Services Management: A Comprehensive Analysis of British Airways Service Experience

This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the service experience of British Airways based on the theories and framework of services management. It includes service design, encounter, quality, literature review, and management recommendations.

Running head: SERVICES MANAGEMENT
SERVICES MANAGEMENT
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
Discussion..................................................................................................................................2
About the company:...............................................................................................................2
Introduction of the service experience:..................................................................................3
Service Design and encounter:...............................................................................................3
Service Quality:......................................................................................................................4
Literature review:...................................................................................................................5
Overview of employee empowerment...............................................................................5
Total Quality Management................................................................................................5
Gap model depicting service quality..................................................................................6
Customer experience during failure of services.................................................................6
Management Recommendations................................................................................................7
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................9

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Introduction
The intangible product which adds utility to consumers is known as Services. The
concept of service management in context of manufacturing reflects the integration in the
process of supply chain for the connection in the point of view of customers as well as the
actual sales. Service management includes the elements like service culture, the quality of the
services, employee engagement as well as the experience of the customers (Ansari, Siddiqui
& Farrukh, 2018). Service marketing is a constituent for facilitating the application of
services management in organizations. The processes or function which help in the process of
constructing, communicating, conveying the values to the customers and managing the
relationship with the customers for benefiting both stakeholders and organizations is known
as service marketing. The purpose of the paper is to assess a particular service experience
from a customer’s point of view. The service encounter chosen for this paper is British
Airways. The paper will be presenting a comprehensive analysis of the service experience
based on the theories and framework of services management. The paper will be concluded
by presenting a summary of the assessment in regards with the experience in British Airways.
Discussion
About the company:
The airline company is one of the popular airlines of United Kingdom. The company
is headquartered at Harmondsworth. It is considered to be second largest companies
operating in airline industry of United Kingdom. The airline brand is known for operating
with daily flights schedules to 400 plus cities in the world. The airline company directs its
focus on the functionality of customer services. The objective of the company is categorized
in the areas like global operations by targeting customers based on business travel and leisure
travellers, by maintaining the quality in the airlines with the incorporation of latest services,

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products and equipment and the premiumness services for presenting a diversified image to
the target audience.
Introduction of the service experience:
The experience was based on the services provided by British Airways. The decision
of choosing British Airways for travelling from Australia to Malaysia was due to the
affordability of the service offerings which connects global networks. The expectations form
British Airways was based on the proposed services in relation to the information regarding
delays and cancellations, the promise of quick refunds, the right of cancelling within a range
of 24 hours, a complete transparency of the service offerings and price ranges and acting as
per the feedback. The actual experiences was pleasant as well as proved to be an appropriate
option for such a longer flight (Hanlon, 2017). The airline company demonstrated the
implementation of the valuable strategies focussed on building customer experience. The
long duration in the flight was accompanied by the features like, the offer of experiencing the
technology of virtual reality at the check-in desks and in the air, the decent amount of leg
space for a comfortable journey and restaurant-style food option. The experienced was
focussed with the objective of incorporating strategies of customer engagement. Although,
the overall experience was pleasant but the company lacked in the service delivery of the
strategized plans.
Service Design and encounter:
The airline brand, British Airways reflects the reputation of quality offerings and in
flight experience. The company execute the strategies of customer services along with the
associated partners like the airport staff and support vehicle. The airline is known for
advertising heavily prior to the flight for differentiating British Airways from other brands.
The company offers various booking options like booking through online platform and
offline (at the airport), I availed the online option which reflected price discount offers and

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extra baggage amount offer. The services of the company comprises of a 24/7 customer
service department dedicated for the purpose of resolving customer issues and queries
regarding the flight. Customer service department is trained for the knowledge about the kind
and range of service offerings by British Airways. Hospitality services in the case of flight
delays and inconvenience is the part of the structured service design. The service design also
includes vouchers for the provision of availing refreshments in the waiting time. The payment
of the services are asked during the time of flight bookings. The service delivery plans and
investments in the customer experience is well planned but lacks majorly in the phase of
execution due to the gap in aligning customer experience with the employee motivation.
Service Quality:
The service delivery department of British Airways is responsible for setting specific
service standards for constant delivery of quality customer delivery. The service point of
delivery includes booking services, customer services for resolving issues and queries, check
in services, catering services, baggage delivery services and service delivered through
designated cabin crew members. Recruitment and training strategies are aimed at executing
the strategic service delivery plans. British Airways is known for recruiting younger staff
member for the purpose of creating a friendly atmosphere. British Airways has a designated
board, British Airways Quality Board for ensuring the quality initiatives regarding the service
offerings (Budd & Ison, 2016). However, the company failed at ensuring optimum level of
employee engagement and employee motivation. The airline company lacks effective and
efficient employee training and motivation technique, which is needed for delivering
coordinated service quality. According to the Gap model of service delivery, the company
reflects the delivery gap. The reason behind the service delivery gap can be depicted by the
lack of coordination in the actual standards and the consistency in quality delivery of
services.

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Literature review:
Employee empowerment
There are various papers which presents the importance of employee empowerment in
service industry. The concept of employee empowerment in service industry ensures the
facilitation of employee engagement and motivation practices. Employee engagement is very
crucial for the purpose of delivery quality execution in the service industry. Employee
empowerment contributes towards the accomplishment of the objectives and standards
established by the organizations. Increasing attrition rates, employee lay off and pay cuts
reflects challenges in the operational process (Madar, 2015). The operational capabilities of
the airline company can be affected by the means of employee dissatisfaction and insecurity
in the organizational culture. There are various stages comprising the concept of employee
engagement, British airways involves the practices of training, empowering and internal-
external feedback system for the purpose of standardizing the delivery of services (Au, Dong
& Tremblay, 2019). The elements leading to employee empowerment can be the factors
associated with career growth, rewards and recognition, communication of the customer
preferences and a decent working environment.
Total Quality Management
There are various papers, which specializes in the concept of Total Quality
Management (TQM) is an important tool for implementing strategies regarding service
policies and standards for the purpose of improving service performance. The implementation
of the concept of Total Quality Management helps in building the factors contributing
towards service quality (Jiménez-Jiménez et al., 2015). Companies like British Airways
implemented the plan of TQM by focussing on the areas like reduction of the operational
costs on a continuous basis, offering quality service with premium price bookings, facilitating
the strategies of partnership and alliances for expanding in the market (Ross, 2017). The

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Total Quality management should direct the focus of British Airways into the factor of
reducing the cost to a level where the existing resources are optimally utilized. The focus
should be directed towards offering an effective and efficient customer service experience for
the customers by building appropriate and customize response for their service needs
(Kaliannan & Adjovu, 2015). The return on investment of the company can be improved by
investing in improved human skills (leadership) for empowering the human resources as well
as incorporating computerized reservation strategies for the incorporation of convenience
(Kaliannan & Adjovu, 2015).
Gap model depicting service quality
There are various papers which depicts the concept of gap model. Gap model is used
as a tool for assessing the service quality of a customer experience. The gap model comprises
of five gaps, knowledge gap, which depicts the unawareness of the management regarding
customer expectations and preferences. The first gap can be caused due to the lack of
effective communication among the management and service employees (Cyphert & Lyle,
2016). The second gap depicts the lack of alignment between the management’s knowledge
about customer preferences and the policy implementation regarding service standards and
benchmark. The next gap depicts the concept and causal agent of service delivery gap
(Efthymiou et al., 2019). The next two gaps comprises of communication gap, which reflects
the poor strategy of advertisements and customer communication as well as the customer gap,
which indicates the gap between the customers’ understanding and company’s delivery of
quality services (Cyphert & Lyle, 2016). Service delivery gap is the main problem in the
operational strategy of British Airways, as the airline brand have directed their focus on the
improvement of customer experiences but is behind in aligning the objectives and standards
with the practice of employee empowerment and engagement practices (Franceschini &
Mastrogiacomo, 2018).

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Customer experience during failure of services
There are papers, which specializes in the depiction of customer experience during the
phase of service quality failure. The airline companies should be involved in monitoring the
satisfaction level of the customers for the purpose of assessing the alignment with service
quality. Maintaining a specific kind of service quality in the airline business is challenging
because of its dominant intangible nature. Customer experience majorly depends on changing
customer expectations. The papers communicated three levels in the category of expected
service, predicted, desired and adequate. The predicted service expectations reflects the actual
expectations of the customers regarding a chosen company. The desired service expectation
is influenced by the personal requirements which builds up by the tools of word-of-mouth
and advertising. The concept of adequate customer experience depicts the minimum
expectations of the customers regarding a specific service offering.
The inability of the airline company to address the service expectations by the
offerings, depicts the outcome of service failure. Customer loyalty cannot be maintained
among dissatisfied customers. The paper depicted the importance of employee empowerment
by the incorporation of leadership styles for responding to the challenges as employees are
the direct point of contact in the process of service delivery. Empowered and well trained
staff can be the best tool for responding and resolving the customers’ concerns and
customized expectations (Airways, 2017). The concept of service recovery helps in retaining
the loyalty of the customers through the help of appropriate and timely customers’
complaints. For building a positive and effective customer experience, airline companies
should engage in the various phases of service delivery, speed, compensation or refund and
apology. The customer experience can be constructed by the elements of customer journey
and the level of satisfaction deduced from the interaction between the company and the
consumer. The airline companies like British Airways have experienced a rough phase of

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facilitating positive customer experience but the implementations of various strategies for
improving the employee participation, cost involvement and the understanding the
expectations of the customers resulted in the improvement of British Airways in terms of
customer satisfaction.
Management Recommendations
British Airways is one of the popular airline companies in the world, with operation in
around 400 cities. The company reflects a continuous improvement process for the purpose of
improving customer experience. However, a company cannot be perfect, British Airways
faces issues with the quality of service delivery based on the service policies and standards.
 Knowledge of customer satisfaction and employee engagement: Understanding and
knowledge about the factors influencing the levels of customer satisfaction and
employee engagement (Eaton, 2017).
 Service excellence and employee engagement: The focus of the employees should be
directed towards service excellence and employee engagement at various
organizational levels (Shaw, 2016). British Airways should adopt various strategic
approach for improving the state of employee engagement, which in return will
improve service excellence of the individuals (Kaliannan & Adjovu, 2015).
 Knowledge of customer preferences: Helping employees in understanding the needs
of the customers for offering a consistent and standard quality service (Harrison,
2018). The expectation and objectives of the airline company British Airways needs
to be communicated clearly for the purpose of aligning the employee efforts with the
company’s service policy and standard (Noe et al., 2017).
 Leadership style and attitude: Leadership style can be a major influencer in framing
the aspects of service delivery. The elements of service delivery are service culture,

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service quality, employee engagement and customer experience (Karami, 2017). The
elements can be synchronised by implementing strong and effective leadership style
(Turner, 2016). Leaders of British Airways can improve the culture of the service
offerings by incorporating regular training programs and continuous internal-external
feedback process (Flouris & Oswald, 2016).
 Internal-external feedback: Being in a service industry, British Airways should be
involved in the process of regular monitoring, which can include the data of customer
experiences and employee satisfaction (Tckhakaia, Cabras & Rodrigues, 2015).
 Overall service excellence: The service quality should not be limited to the premium
segment. Although the company receives premium price from the niche or business
class travellers but the service quality should not be restricted for high-priced tickets
as the company should focus on building overall service excellence.
Conclusion
Therefore, it can be concluded that being the flag carrier airline company, British
Airways should direct its focus solely on the objective of improving customer experience in
regards with the service quality. The company has a designated service delivery department,
which specializes in setting service policies and standards for the accomplishing service
excellence. In a service industry the organizations should focus on the continual process of
improving the service quality for an effective competitive advantage among the competitors
with the nature of dominant intangibility. The point of service delivery comprises of 24/7
customer services, booking services, baggage delivery, check in services and services from
cabin crew members. The recruitment plans of the British Airways is concentrated on
employing young staff as the point of delivery as well as senior staff employment for the
leadership and management services. Leadership style and attitude: Leadership style can be a
major influencer in framing the aspects of service delivery. The elements of service delivery

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are service culture, service quality, employee engagement and customer experience. The
elements can be synchronised by implementing strong and effective leadership style Leaders
of British Airways can improve the culture of the service offerings by incorporating regular
training programs and continuous internal-external feedback process. British Airways reflects
a designated board, British Airways Quality Board for the purpose of ensuring quality
initiatives in regards with service offerings. The recommendations presented in the paper are,
understanding the influencing factors for employee engagement and customer satisfaction.
The company should involve in the process of improvement regarding the areas of employee
engagement and service excellence. The consistency of the service quality can be maintained
by empowering employees for understanding the variations in customer expectations.
Although, the aims and objectives of the airline company, British Airways is effective and
directed towards the attainment of service excellence but the focus will have to be
concentrated on the factors of improving service delivery execution.

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