Chapter 8-16 Services Marketing Final Exam

Standardization of services in the form of ______________ is exemplified by maid services by Molly Maids as well as routinized tax services developed by H&R Block.

. Improvement in work methods and training

The last step in building a service blueprint is to:

Add evidence of service at each customer step

Which of the following is an example of a specific behavior or action that defines the performance expected by customers?

All of the above

Which of the following is NOT a demonstrated benefit of service blueprinting?

All of the above are demonstrated benefits of blueprinting.

When translating abstract customer requirements into concrete behaviors and actions, the pertinent information should be gathered and interpreted by _________ to avoid the creation of company-defined standards rather than customer-defined standards.

An objective source such as an outside research firm

Ambient conditions will have the least effect on customer behavior in which of the following servicescapes?

An open five-story parking garage

Delta Airlines was dissatisfied with customer reactions to its attempt to offer passengers their choice of cold deli sandwiches instead of the more traditional airplane meal. Its intent was to provide passengers with better food. Passengers saw the move as another way Delta was trying to skimp on service and save money. When trying to deliver service quality, Delta forgot to:

Consider customer requirements

Simone called the Puppy Heaven Kennel to reserve a kennel for her German Shepherd while she went on vacation. In terms of the service blueprint, Simone's telephone call is an example of a(n):

Customer Action

Progressive Insurance examined insurance from the customers' viewpoint and saw how difficult it was to get an auto claim processed and paid by insurance companies. Then the company crafted its service strategy around solving that problem. The company now has fleets of claim adjustors on the road every day, ready to rush to the scene of an accident in their territory and provide fast claims processing-sometimes on the spot. Progressive Insurance relies on _____ service standards.

Customer-defined

Which of the following is NOT a soft customer-defined standard?

Deliver orders on the date promised

Which of the following is NOT an example of an effective formal service goal?

Deliver products quickly

After determining that reliability was a major concern for its customers, a pest control company translated customer expectations into behaviors and actions for its monthly sprayings of homes and businesses. Having accomplished that, the pest control company needs next to:

Determine whether hard or soft standards are appropriate

Service blueprinting is grounded in all of the following disciplines EXCEPT:

Economics

Which of the following is an important consideration for innovating or developing a new service?

Employ service and design thinking and techniques.

In a Federal Express overnight delivery service blueprint, which of the following is an example of an onstage contact employee action?

Federal Express driver picks up package from customer

If the purpose of the service blueprint is to understand the customer's view of the process, the blueprint should be analyzed:

From left to right

Service companies experience difficulty in setting standards to match or exceed customer expectations because of a lack of:

Functional integration

First National Bank of Chicago tracks 650 service quality measures relating to timely, accurate and responsive service. The measures include speed of telephone answering, number of abandoned calls, turnaround time on inquiries and the speed at which the bank transfers securities. The measures used by First Bank of Chicago are _____ measurements.

Hard

One of the customer-defined standards at Delta Airlines is "the number of pieces of luggage damaged per day". "The number of pieces of luggage damaged per day" is a _____ customer-defined service standard.

Hard

Things that can be counted, timed or observed through audits are _____ customer-defined service standards.

Hard

The first step in the process of developing customer-defined standards is to:

Identify existing or desired service encounter sequence

New owners of the Atlanta Falcons wanted to increase attendance by giving customers want they wanted, such as an online site to purchase tickets, clean restrooms, more opportunities to interact with the players and family-oriented halftime shows. The first step to developing these customer-defined standards was to:

Identify the existing service encounter sequence

When a guest staying at the Marriott Marquis in New York calls room service to order dinner, which of the following is an example of a backstage contact employee action?

Marriott food service order clerk takes guest's order

During the commercialization stage, the service goes live and is introduced to the marketplace. This stage has two primary objectives. One is to build and maintain acceptance of the new service among large numbers of service delivery personnel who will be responsible for day to day service quality. The other is to:

Monitor all aspects of the service during introduction and through the complete service cycle

During which stage of the service innovation and development process does a service firm produce a description of the service that represents its specific characteristics and features?

NOT Service development and evaluation

Nike's introduction of women-only boutiques called Nike Goddess to satisfy the needs of a growing number of women athletes is an example of a(n):

One-time fix

When a local Taco Bell extended its operating hours on Friday and Saturday nights to 24-hour service to satisfy its college market, it was instituting a(n):

One-time fix

When the customers of Granite Rock expressed their desire for 24-hour availability of ground rock products from the quarry, the company responded by creating an ATM-like system and the Granite Xpress Card that allows customers to enter the quarry and select and receive ground rock products at any time of the day or night. Granite Rock addressed customer requests with a(n):

One-time fix

When creating a blueprint for a technology-delivered self service, a row labeled "onstage technology" can be added to the blueprint:

Only in addition to the onstage contact employee action row

In service blueprinting terms, _____ are those steps and activities that contact employees, like desk clerks and receptionists, perform that are visible to customers.

Onstage contact employee action

When the character playing Alice in Wonderland signed autographs and had her picture taken with guests at Disneyworld, it was an example of a(n):

Onstage contact employee action

In a service blueprint, the line of visibility separates:

Onstage contact employee actions from backstage contact employee actions

When Simone dropped off her German Shepherd at the Puppy Heaven Kennel before she went on vacation, she was pleased when she saw that the waiting room was brightly lit, it looked and smelled clean, and all of the employees were wearing neat uniforms. In service blueprinting terms, the condition of the waiting room and the employee uniforms are examples of:

Physical evidence

The final stage of the new service development process is:

Post introduction evaluation

Which of the following is NOT a technology substitution for personal contact and human effort?

Professional maid service

Which of the following measurement research methods can document customers' opinions about whether performance met the standards established?

Relationship surveys

Which of the following is NOT an example of a hard measurement?

Satisfaction with reservation process

When a company offers new services to current customers, it is using a _____ growth strategy.

Service Development

______ are the most common types of new services.

Service Improvements

It is often useful to create a service blueprint at the ___________ stage of the service innovation and development process.

Service concept development and evaluation

Elysian Events, a wedding planning company, noted how many couples had a wedding catastrophe of some kind. As a result, it abandoned wedding planning and began offering wedding insurance to protect couples from financial losses due to weather emergencies, stolen wedding rings, damaged wedding dresses, etc. Elysian Events is using a _____ growth strategy.

Service development

McDonald's offers home and office delivery service in selected markets in the U.S. and Canada. McDonald's delivery service is a _____ growth strategy.

Service development

Pret a Manger, a London-based sandwich shop, introduced restaurant-quality sandwiches with fast-food velocity. Pret a Manger's faster service is a _____ growth strategy.

Service development

Canadian Airline did market research to determine the expectations of business travelers-its target market. It learned business travelers don't view air travel as a simple product but as a inconsistently performed sequential process that includes making reservations, checking-in, waiting, boarding, in-flight time and baggage pick-up. Canadian Airline diagnosed that a problem existed with its:

Service encounter sequence

Pret a Manger, a London-based sandwich shop, introduced restaurant-quality sandwiches with fast-food velocity. This would be an example of a

Service improvement

Spatial layout and functionality increase in importance when:

Service is provided in a self-service environment

Dentists have to earn forty continuing education (C.E.) hours every two years to stay licensed. Dental Learning Systems Co. (DLSC) prepared and presented dental seminars around the U.S. to help provide dentists with the access to continuing education courses. During the 1990s, DLSC introduced a journal that could be used like a correspondence course for earning C. E. hours. A dentist gets a list of upcoming articles/lessons, registers for one that meets his or her need, studies the information provided in the journal and fills out paperwork for DLSC, which then sends notification of completion and the C.E. hour(s) earned to the accrediting bureau. The Dental Learning Systems journal is a:

Service line extension

The augmentation of an existing service line is a:

Service line extension

All aspects of the organization's physical facility are collectively referred to as the:

Servicescape

The patient examination room in a doctor's office is a:

Servicescape

Many people expect checkered tablecloths and bottles of Chianti wine at Italian restaurants and fortune cookies at Chinese restaurants. These are both examples of which composite dimension?

Signs, symbols, artifacts

Which of the following service organizations has an elaborate environment?

Six Flags over Texas

Some retailers have feared that their customers will like the convenience of Internet shopping and quit shopping at their stores. To combat this, many mall retailers have tried to create a shopping experience that is entertaining because they believe that Internet retail sites are not designed to be fun. That's why you'll see fashion shows, magic acts, local singers and children's art exhibits at malls. The malls are encouraging _____ behavior.

Social interaction

A vacuum cleaner repair shop that called recent customers to ask if the people who waited on them were friendly and courteous, if the cleaner had been clean when it was returned to them and if they had any trouble finding the new store is collecting feedback on _____ measurements.

Soft

American Airlines conducts ongoing in-flight surveys to assess passengers' perceptions of the ticket buying process, gate agents, flight attendants, food and beverage service, condition/comfort of airplanes and adherence to departure/arrival schedules. American Airline's research provides feedback on _____ measurements.

Soft

Enterprise Rent-A-Car closely ties customer service to employee success. With a tracking system called the Enterprise Service Quality Index (ESQi), the company routinely follows up with customers by phone to determine their level of satisfaction with the company. Only completely satisfied customers count toward an employee ESQi score, which is used to measure employee's potential for promotion. Enterprise uses a _____ customer-defined standard.

Soft

New management of the Falcons football team surveyed former season ticket holder to determine why they were no longer attending the games. As a result, it set "Clean and well-stocked restrooms" as one of its _____ customer-defined standards.

Soft

New owners of the Atlanta Falcons football team were concerned about declining attendance figures. As a result, Falcons staff set up kiosks at arena exits and asked attendees what would make the gameday experience more fun. The management was gathering _____ measurements.

Soft

One of the Four Seasons Hotel's customer-defined standards is "staff will speak to guests in an attentive, natural, and courteous manner. This is an example of a(n) ________ customer-defined standard.

Soft

The _____ customer-defined standards are opinion-based measures and cannot be directly observed.

Soft

When students at Fairleigh Dickinson University complete a student evaluation of faculty questionnaire at the end of a semester, one of the items they are asked to evaluate on a five-point scale is, "The instructor presented the material clearly and summarized major points". This statement evaluation is a _____ measurement.

Soft

Because appropriate hard measurements are not always intuitive or obvious, the potential for counting or tracking an irrelevant aspect of operations is high. Thus, it is often desirable to link operational performance measures with _________ to be sure they are strongly correlated.

Soft measurements

Traditional thinking has defined _____________ as "bundles of goods and services that companies offer to customers", but customers think of them as sets of customer-facing processes.

Solutions

When a customer enters John Robert's Spa, which has a reputation for extraordinary service, some of the _________ expected of employees are, "greet the client enthusiastically within 8 to 10 seconds," "confirm the client's appointment," and "offer to provide a refreshment."

Specific behaviors and actions

Canadian Airline did market research to determine the expectations of business travelers-its target market. It learned business travelers don't view air travel as a simple product any more but as a sequential process with a series of customer service interactions which to them seemed at times arbitrary. A traveler could not estimate how much time it would take to make reservations, to check-in, to board or any of the other interactions-the time spent on these activities was typically directly related to the experience and training of the airline's employees. Canadian Airline could provide better service to its target customers if it could:

Standardize its services

A land surveyor will come out to your home, survey your property and draw you a plat showing you the shape of your land and how it looks in relation to land around it. The work is routine unless the deed for the property is over one hundred years old. One of the ways a surveyor determines what land belongs to you is by using old deeds. This becomes a complicated practice when the deed says "west from live oak tree" and "northeast 30 feet from Gray family cemetery". Often these landmarks, which were there 100 years ago, are long gone and no one remembers where exactly they were. Surveyors may differ by a couple of feet in their determination of where these landmarks used to be. This is an example of the difficulty involved in:

Standardizing services

Rama thought the light blue paint on the walls of the hospital waiting area was a vast improvement over the old brown paint. The repainting of the walls of the service provider is an example of a:

Style change

One of the ways in which standardization of services occurs is through:

Substitution of technology for personal contact and human effort

After an airplane arrives at its gate and passengers disembark, it is cleaned, restocked with food and beverages and refueled by maintenance workers before the next set of passengers board and the airplane departs on its next flight. The activities performed by maintenance workers to prepare the airplane for its next flight is part of which section of the service blueprint?

Support Processes

Elysian Events, a wedding planning company, noted how many couples had a wedding catastrophe of some kind. As a result, it abandoned wedding planning and began offering wedding insurance to protect couples from financial losses due to weather emergencies, stolen wedding rings, damaged wedding dresses, etc. In terms of the service blueprint, preparation of documents to submit to the insurance underwriting company that makes it possible for Elysian Events to offer wedding insurance inexpensively is part of which section of the service blueprint?

Support processes

When Grace wanted to buy a new pair of shoes, she went to Zappos.com because she really likes the wide variety of styles they carry and the free shipping policy. The people at Zappos.com who maintain the company's website, manage the inventory, and ship the shoes are performing:

Support processes

A service blueprint depicts:

The process of service delivery

Which of the following statements about service standardization and employee empowerment is true?

The use of service standardization is compatible with employee empowerment

Enterprise Rent-A-Car closely ties customer service to employee success. With a tracking system called the Enterprise Service Quality Index (ESQi), the company routinely follows up with customers by phone to determine their level of satisfaction with their most recent Enterprise service encounter. Only completely satisfied customers count toward an employee ESQi score, which is used to measure employee's potential for promotion. Enterprise is using_________ to determine whether performance meets standards.

Trailer Calls

Which of the following research methods provides feedback on soft measures?

Trailer calls

After determining that responsiveness was a major concern of customers, American Express conducted additional research to establish the exact number of days customers defined as responsive for the various company processes (e.g., 2 days for reissuing lost cards and 15 days for deciding on an application). By conducting additional research, American Express was addressing which of the following steps in the process for developing customer-defined standards?

Translating customer expectations into behaviors and actions for each service

New owners of the Atlanta Falcons wanted to increase attendance by giving customers want they wanted. After determining that family-oriented halftime shows was an important consideration for a large portion of its target market, the Falcons researched specific ideas such as fireworks displays, a battle of the bands featuring local high school bands, drawings for prizes and musical concerts. The additional research would have been done during which step of the developing customer-defined standards?

Translating customer expectations into specific behaviors and actions

Which of the following is NOT an example of a hard customer-defined service standard?

Understand the customer's question or request

The first step in delivering high service quality is:

Understanding customer requirements

If the purpose of the service blueprint is to understand the integration of the various elements of the service process, the blueprint should be examined:

Vertically

When is a biased interpretation likely to occur during a discussion of a new restaurant?

When one party uses words like nice and different to describe the restaurant

If the purpose of the service blueprint is service redesign, the blueprint should be examined:

As a whole

If Maeve has to go on a business trip, she will not fly out of the airport in Atlanta, Georgia, because it is so large and has so many people who are in a hurry to get somewhere. Instead she chooses one of the smaller airports a couple of hours away. Maeve's reaction to the airport in Atlanta is a(n) _____ behavior.

Avoidance

Many customers will not shop at traditional retail stores the day after Thanksgiving due to the crowds. This refusal to shop is an example of how a servicescape can create _____ behavior.

Avoidance

When Jessie wanted to talk to a therapist to learn how she could improve her relationship with her mother, she went to Counseling Professionals, Inc., a counseling service that charges $1 per minute of counseling by phone. By providing counseling and advice by phone, the therapist Jessie spoke with is performing a(n):

Backstage contact employee action

In a service blueprint, the line of internal interaction separates:

Backstage contact employee actions from support processes

For a physical evidence strategy to be effective, it must:

Be linked clearly to the organization's overall goals and vision

A retail store manager instructed two new sales associates to greet customers quickly when they enter the store. On the first day the sales associates are working on the selling floor, one sales associate greets customers immediately after they enter the store, while the other associate greets customers after they have looked around for a minute or two. Which of the following risks incurred by describing services in words alone has led to the sales associates greeting customers at different time intervals?

Biased Interpretation

Once an organization that is developing a physical evidence strategy has recognized the strategic impact of physical evidence, it should next:

Blueprint the physical evidence of service

During which stage of the service innovation and development process are demand analysis, revenue projections, cost analyses and operational feasibility assessed?

Business analysis

The first step in the new service-development process is:

Business strategy development or review

Which of the following is an example of a remote service environment?

Carolina Power, an electricity provider

The supervisor of a hotel housekeeping staff instructed a new housekeeper in the 45 ways a room must be cleaned if its guest has checked out but she forgot to mention that a less thorough method was to be used if the guest was staying additional nights. The next month the supervisor wonders why the new housekeeper is using many more packets of toiletries than the other housekeepers are. Also, it is taking the housekeeper the same amount of time to clean a recently vacated room as it does to clean a room that will be housing the same people for another night. The best explanation for the misunderstanding about the service to be provided by the housekeeper is _________, a risk incurred when services are described in words alone.

Incompleteness

Based on the Framework for Understanding Physical Environment-User Relationships, a person's ___________ the servicescape is what influences his or her behavior in the service environment.

Internal response to

What is wrong with the following service goal posted in a restaurant: "Do not keep customers waiting too long to be served"?

It is not specific enough

Which of the following is an element of the servicescape for the Fred Astaire Dance Studio?

Its parquet dance floor

The Cirque du Soleil fused elements of theater with traditional circus skills to create a whole new form of entertainment. Cirque du is an example of a:

Major Innovation

The ability to connect to the Internet through a modem using the same wires that transmit cable television was an example of a _____ when it was first introduced.

Major Innovation

For quite some time, Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) has grown through providing its service outside the United States. After over two decades of expansion in China, the company is now planning to explore Africa as a new market and expects to double its number of outlets in Africa by 2014. KFC has developed a growth strategy emphasizing:

Market Development

The openings of new fast-food franchises are typically highly promoted events-especially when the franchise is new to a geographic area. Special food promotions are offered on the day of the grand opening and sometimes guest appearances. Often if a grand opening event is scheduled for the first of the month, the business will actually start serving customers who happen to notice that it is open during the week prior to the first. In this way, employees can familiarize themselves with their jobs and minor problems can be handled before they become major. This pre-opening practice is most closely related to which stage of the new service-development process?

Market testing