Mini-Case Hotel Flowchart and Blueprint
One of the ways that services marketers try to understand, manage, and control the service encounter experience is to use flowcharts (they're also called blueprints). In services flowcharts, there is a delineation between what a customer sees (e.g., a car valet) and what the company needs to do to make that part of the service encounter as flawless as possible (e.g., it needs to have a sufficient number of valets who are well trained to be polite and good drivers, plentiful nearby parking).
Each part of the service encounter is described in steps that unfold or flow over time to simulate the process of the customer experience. It's important for the customer service team to understand that the customer is evaluating the brand every step of the way.
Each step along the customer journey is described in layers-some are visible to the customer, or are actions that occur "on stage," and other services and actions occur "behind the scenes." The figure depicts the steps, left to right, and the layers, top to bottom, for a customer going to a hotel (the figure is based on Scheuing and Christopher's Service Quality Handbook).
Case Discussion Questions:
1. Brand managers of services often complain that their job seems more difficult than being a brand manager for, say, a sneaker. How does the flowchart support their claims? What must the marketer pay attention to?
2. For quality assurances, what performance indicators would you measure, at each step in the process (left to right) and in which layers (top to bottom) to track what is working well versus what needs to be streamlined in the process?
3. By comparison, how much of manufacturing goods, say a box of cookies, occurs "on stage," that is, visible to the customer?