Service Blueprint and Quality at Woolworths

This assignment analyzes the service blueprint employed by Woolworths, a leading Australian supermarket chain. It delves into various aspects, including customer actions, employee roles (front-stage and back-stage), marketing moments of truth, and key determinants of customer satisfaction. The focus is on understanding how Woolworths delivers quality service and maintains customer loyalty through tangible elements, reliability, assurance, empathy, and responsiveness.

Speaker Motes
2 Woolworth Limited is one of the largest supermarket retail chain in Australia. They
have more than 800 stores. The firm specialises in selling of grocery and packaged food
item. The firm provides services like assisting customers and helping them purchase
various products under one roof.
3 A blueprint is an essential component of procedural framework of a firm. Through a
blue print the employees can understand their roles and responsibility effectively. A blue
print can also help in reducing faulty service delivery. The blue print helps in efficient
service delivery. Blue print contains the physical evidence of services and the line of
contact. For Woolworth it would involve the assistance that the employees provide the
customer and the cash counter operations.
4 in service blue print, customer actions involve all the interactions, steps and choices
that the customer makes while purchasing a service. For Woolworth customer action
involves purchasing, choosing and making payment for the products. Onstage
employees are the employees who come directly in contact with the customer. Like the
employees who assist the customers and the cash counter staff. Backstage employees
work behind the scene so that all activities happen smoothly/. These functions are
procurement and management of inventory. Support process involves the support staff
who looks after the infrastructure and manages the customer service
5 Front stage functions are the functions which are visible to the customers. At
Woolworth these include cash counter, self-service counter and complaint counter
employees. Also employees who assist the customers are also a part of this
Back stage functions involve all the functions which help the front stage employees in
managing service delivery. At Woodworth it involves Procurement, managing
infrastructure, categorising and manging products managing inventory etc.
6 In marketing moment of truth is the point where customer interacts with a brand,
product or a service to form a new impression about the service or brand or to change a
pre-existing impression. First moment of truth occurs when a customer visits a

Woolworth store or Woolworth website for the first time. Second moment of truth occurs
when customer purchases the product and this moment of truth occurs when customer
reacts to the product and forms the impression. Zero moments of truth are another term
to explain customer interaction with the company. This interaction occurs when the
customer searches about the company and its brands online.
7 Customer satisfactions is measures as a percentage of customers whose experience
with the firm and its products and services exceeds or equals their expectation. If this
percentage is high customers are considered to be satisfied. Customer satisfaction is
correlated with expectation fulfilment. Customer feels most satisfied if he finds the
quality of the service as per expectation. Therefore service quality is a major
determinant of customer satisfaction. Another determinant is that information about the
company and the brand should be readily available on the internet, if the store layout
and atmospherics are soothing then too customer feels satisfied.
8 Se5rvicequal model gives five elements of measurement of service quality. If the firms
fares well on these elements then it has high service quality. These are
Tangibles- Customers will feel that the service is as per their expectations if there is an
appearance of physical evidence, equipment or personnel related to the service
If the service provider is able to deliver the service that he promised, the service is
considered of good quality
Assurance- The knowledge and politeness that the front line employees show to the
customers, determines the perception of quality
Empathy- It is the measure of individual attention given to customers
Responsiveness- Responsiveness is the speed with which service is offered
9 technological or human errors can lead to service failure. Woolworth can also face
service failure on account of technological and human error. At certain times customer
service system breaks down due to fault in information technology system or due to lack
of knowledge or work stress of front line employees

.