Who is the "customer" in a jail? A cemetery? A summer camp for children?
How have price and variety competition changed McDonald's basic formula for success?
Could a service firm use a production-line approach or self-serve design and still keep a high customer focus (personal attention)? Explain and support your answer with examples.
Why should a manager of a bank home office be evaluated differently than a manager of a bank branch?
Identify the high-contact and low-contact operations of the following services:
A dental office.
An airline.
An accounting office.
An automobile agency.
Amazon.com
Are there any service businesses that won't be affected by knowledge outsourcing?
Relative to the behavioral science discussion, what practical advice do you have for a hotel manager to enhance the ending of a guest's stay in the hotel?
List some occupations or sporting events where the ending is a dominant element in evaluating success.
Behavioral scientists suggest that we remember events as snapshots, not movies. How would you apply this to designing a service?
Some suggest that customer expectation is the key to service success. Give an example from your own experience to support or refute this assertion.
Where would you place a drive-in church, a campus food vending machine, and a bar's automatic mixed drink machine on the service-system design matrix?
Can a manufacturer have a service guarantee in addition to a product guarantee?
Suppose you were the manager of a restaurant and you were told honestly that a couple eating dinner had just seen a mouse. What would you say to them? How would you recover from this service crisis?
What strategy do the following organizations seem to use to manage customer-introduced variability?
