Services Marketing: Concepts, Cases and Strategies
Hoffman, Bateson, Wood & Kenyon
ISBN: 9781844808137
SHORT-ANSWER ESSAYS
Chapter 11: People Issues – Managing Service Employees
1. Discuss the role of boundary spanning personnel.
ANS:
 Boundary-spanning personnel have two main roles: information transfer and
representation. Boundary spanners collect information from the environment and feed it
back into the organization. Boundary-spanning personnel are also the organization's
personal representatives.
2. Discuss the methods in which marketing can reduce the sources of conflict felt by its
employees.
ANS:
 Marketing can reduce the person/role conflict of its employees by being sensitive to
employees’ feelings and by actively seeking input from employees about issues.
Similarly, marketing can help reduce conflicts between the organization and its clients by
making sure that customer expectations are consistent with capabilities of the service
system. Finally, inter-client conflicts can often be reduced if the customers are relatively
homogeneous in their expectations.
3. Discuss the benefits and costs associated with empowerment.
ANS:
 Benefits associated with empowerment include quicker response to customer needs,
quicker response to dissatisfied customers, employees who feel better about their jobs
and themselves, employees who interact with customers with more warmth and
enthusiasm, and increased word-of-mouth advertising and customer retention. On the
other hand, the costs associated with empowerment include a larger dollar investment in
selection and training of personnel, higher labour costs, slower or inconsistent service
delivery, violations of fair play or perceived preferential treatment, and giveaways and
bad decisions.
4. Discuss the contingency approach to empowerment.
ANS:
 One method for determining the appropriate level of empowerment is by examining this
decision based on a contingency basis. The five contingencies include the firm's basic
business strategy, the tie to the customer, technology, business environment, and the
types of people that are employed by the firm. Each contingency is evaluated on a scale
ranging from 1 to 5. The lower the score, the more appropriate a production line
Services Marketing: Concepts, Cases and Strategies
Hoffman, Bateson, Wood & Kenyon
ISBN: 9781844808137
approach becomes. Conversely, the higher the score, greater levels of empowerment
should be employed.
5. Discuss the relevance of the Service-Profit Chain as it relates to the Marketfocused Management approach.
ANS:
 Employee satisfaction is derived from a workplace and job design which facilitates
internal service quality. The links in the Service-Profit Chain reveal that employee
satisfaction and customer satisfaction are directly related. Employee satisfaction is linked
with increases in productivity and external service value. External service value is linked
with customer satisfaction and the benefits of customer loyalty. The net effects of
customer loyalty are increased revenues and profitability for the firm. The outcomes
associated with employee satisfaction--external service values, customer satisfaction,
customer loyalty, revenue growth, and increased profitability provide feedback and
reinforce the company's internal service quality and employee satisfaction.
6. Discuss the three sources of conflict for boundary-spanning service workers.
ANS:
 Boundary spanners face three main sources of conflict: person/role conflicts,
organization/client conflicts, and inter-client conflicts. With person/role conflicts, a bad
fit between an individual’s self-perception and the specific role the person must play in
an organization. A more salient conflict for most front-line workers is the conflict
between their two bosses – the organization and the client. This organization/client
conflicts arises when a customer requests services that violate the rules of the
organization. Inter-client conflicts arise because of the number of clients who influence
one another’s experience. This occurs most often when the service worker is serving
multiple clients at the same time.