Role Play of Service Marketing

Danish Hasan, Ather Saeed, Faizan Hanif, Riaz ul Haq 4/1/2012

Scenario
Customer dials 111 and connects to the service help line. CSR: Good morning Sir. Welcome to the ABC help line. How may I help you today? Customer: I just realized my outgoing has been barred on my post paid connection due to nonpayment. It is Saturday today and there is a strike outside, and tomorrow is a Sunday. It would be impossible for me to pay my bill before Monday. So I would be grateful if you can restore my service till Monday. CSR: Alright sir. I understand your situation. I will forward your request to our concerned department. The concerned department will get back to you. You can also inquire about your request status through a tracking number. Please note a tracking number for your request. Customer: Thanks CSR: Sir just to make sure you will pay your outstanding amount of 2000Rs on Monday? Customer: Yes CSR: Thank you for calling on ABC help line. CSR sent an email to Billing department. The billing department manager received the email and approved to restore the service till Monday. The service was restored within 30mins. (Although the turnaround time is from 4 hrs to 24hrs) Afterwards a billing department representative contacted the customer and informed him regarding the service restoration.

Theoretical aspects considered for the scenario 8Ps of Service Marketing

Out of the 8 Ps of service marketing, following Ps were found to be related to the undertaken scenario: 1. Promotion It involves an indirect promotion of the service. Word of mouth and good will by the service provider will be the promotional act here. You have produced an emotional attachment between your customer and your service. 2. Process This role play talks about the Processes of this telecommunication service provider. How stream lined the process are and what the customer response time is. 3. People This role play identifies how this service provider has segregated its market into premium customers and regular users. 4. Productivity and Quality Here we are talking about a sort of service interruption and service recovery. So when we say Quality we mean the Quality of service recovery and the response time.

Other aspects
Customer Interface The customer will be using telephonic helpline to connect with the service provider.

What is the process? The customer dialed a given help line number and within 30secs the call was connected to an available customer support representative. The CSR greeted the customer and listened to customers complaint. After listening to the complaint the CSR forwarded the request to the concerned department and assured the customer that he will be informed about his request status. The issue was immediately raised to the concerned department and since it had a high priority tag on, it was dealt immediately. The concerned department manager resolved the issue and the service was restored within given time frame.

Is it a high contact, low contact or medium contact service? High contact service
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Were you delighted? As a premium customer yes the customer was delighted because the service provider understood his position and the service provider trusted the customer. Research shows that delight is a function of three components: o Unexpectedly high levels of performance o Arousal o Positive affect

Personal Experience
This service scenario is based on an actual encounter of Ather Saeed Khan with Mobilink customer services. The incident took place on Saturday 31st March 2012.