Fluent Essays

Strategic Service Vision report (Individual) Many organisations face choices regarding the types of services they wish to offer and to whom, and the operational procedures they employ. Strategic Frameworks are sometimes used to assist in these decisions. Using your companys strategic service vision as a template and relevant strategic service management frameworks, provide an overview of your organisation, its ‘target market segments’ and its service concept’. In addition to the above, the following questions should be addressed: • Outline your core and peripheral services that make up the bundle of services you will offer to your customers. • Provide a description of the proposed servicescape. • The service sector is now a key generator of economic prosperity in many countries. However, changes in the context in which businesses operate are having an impact on their ability to provide this economic wealth. Using online articles and news articles published in the past three years, identify three current issues that would impact on your specific organisation. You will need to include evidence of these in your bibliography. • Using a range of sources of information, including both media articles and academic literature as supporting evidence, identify and evaluate four factors that you think will impact on your business in the future Executive summary (This does not count towards the word count of the report). Section one – Introduction Section two – Organization Overview (Core and Peripheral Services and relevant Servicespace – both physical and digital) This activity must meet the following formatting requirements: • Font size 12 • Double-spaced • 1500 words • Harvard Referencing System Core and Peripheral Services The core service are the main services that provide certain benefits to the customers. They are an important part of the services provided by the enterprises The peripheral services are add on to the core services and they support the core services but they are independently used and have a character of their own Explanation: Core services The core service is the main service that is needed by the customers and it is the main framework for the other peripheral services. The core services are used by the enterprises for working through their activities for creating benefits for the organisation. They play an important part for the enterprise and are supported in their endeavor by the peripheral services Peripheral Services Peripheral services are part and supportive of the main services but they are independent in their own rights.  The peripheral  services are used as a support to the core services but are not interlinked with them. They provide their own level of comfort and have their own characteristics. They provide the access to the core services. Core services refer to the basic services that help a company to perform business activities in the marketplace or a team to create value in its organization [12]. They represent essential functions of services which play a pivotal role in maintaining high levels of quality across the services and are supported and boosted by their peripheral services . In the literature, the core services appear in slightly different but concrete forms. In the performing arts, the core services are defined as displays, performances or performing skills according to performance characteristics. Iacobucci and Ostrom [13] argue that a laywer’s advice in the field of law or a meal in a restaurant constitutes a core service in itself. Lemon and Wangenheim [14] state that the core services of airlines are the activities of selling air tickets and their peripheral services are geared towards increasing ticket sales; for example, there may be a loyalty program that allows customers to use other affiliated services with their mileage points earned from ticket purchases. If the quality of core services is considered poor or if customers feel dissatisfied with the services, they will switch to one of other service providers [15]. Peripheral services work to support and facilitate the provision of core services. Lovelock [16] argues that although the peripheral services intended to support core services act as a catalyst for seamless provision of such services, they have no intersection with the core services and have some increased attributes supplementary to the core services. Typically, in the performing arts, peripheral services are represented by performing places’ characteristics, manners and attitudes, comfortableness and accessibility especially for parking and public transport. The Service Concept explained One of the central models of the Service Framework is the service concept. In this post we explore the use of a Service Concept in further detail, and why it is important to understand what the Service Concept of an organization is. The service concept outlines how a service provider can realize the value and desired outcomes of its services. The service concept can best be described as the way in which an organization would like to have its services perceived by its stakeholders.[i] It describes the non-tangible aspects of service delivery and is an integral part of the value proposition of service providers. Whereas with tangible objects the final product is mostly the sum of its parts, this is certainly not the case with services. Various studies have shown that users tend to see a service as a ‘whole experience.’ For example, a day at Disneyland’s Magic Kingdom is more likely to be defined by its visitors as a magical experience rather than six rides and a burger in a clean park.[ii] The service concept facilitates this holistic approach by providing a detailed description of what is to be done for the user (what needs and wishes are to be satisfied) and how this is to be achieved.[iii] As such, the service concept can be a major driver for the Service Design phase of (new) services. The service concept consists of the holistic combination (i.e. all element should be considered equally) of four dimensions[iv]: Service operation: the way in which the service is delivered; User experience: the user’s direct experience of the service; Service outcome: the benefits and results of the service for the user; Value: the benefits the user perceives as inherent in the service, weighed against the cost of the service. The four dimensions of the service concept form a key to defining how the stakeholders in an organization perceive the value of services, minimizing the gap between user expectations and the service delivery operation. Service Concept Explained The four dimensions of the Service Concept The service concept plays an important role in determining the Service Automation strategy for organizations, and the subsequent design and development activities. It is positioned as a high-level and overarching concept that gives input to the overall strategy of the service provider. Why is the Service Concept important? One of the most distinctive characteristics of services is their process-oriented nature. Each service can be seen as a chain of activities that help a service to function effectively.[v] For example, a package delivery service consists of a number of activities that need to be executed in a predetermined order. First, you need to register your package with the shipping company. Next you print the package label and attach this to the shipment item. Finally the courier will pick up the package and subsequently ensure that it is delivered at the designated address. Each of the activities mentioned is part of a larger (again holistic) process that constitutes the whole service. Because each activity contributes to a singular outcome of a service (in this example the shipment of the package from A to B) the service concept of any organization needs to take into account that its potential to deliver value is only as good as its weakest link. If any of the activities in the sequence fail, the user will have a very poor user experience because the desired outcome of the service is not achieved. Almost every service provider delivers not one, but a variety of different services, which can all be considered as separate processes of value creation. Service organizations do, however, only have one service concept, which functions as an overarching directive to all other services. It is the glue that binds the individual services of an organization together, aiming them towards the common objectives of the service concept. As such, the service concept aligns an organization’s service offering towards a common direction by setting overall goals and objectives that apply for the complete collection of services. This is especially so in larger organizations, which offer a variety of different services, where establishing a uniform service concept greatly helps in determining and setting priorities. The Service Concept and Services The Service Concept directs the design of multiple services The primary goal of the Service Concept is to determine the desired service outcomes and value of a service provider, which is subsequently incorporated into the design of the organization’s various services. A firm that delivers accountancy services, for example, might have a service concept that concentrates on national delivery (service operation) of various accounting services (value) that comply with all relevant rules and regulations (service outcomes) and that primarily focuses on online delivery (user experience). Although this is an extremely abbreviated example of a service concept, it can set the direction for all services of the accountancy firm. Each of the organization’s accountancy services, which are all individual processes, can be related and designed based on the service concept. Ultimately, the service concept might form the foundation upon which organizations can start managing their service portfolio, which is the collection of various services a service provider offers. References [i] Heskett, James L. Managing in the service economy. Harvard Business Press, 1986. [ii] Clark, Graham, Robert Johnston, and Michael Shulver. Exploiting the service concept for service design and development. New Service Design. Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA (2000): 71-91. [iii] Edvardsson, Bo, and Jan Olsson. Key concepts for new service development. Service Industries Journal 16.2 (1996): 140-164. [iv] Johnston, Robert, and Graham Clark. Service operations management: improving service delivery. Pearson Education, 2005. [v] A. Johne and C. Storey, New Service Development: A Review of the Literature and Annotated Bibliography, European Journal of Marketing, 32/3-4 (1998), pp. 184-251.