or that you have done
in another class, but should be on a services marketing topic. You can choose any topic we cover
(see Chapters for ideas). I’d like the case to be a decision making case, not just an “illustrative”
case. So, try to think of a situation, in services, in which a decision is needed, some alternatives
are available, and then plan your case. I’ll work with you to narrow this now if you want.
Requirements: Cases can be short or long. They would ideally be accompanied by other
material, (YouTube, commercials, etc) that help to provide extra interest to the case. You will
also need a short “Teaching Note” that lays out some guideline questions and suggested answers.
My hope is that your case can be published at some point and used in other courses around the
country.
Due Date: End of Course (Final Date TBA)
Option Two - Co-Production Assignment
Objective: The intent of this assignment is to develop your expertise in a particular services
marketing area and to provide you with an opportunity to refine your presentation/facilitation
skills. You will co-produce, if you choose this option, together with your instructor and classmates, a learning opportunity for the rest of the class in the same way that most services are “coproduced” by the service customer (in this case, the student).
Directions: You will be responsible for leading the discussion on a services marketing topic for
one class period.
Requirements: In this assignment, you will be expected to:
-prepare an outline and PowerPoint several days in advance of the class for my
review
-direct a meaningful discussion on the key concepts in the area chosen
-describe the key concepts to the class
-find relevant examples of these concepts in addition to those provided in the text
-design a short cooperative learning activity (if applicable)
-produce power point overheads that are available to the class
-bring in any other material you think relevant (videos, print ads, etc)
You have some latitude in organizing the discussion, particularly in getting students to coproduce the service with you. Evaluation will be based on the following:
-were you prepared?
-did you organize the material effectively?
-was the instruction effective?
-was the material relevant and meaningful?
-did the other students in class learn from the experience?
Due Date: The in-class portion of this assignment will be dependent on everyone’s schedules.
See the Assignment Sheet for eligible dates (*).
Option Three - Service Blueprint Assignment
The objective of this assignment is for students to develop an understanding of the importance of
service blueprinting. Your task is to employ service blueprinting to evaluate the service process
for a local company or a company that you are familiar with in your hometown with a significant
service component. Your task is to graphically capture the process on paper.
Resources:
o Me
o Chapter 8. Reading and understanding this chapter is critical.
Requirements:
o
Create a complete blueprint of the service that you have chosen. Each blueprint should
include the components listed in chapter 9 and discussed in class (for example customer
actions, and onstage and backstage contact). All lines should be labeled clearly, and
arrows should be included in the blueprint to indicate the order of activities. The
blueprint should include at least four ‘boxes’ of support processes. Potential
‘bottlenecks’ and ‘fail-points’ in the service delivery process should be identified.
o
In addition to the actual blueprint, each group is required to submit a 4 to 5 page paper
(double-spaced) that highlights:
o
1. Why you selected the organization to blueprint that you did.
2. A minimum of four key elements of physical evidence revealed in the blueprint
and discuss how they influence the customer’s experience.
3. Recognize bottlenecks (points in the process where backups or slow delivery
may occur) and fail-points (where problems can occur).
4. Recommend possible solutions or alternatives to address these likely problem
areas.
Each blueprint will be presented in class.
Due Date: End of Course (Final Date TBA)