Service Processes

Prof Harish Rao

Example: Setting up a Restaurant
 Nature and level of interactions of the service provider with the
customer
 Alternatives available for positioning the service
 Factors influencing service positioning and implications of this on the
overall service delivery design
 Overall level of technology to be used
 Identifying the elements of a front office and back office of this service
delivery system
 Design of the dining and the kitchen areas
 Layout of the service delivery system - areas that need greater attention
with respect to look and feel
 Capacity of the dining and the kitchen areas –
 Estimating this given a certain uncertainty in the arrival pattern and the
demand for the restaurant services
Design of Service Systems

 Key difference from manufacturing

 In most cases, customer participation in the process is inevitable.
 Incorporate customer as an integral element in the design
process.
 Designing services requires looking at tiny details that pleases the
customer
 the issue of personalization
Service Triangle
Service Package

 Supporting facility Explicit services

 Facilitating goods Implicit services
 Information

Operational Classification - Degree of Customer Contact

Low – Quasi Manufacturing
Medium – Mixed Service
High – Pure service
Major Differences between High- and Low-Contact
Systems in a Bank
Service-System Design Matrix
Service Positioning
Customer Induced Variability
Arrival variability

• Customers arriving at times when there are not enough service providers

Request variability

• Travelers requesting a room with a view

Capability variability

• A patient being unable to explain symptoms to doctor

Effort variability

• Shoppers not putting up carts

Subjective preference variability

• Interpreting service action differently

Managing strategies for Customer Induced Variability
Behavioral Science Application in Services
 Front end and back end of the encounter are not created equal
 Segment the pleasure; Combine the pain
 Let the customer control the process
 Pay attention to norms and rituals
 People are easier to blame than systems
 Make up appropriately for errors
Service Blueprinting
Contrasting Service Designs
 Production Line approach
 Delink the back end from the front end
 Allows focus on efficiency in the back end

 Self Service Approach

 Involve customer as a part-time employee

 Personal Attention Approach

 Highly intensive customer relationship
Capacity planning for services

Use of waiting line models

 make use of queueing theory fundamentals
 to analyze the impact of alternative capacity choices
 on important operational measures such as
 queue length,
 waiting time
 utilization of resources

 Waiting time is an important operational measure that determines the service

quality
Components of Queuing System
Components of Queuing System
Single service channel structures
Multiple service channel structures
Queue Notations

Symbol Meaning
Ls Average number of customers in the system (waiting to be served)
Lq Average number of customers in the waiting line
Ws Average time a customer spends in the system (waiting and being
served)
Wq Average time a customer spends waiting in line
λ mean arrival rate
μ mean service rate
S Number of servers in a multi-server queue
Pn Probability of n customers in the queue
Single server model

Where arrival rates and service rates follow a poisson distribution

= = = (1- ) = (1- )

= = ρ=

M/M/s models - Easier to compute using tables or excel models

Multiserver
Lq numbers
Flexibility vs Utilization trade-off
The End