The document discusses the nature of services and customer care. It notes that services are idiosyncratic and require an understanding of both marketing and personnel management. Services often involve cycles of interactions between customers and service providers through various channels. The document also distinguishes between internal customers, who are individuals or departments within an organization that use its services, and external customers, who purchase and use products and services from outside the organization. Former customers can also provide useful feedback or become future customers again.

1. Customer Care

2. Service Definition

3. The Nature of Services
• Everyone is an expert on services. We all think we know
what we want from a service organization and, by the very
process of living, we have a good deal of experience with
the service creation process.
• Services are idiosyncratic - What works well in providing
one kind of service may prove disastrous in another. For
example, consuming a restaurant meal in less than half an
hour may be exactly what you want in a fast restaurant but
be totally unacceptable at an expensive French restaurant.

4. The Nature of Services
• Quality of work is not quality of service. An auto dealership
may do good work on your car, but it may take a week to get
the job done.
• Most services contain a mix of tangible attributes that
constitute a service package. The package requires different
approaches to design and management than the production of
goods.
• High-contact services are experienced, whereas goods are
consumed.

5. The Nature of Services
• Effective management of services require an
understanding of marketing and personnel as well as
operations.
• Services often take the form of cycles of encounters
involving face-to-face, phone, electromechanical,
and/or mail interactions.
Source: “Product Design & Process Selection-Services.”
Production & Operations Management. Richard Chase, Nicholas Aquilano &
Robert Jacobs, Irwin/McGraw-Hill, 1998. Chapter 5.

6. Contexts of Services
• 1. Service Business is the management of organizations
whose primary business requires interaction with the
customer to produce the service. Examples are: Banks,
Airlines, Hospitals, Law firms, Retail stores, and
Restaurants.
• Within this category, there are two distinctions:
• A. Facilities-based services, where the customer must go
to the service facility, and
• B. Field-based services, where production and
consumption of the service take place in the customer’s
environment.

7. Contexts of Services
• 2. Internal services is the management of services
required to support the activities of the larger organization.
Functions include, data processing, accounting,
engineering, and maintenance. Their consumers are the
various departments within the organization that require
such services.

8. The Customer ???

9. Who is My Customer?
• Internal Customer: is the individual or
department within your organization who
uses your products or services. By
enhancing your customer service skills, you
develop better working relationships with
the people within the organization.

10. Internal Customers: Example
• Ahmad is responsible for ordering forms and envelops
for the mailing services department of his company.
Although ultimately his company’s customers are those
people who receive a mailing, Ahmad’s primary
customers are internal - members of the marketing
department, word processors, computer programmers,
and employees in his own mailing department. All his
internal customers rely on Ahmad to purchase the
products they need in a timely fashion. If Ahmad does
not order the correct products, none of the internal
departments can serve their external customers.

11. Who is My Customer?
• External Customer: is the person or
organization who purchases and uses your
products and services. This is the customer we
traditionally think of. In government and not-
for-profit organizations, these are the people
who use your services, along with the taxpayers
and donors who support you. In business-to-
business relationships, external customers may
also be people with whom you are in a joint
venture.

12. External Customers: Example
• One surprising example of external
customers are the Former Customers - those
persons who, for one reason or another, do
not do business with your organization
anymore.
• Former customers may provide excellent
input your organization can use to provide
exceptional service.
• They are also potential future customers.