People - the Fifth ‘P’

1. SERVICES MARKETING Text and Cases People - the Fifth ‘P’ CHAPTER 6 by RAJENDRA NARGUNDKAR

2. People – The Key to a Service Business • Change from Manufacturing Era • New HRM for Services? • Service is a People’s Business • Direct Interaction with Customers-unlike shopfloor workers • Thus the Extra ‘P’ for People

3. The concept of “emotional labour” • Customers range from nice to nasty, and a range of emotions come into play every time the worker deals with a set of customers. • constant interaction with (and scrutiny by) customers can be very stressful • eg: Railway Booking Clerks

4. Recruiting Employees • Good attitude and a cheerful disposition are the most critical skills in service jobs • Specific job-related skills come second, as they can be imparted through training as well.

5. Customer’s Experience In a hotel, everybody except the cook directly interacts with the guests in some way or the other-this includes parking attendants, doormen, lift attendants, front office staff, maids or cleaning personnel, laundry and housekeeping staff, and room service personnel. The quality of all these people will determine the service experience for a typical customer of the hotel.

6. India’s Service Culture In India, it is not easy to know what to expect if you are a customer. Lack of standardisation is almost a norm. A few corporate service providers now provide standardised services by training their employees in basic service norms, following the practices of organised service companies from the western world. Labour being cheap is both an asset and a liability to Indian service companies

7. Specific Skills • air hostesses need physical stamina, pleasant disposition, and ability to cope with odd working hours • A TV talk show host needs to have a personality that gets the desired responses from the guest, and a radio announcer needs a pleasant voice which people like to hear. Eg: Simi Garewal, Ameen Sayani

8. Skills needed…contd. • At higher levels in a large service company, analytical and creative skills of a high order may be needed, along with people skills to resolve problems • All employees of service companies need to be capable of handling the stress involved in keeping large numbers of people (customers) happy

9. Service Orientation • Service employees need the right attitude towards service. • Service is not being “servile” • In fact, service jobs provide a lot of enriching experiences as well, and a lot of customers are very understanding, well-behaved and courteous under normal situations.

10. The Three Pillars of a Service Business Marketing H. R. Operations

11. Motivation • Giving them higher say in how they perform their job (autonomy) • Variety in the type of work-Job rotation • More responsibilities-Job enrichment • Monetary Rewards-Incentives for good performance • Recognition, or other non-monetary rewards • A clear career path with chances to go up the ladder at regular intervals • Equity or fairness in dealing with employees – according to employees’ perception

12. How FedEx Keeps Employees Motivated to Deliver Fedex, the courier and supply chain company in India does it by-- • By clearly outlining their roles • Providing Learning Opportunities to all employees • Giving them dignity • Guranteeing a fair hearing without retaliation for any concerns of employees • Creating a regular interaction among employees at different hierarchical levels Source: an article in the Business Line, Sept. 2, 2003

13. People are Your Brand Ambassadors Once you view people as brand ambassadors for your service brand, a lot of thinking falls into place, ranging from recruitment, training, motivation, to making the best use of the human resources, while keeping them happy.

14. Two Kinds of Training • People require two kinds of training- • Technical, or hard skills • Soft skills like people handling, team work, etc. • Most companies provide hard skills, without providing adequate soft skills. Indians are naturally good at picking up on analytical and technical skills most of the time, but if untrained, not good at soft skills

15. Training methods • Can range from • Structured classroom lectures, role plays, to • observation and feedback on the job. • In-house programmes for staff, with some outside programmes for managerial personnel, to improve their perspective, are an effective mix

16. Infosys • Infosys has been the Indian Benchmark for Pioneering Employee Satisfaction many years ago • One of the stated goals of its founder Mr. Narayana Murthy has been to make every employee of Infosys wealthy during his lifetime, and make him a partner in the company’s progress.

17. The BPO Sector – Challenges of Retaining Employees • The problems are two-fold. One, graduates may feel like going for a post-graduate degree, and leave to pursue it. • Second, there is boredom induced by the repetitiveness of their job • How do Companies tackle this issue?

18. EXL’s Strategy EXL, a BPO operator, has offered housing to its employees, as a preventive and curative measure to tackle attrition at its Delhi and NOIDA centres. Other measures which it already has in place include pick up and drop services, quick potential increases in salary and designation for good performers, recruitment from smaller towns (Lucknow, Chandigarh, Pune, Ahmedabad) in addition to metros.

19. Measuring Productivity Quantity and quality in the case of goods may be easy to separately measure through conformance to specifications and number of units produced. But service tends to be customised, and may involve human interactions, smiles, and other formal and informal add-ons, essential to it being delivered successfully. Also, the queries from customers can vary in range, intensity and degree of fulfillment sought, and therefore it is difficult to standardise the response time needed to serve a customer in many service situations.

20. A Ratio of ……. Loosely, one can define service productivity as a ratio of • The Quality and Quantity of Output • The Quality and Quantity of Input

21. Empowerment • Service jobs - the employee will frequently come across a variety of customers-some nice and easily satisfied, some impolite or rude, but almost always requiring something slightly different from the previous customer. It is necessary for the service employee to have a higher degree of empowerment or autonomy to decide what to do in a given situation. Common sense can be a guide. • This does not mean the company cannot do some homework on the possible customer requests it may encounter and plan its responses. This should also be done as a matter of course, and role-plays etc. can be used to train employees to handle different types of situations.

22. Empowerment..contd. Company can also do some homework on the possible customer requests it may encounter and plan its responses. But in addition, an appropriate freedom, designed to keep customers happy is needed. Its consequences would be in most cases-customers being delighted with service quality on one hand, and employees being happier, on the other. Bureaucratic employers may sap the employee’s enthusiasm to serve, bringing negative long term effects to the service company.

23. END OF THE CHAPTER