Evaluate a Service Product
The purpose of this assignment is to select a service product that your current organization produces, evaluate how it is accomplished, identify key service requirements, discuss the challenges faced in managing its production, and suggest possible methods for measuring the productivity of the service process.
1. Select a service product that your current organization produces. The product can be either one that is delivered to the customer (e.g. a checking account, a complaint resolution, a repair), or one that is used internally in your organization (e.g. a standard practice, a product design, a delivery routing).
2. Identify the key customer requirements for this service product. Discuss the relative importance of those requirements.
3. Depict how that service product is produced using either a simple flow chart, or a service blueprint.
4. Pick the 3 most important challenges in managing this product "Managing Services is Challenging". Discuss how those 3 challenges affect the product/process, and how you might try to overcome those challenges.
These are the challenges
- Jobs in services are often less structured than in manufacturing
- Customer contact is generally much higher in services compared to manufacturing.
- In many services, worker skill levels are low compared to those of manufacturing employees.
- Services are adding many new workers in low-skill, entry-level positions
- Employee turnover is high in services, especially in low-skill jobs.
- Input variability tends to be higher in many service environments than in manufacturing.
- Service performance can be adversely affected by many factors outside of the manager's control (e.g., employee and customer attitudes)
5. Recommend at least one alternative for measuring the productivity for this product. If several, recommend an alternative. Discuss the challenges of instituting this measurement in your organization.