A Comprehensive Overview of Service Operations Management Principles

This report provides a comprehensive introduction to Service Operations Management (SOM). It begins by defining SOM and its importance in delivering services to customers, emphasizing the need to understand customer needs and manage processes for continual improvement. The report explores the service concept, highlighting its role in linking operations and marketing, and defining key components such as service experience, outcome, operation, and value. It delves into the meaning of service, differentiating between service outcomes and experiences, and discusses the characteristics of services, including intangibility, inconsistency, inseparability, and inventory. Furthermore, the report categorizes various types of services, such as B2B, B2C, internal, public, and not-for-profit services, and classifies services based on different criteria like nature of organization, tradability, and customer relationships. The report also examines service processes, including front and back-office operations, service process planning, and the use of service blueprints and flowcharts to design and visualize service delivery systems. Finally, it touches upon service operations and their distinct features, such as customer participation.

Chapter I
Introduction

Introduction
• Service Operations Management (SOM) concerned with delivering service
to the customers or users of the services, understanding the customers
needs, managing the processes, ensuring meeting objectives, paying
attention to the continual improvement of services.
• The term SOM is used to cover the activities, decisions and responsibilities
of operation managers in service organizations.
• Business to consumer services(financial, retail, leisure)
• Business to business services B2B consultants, office equipment provision
and support, communications)
• Internal services (e.g. personnel, information technology IT services)
• Public services‘( police, education, health services) G2P
• Not-for-profit services ( e.g. charities, faith organizations aid organizations)

Service concept
• The service concept is a mechanism that links operations and
marketing;
• The service concept should be a shared understanding of what
the organization provides and what the customer receives;
• The service concept is therefore a key tool that can communicate
the set of benefits (outcome, experience, operation, together
with the psychological benefits) to the customer in order to
demonstrate the potential value of the service.

Service concept

Service Concept
• A service concept is a shared understanding of the nature of the service provided
and received, which should encapsulate information about the service
experience, the service outcome, the service operation and the value of the
service;
• The service concept acts as a ‘service specification;
• Customers ‘buy’ concepts;
• A service concept contains the ‘organizing idea’ for the service;
• A service concept is more emotional than a business model, deeper than a brand,
More complex than a good idea and more solid than a vision;
• A service concept should provide sufficient detail to make it clear what the
organization is selling/providing and what the customer is buying/receiving;

Service concept
• More than the ‘DNA’ of a service – the elements of the service
product; it is the mental picture that is held by customers, employees
and shareholders about the service provided by the organisation. It is
‘service in the mind’ (Clark et al. 2000).
• The service concept is much more than an idea. An idea is an initial
notion of a service. A service concept is a more complete picture,
which includes some details about what the service will be like, the
outcomes and the experience.

Service concept defined as
• The organizing idea. The essence of the service bought, or used, by
the customer.
• The service experience. The customer’s direct experience of the
service process, which concerns the way the service provider deals
with the customer.
• The service outcome. The result for the customer of the service.
• The service operation. The way in which the service will be delivered.
• The value of the service. The benefit that customers perceive to be
inherent in the service weighed against the cost of that service.

Meaning of service
• Service means many different things in many different contexts.
• Combination of outcomes and experiences delivered to and received by a
customer.
• Services are deeds, processes and performance central to the economic
activity in any society.
• Services are solution for customers problems.
• Intangible in the form of work, interaction, feeling, experience, benefits
and values.
• Service experience is the customer’s direct experience of the service
process and concerns the way the customer is dealt with by the service
provider.
• “Service is something which can be bought and sold but which you cannot
drop on your feet.” Evert Gummesson.

Service outcomes
Service Outcomes
Value
Emotion
Judgement
Intention

Service
• Services are those intangible activities that provides
satisfaction of wants and imply an interaction to be realized
between the provider and consumer,
• service is the combination of the customers’ experience and
their perception of the outcome of the service.
• Distinct features of five I’s intangibility, inconsistency,
inseparability, inventory less, involvement

Definition of service
“A service is an activity or series of activities of more or
less intangible nature that normally, but not necessarily,
take place in interactions between customer and service
employees and or physical resources of goods and / or
systems of the service provider, which are provided as
solution to customer problems”. (Gronroos, 1990)

Characteristics of services
• Intangibility: they can not felt,
taste, touch, smelt, seen before
they are consumed experiential in
nature
• Inconsistency : the provision of
services includes the large measure
of human elements. In this case a
service provider may alter its offer
according to the need of customers
• Inseparability: the service provision
is inseparable from the service
consumption
• Inventory (less): are perishable and
cannot be stored for a future use.
That is service providers can store
some associated good but not service
• Involvement: participation of the
recipient or customer in the service
delivery process
• Simultaneity: produce and consume
at the same circumstances
• Other features
• Quality measurement
• Fluctuating demand