MRKT 4652 Marketing Services Fall 2020 – Group Project: Designing a Customer Service Blueprint

This assessment is a group project and you are required to work with your existing team members.

Preparation requirements:

Completion of the project requires the knowledge of services marketing gained from all the chapters we have covered during the classes. However, the task specifically relates to chapter 14 – Improving Service Quality, and chapter 8 – Designing and managing services processes.

The task:

Select an Omani company to which you can get relatively unrestricted access to information. Assume your group has been hired as a consultancy to improve company’s service design and delivery.

Step 1: You need to gather enough information to prepare a detailed blueprint showing how a specific service is created and delivered to the customer. You may find it necessary to interview a small number of the company’s customers, as well as some employees from departments like marketing, human resource and operations.

Prepare a detailed blueprint of the service including all relevant elements both front stage and backstage. Add a written narrative and evaluation of the process in its present form, paying particular attention to service quality.

Step 2: Using your blueprint, you must use the GAPs Model to diagnose the different gaps that that exist in the service design and delivery. Provide details on AT LEAST 3 gaps, and highlight how problematic those gaps can be to the company. Using the knowledge gained from the course, consider what the company could do in order to close those gaps (what changes or improvements may be necessary).

Step 3: Based on the original blueprint , and using your findings from the Gaps Analysis, you are required to redesign the service processes and outline a new blueprint that will detail the processes involved to ensure that the identified gaps are eliminated or at least minimised. Provide a written narrative and evaluation of the redesigned processes, paying particular attention to service quality.

If you deem it appropriate, you may wish to compare the proposed approach with the processes used by its leading major competitors. Add suggestions for any changes or improvements.

Keep in mind that service redesign is typically required due to either:

a) changes in the external environment; and b) internal institutional ‘rusting’ – natural weakening of internal processes, rules, regulations, or the development of unofficial standards (badly thought out shortcuts).

Your aim with the redesign is to achieve the following four objectives:

1. Reduce number of service failures;

2. Reduce cycle time from when the customer first starts the service process to its completion;

3. Enhanced productivity;

4. Increased customer satisfaction.

This assignment requires both secondary research (public records search, company pamphlets, reports, websites, internet searches, etc.) and can also include primary research

Please remember that you may not have all of the information that you would like at your disposal. Do the best you can and be sure to explicitly state any assumptions you are making. If there is information that you cannot get (due to confidentiality issues, etc.) but would want to obtain, be sure to specify that in your paper.

As this is a major part of the course assessment and worth 40% of your overall grade, it is expected that it will be done in a very professional way – both in terms of content and presentation. The work must be fully references using APA style (following this link to learn about using APA style referencing https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/) and you must use a minimum of seven (7) references (at least 4 references must be an academic source such as a textbook or a journal article), both in-text and a list of references.

Your paper will be evaluated based on the quality of the GAPs analysis and your justification for the decisions you make about the proposed blueprint redesign, your consistency in linking strategic and tactical decisions, the depth of knowledge about services marketing you demonstrate based on your discussion of course concepts, the level of detail provided, and the quality of the writing, presentation and referencing.

Technical details:

Template and cover sheet: Please use the template and cover sheet provided in shared folder (emailed to you)

Presentation: Professional report, legible font (TNR, Arial, etc.), 12 pt., 1.5 line spacing

Overall word limit: maximum 4000 words minimum 3000 words (excluding references)

Weighing: 40 marks

Submission details: soft copy (team leader to upload to Moodle) and hard copy (hand in during class)

Submission date: December 20th 2020

Late submission penalty: A maximum penalty of 10% of the mark allocated to this assessment task will be deducted for each day (or part thereof) that the assignment is late. All team members are responsible for ensuring the timely submission.

Good Luck!