1. WHAT ARE SERVICE GUARANTEES?

ANALYZE THE VARIOUS TYPES OF SERVICE GUARANTEES INDICATING THE PURPOSE AND IMPORTANCE TO THE SERVICE CONSUMER. Hart, Schlesinger, and Maher (1992) define a service guarantee as "a statement explaining the service customers can expect (the promise) and what the company will do if it fails to deliver (the payout)." Evans, Clark, and Knutson (1996) also define a service guarantee as " a policy, express or implied, advertised or unadvertised, that commits the operation to making its guests happy." Services are however often not guaranteed because, the service cannot be returned and the service experience is also not tangible. For products however, guarantees are often in the form of warranties. Service guarantees have become an important and effective means to signal quality, attract and retain customers, and gain market share through differentiation. In addition, firms use service guarantees to learn about customer needs and finetune internal processes to respond to service failure. In general, firms report significant gains such as premium prices, positive customer attitudes and behaviors, and increased revenues from implementing service guarantees. Research has identified four types of service guarantees: specific, unconditional, implicit, and internal A specific guarantee signals firm commitment on specific attribute performance such as delivery time or price. Specific guarantees allow customers to evaluate service by disconfirming attribute performance expectations. From the firms perspective, a specific guarantee can serve not only as a benchmark to guide employee efforts and firm process design, but also as a performance measure. However, the narrow focus on some attributes may not be highly valued or appreciated by a heterogeneous customer base, although it may appeal to certain segments. An unconditional guarantee promises performance on all aspects of service, and in its pure form, promises complete customer satisfaction, and at a minimum, a full refund or complete, no cost problem resolution for the payout. Unconditional guarantees require a slightly different firm approach since variables that determine customer satisfaction such as affect and cognitive evaluations of attribute performance are not within the firm's control. Implementation of unconditional guarantees requires firms to focus efforts on managing customer interactions instead of specific service attributes. The distinction between specific or overall (unconditional) performance is important as it defines the scope of the marketing effort required to communicate and support the guarantee and has widely different implications for service guarantee design and management. As the term suggests, an implicit guarantee is an unwritten, unspoken guarantee that establishes an understanding between the firm and its customers. Customers may infer that an implicit guarantee is in place when a firm has an outstanding reputation for service quality. The focus of an implicit guarantee is customer satisfaction Previous research suggests that customers are more likely to rely on explicit firm promises instead of implicit cues to make inferences about the firm.

An internal guarantee is a promise or commitment by one part of the organization to another to deliver its products or services in a specified way or incur a meaningful penalty, monetary or otherwise. Since implicit guarantees are unconditional guarantees (without formal expression of explicit commitment) and the focus of internal guarantees is limited to coordinating functions and employees, Customers have difficulty evaluating service quality prior to consumption since most services are high in experience or credence attributes. Even when search attributes can be used to distinguish between firms, customers may not have access to full information about the quality of competing services. Hence, service guarantees serve as useful signals of service quality. Consequently, service guarantees that successfully signal high service quality also serve to reduce customer costs of search and information. service guarantees may communicate higher service quality either directly or indirectly by conveying lower risk. The extent to which a service guarantee may improve customer evaluations of service quality depends on its perceived credibility. Credible signals are perceived as "bonds" by customers, since the firm incurs a cost if the signal is false and the guarantee is invoked. Credibility is increased when customers sense that the bond is vulnerable that is, the firms reputation or current or future revenues are at risk suggest that customers will use service guarantees as signals of quality only when bond credibility is high, the differences in costs or revenues for meeting guarantee obligations is significantly different for high and low quality firms. For example, consider two airlines A and B contemplating on-time guarantees. Airline A knows that only 75% of its flights arrive on time, while Airline B has a better record with 95% on-time arrivals. Airline A would have little incentive to offer an ontime guarantee, if costs incurred when the guarantee was invoked resulted in profit erosion (i.e. could not be passed onto customers). The situation described above results in a form of "separating" equilibrium (Boulding and Kirmani 1993; Kirmani and Rao 2000), in which high and low quality service firms find it profitable to pursue different strategies. In a separating equilibrium, bond credibility is high, since costs of providing false signals are significantly higher for low quality firms. In these circumstances, customers can use guarantees as signals of quality to distinguish between high and low quality firms.

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EXPLAIN WHY CUSTOMERS CONTINUALLY SWITCH FROM A NON PERFORMING SERVICE FOR A COMPETITORS OFFERING Customers everywhere will switch from one service provider to another when they are not treated fairly provided there is an alternative provider and switching is not too difficult.

Customers switch because of many reasons, some of these are pricing, inconvenience, core service failure, service encounter failure, competition, ethical problems and involuntary switching.

1. PRICING Pricing can make a customer switch when the pricing of services are relatively high, price increases, unfair pricing and deceptive pricing. For example, in banks, the charge on the provision of a cheque book is within a particular range. Where a particular service provider charges more than the normal market price for no apparent reason, the likelihood of a customer switching to a cheaper provider is high. In as much as customers have a means of comparing prices of services provided, they will question why they need to pay higher for services that are they can get cheaper with other service providers. 2. INCONVENIENCE With the introduction of Automated Teller Machines (ATM) for example, many customers of banks that did not have this service available switched. People look for service provider that will make transacting business as convenient as possible. How long do they have to wait in queues to be served? How easy is it to get to their office location? How is parking like? How safe is it to do business in that neighbourhood? Clients will switch to a more convenient service provider if doing business with the current on is not comfortable enough. 3. CORE SERVICE FAILURE When the core services being provided by the provider fails in some ways, impatient customers may switch. This can occur for example when cash

balances provided to clients do not match what they expect to have, when loans seem to have been over deducted, when they are not pre informed about some kinds of charges before they are done. When the reason for the existence of the service provider fails, the customer is more likely to switch. 4. SERVICE ENCOUNTER FAILURE This occurs at the time when the service is actually being experienced. For example, an unresponsive customer services person, rude sales attendant or an employee who does not seem to know anything or much about the organizations services. These encounters can make a client decide to leave one company to another. For this reason, how a client is treated from the time he walks in the company to the time he leaves is crucial as it determines to a large extent whether or not they will return to do business with you. 5. RESPONSE TO SERVICE FAILURE After an unpleasant service encounter, the response of the service provider will affect any decision that the client might decide to take. To further explain, whether or not the client will real switch of not to a large extent depend on the response to the service encounter failure. The response to the failure can be in the form of a negative response, or no response at all. This explains why some companies today provide a customer complains box which is viewed and responded to daily. 6. COMPETITION A customer may also switch because he simply found a better service provider. This is the part that makes it scary for organizations and why it is necessary for companies to try and bond with their clients so as to make switching difficult. Many people will move to a new service provider simply because it is new. For example, many people moved from MTN to ZAIN not because of any particular reason but simply because of the thrill of trying something new. 7. ETHICAL PROBLEMS Ethical problems arise in many forms, I have experienced a customer who was banking with BPI Bank until UT bought majority shares and the bank became UT bank. Unfortunately, this client had had terrible experiences with UT financial services which happen to be a subsidiary of UT Holdings the group head of the Bank. He closed his account the day after the new name was launched and nothing we have tried has been able to get him to come back.

Customers may even switch because they belong to a particular political divide so as not to bring about any form of conflict of interest. 8. INVOLUNTARY SWITCHING Clients may also switch involuntarily because they may not have a choice. A customer of Kasapa in Accra may switch to Voadafon when he moves to his village because of the limited service of Kasapa. In another instance, a customer may switch from GBS to DSTV simply because GBS filed bankruptcy and closed down. Due to how easy it is to switch from one service provider to the next, providers must put in more effort in keeping their existing clients.

CASH DEPOSIT IN A BANK

Bank exterior parking Bank door is opened by security Customer ambassad or greets with smile Front desk officer to fill form Receivin g teller checks cash. Collects receipt and leaves

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DEVELOP A SERVICE BLUEPRINT OF YOUR WORKPLACE AND OUTLINE AND EXPLAIN THE IMPORTANCE OF BLUEPRINTING THE SERVICE

Blueprinting may well be the best method for measuring services success, and may also hold the key to future services innovation. Service blueprints could be described as service roadmaps -- tangible, visual documents that lay out where and how customers and companies interact. More specifically, blueprints are information-laden documents made up of five components that, when drawn up together, can help make customer-company relationship and the customer experience crystal clear.

Customer actions include "all of the steps that customers take as part of the service delivery process." Onstage/visible contact employee actions are the actions of frontline contact employees that occur as part of a face-to-face encounter with customers. Backstage/visible contact employee actions are non-visible interactions with customers, such as telephone calls, as well as other activities employees undertake in order to prepare to serve customers or that are part of their role responsibilities. Support processes are all activities carried out by individuals in a company who are not contact employees, but whose functions are crucial to the carrying out of services processes. Physical evidence represents all of the tangibles that customers are exposed or collect to during their contact with a company.

It may sound complicated, but it's not: Essentially, when companies create services blueprints, they are mapping out all the various interactions and actions that occur when customer and company meet. As an executive, you closely monitor your weekly customer satisfaction data. Based on those numbers, things seem to be progressing smoothly on a critical new account. Yet, you are suddenly informed that this same customer is rather displeased. Now, your key customer is threatening to dissolve their contract with

you. How can this be? Perhaps you did not understand your clients needs and perspective as completely as you thought. How can you build a more complete and truthful awareness into the health of your customer accounts? How can you improve your relationship with the customer? Service blueprinting gives service providers a visual way to express their intentions and goals while linking them to customers perceptions and needs as the service activity progresses. Just as architects use blueprints to communicate their designs to engineers, building occupants, and owners, service blueprinting can be used as a communicative tool between those who consume services and those who design, enable, track, and deliver services. The final blueprint presents a collaborative visualization that all stakeholders, including the customer, can recognize, discuss and debate. Service designers play a key role in this collaborative process as they bring new insight to evaluating the service from the customers viewpoint. Through service blueprinting they can introduce their insights for an improved customer experience using a clear and accessible format. Many factors contribute to why a customer chooses to employ a certain service. Service providers need to probe a little beyond the technically keen operational side of the service and consider what is happening from the customers perspective. How can both backstage and onstage operations be better linked to produce a more attractive and memorable service experience? Service blueprinting provides tools and techniques both for focusing on the individual dimensions of the customerprovider relationship and for supporting an integrated view of all aspects of the relationship. Services are hard to describe, represent, or communicate particularly from the customers view. With a service, each transaction is unique. Service interactions may be a conversation, a reservation, a request for a new account, or information. Service designers are faced with managing a wide range of customer touch points throughout the service lifecycle. In addition, the delivery of services involves teams of customers and providers. Gaining a deeper understanding of what impacts customer satisfaction is a formidable challenge in this complex setting. Here is where service blueprinting can provide some traction to this vital task.