Service Operations Management

Q1. Define and briefly explain the term ‘Service Design’. What are the various approaches
that organizations adopt to implement ‘Service Design’? Explain with examples for
approach from setups like Banking or a Healthcare setup (choose any one reference of your
own choice) (

Answer 1:

Introduction

Service design is the activity of planning and arranging people, infrastructure, communication
and material components of a service in order to improve its quality, and the interaction between
the service provider and its users. Service design may function as a way to inform changes to an
existing service or create a new service entirely.
The purpose of service design methodologies is to establish the most effective practices for
designing services, according to both the needs of users and the competencies and capabilities of
service providers.

Service design is an enhanced work and group of a provider to boom its quality and the
relationship among its dealer and customers, including its personnel, infrastructure,
communication, and materials. The design of services can feature as a way of informing or
creating an existing provider approximately modifications in the long run. Service design
processes purpose to expand the best strategies for services in keeping with users' needs and
consistent with service carriers' abilities and competencies. The service might be person-
facilitated and applicable to users if a hit method of carrier layout is implemented and the service
provider is sustainable and competitive. To this give up, the structure of the service employs
methodologies and gear from quite some disciplines spanning from knowledge and organization
to interface design. The thoughts and operations of carrier layout are usually graphically
represented using numerous illustration processes depending on the culture, competence, and
degree of knowledge of the humans engaged inside the provider operations.

Concept and application

There are six service design principles:

 1. Human-centred: Consider the experience of all the people affected by the
service.
2. Collaborative: Stakeholders of various backgrounds and functions should be
actively engaged in the service design process.
3. Iterative: Service design is an exploratory, adaptive, and experimental approach,
iterating toward implementation.
4. Sequential: The service should be visualized and orchestrated as a sequence of
interrelated actions.
5. Real: Needs should be researched in reality, ideas prototyped in reality, and
intangible values evidenced as physical or digital reality.
6. Holistic: Services should sustainably address the needs of all stakeholders
through the entire service and across the business.

The exercise of provider layout is to define and construct processes that provide a particular user
with treasured capability for movement. Practices of provider layout can be direct and indirect
and consist of artifacts or other factors, including interaction, surroundings, and attitudes. Many
authors, including Pierre Eggier, Richard Norman, and Nicola Morelli, have suggested that
offerings are given and used at an equal time. However, before shopping and the usage of, items
are made and “existing”. Even though a clothier can prescribe a proper product setup, the result
of the person-service interaction cannot be similarly defined by using a dressmaker or the form
and capabilities. Any emotional cost created by the service can be prescribed. Therefore,
provider design is a pastime that recommends for the actors attractive within the provider,
amongst different matters, conduct styles or "Scripts." expertise in the interweaving and
supporting of these styles is a vital part of the design character and service. Multiplied flexibility
of usage and better adaptation of the dealer to consumer needs are provided.

In aggregate with the traditional methodologies used for the layout of the product, the provider
requires ways and gadgets to govern extra elements, including time and communication among
actors within the layout phase. A summary of the service layout methods as three critical
suggestions:

• Identification using appropriate analytical techniques of the actors engaged in the

definition of the service.
• It defines possibly service scenarios, verification packages, motion, and function
sequences to describe the desires of the commercial enterprise and its conceptual and
administrative shape.

• Representation the provider using approaches that depict all service components,
including the bodily elements, interactions, logical connections, and time sequences.

• Analytical contraptions relate to anthropology, global history, ethnography, and

technological, social construction.

Suitable video ethnography and other observation techniques had been cautioned in growing this
technology to gather information on customers' behaviors. Different styles, such as cultural
samples, have been created to capture consumers entering their usage context inside the design
subject.

Conclusion

Inclusivity in healthcare and digital transformation are inseparable from each other. Healthcare
organizations can’t hope to change the patient experience and generate better outcomes for
underserved groups without transforming the way their business functions. However, it is
important to understand — when applying service design thinking — digital alone isn’t enough.
Offline and online channels must be considered at every touchpoint..

Healthcare is in need of change because of an on-going growing and ageing population.

Meanwhile increasing attention has been paid to the potential value of service design tools within
healthcare. Service design is the activity of planning and implementing change to improve a
service’s quality. To manage change, it is important to identify challenges for change in the
service that needs improving. A large number of change initiatives fail due to unfocused and
insecure management and there is a need for a new way of implementing change. Service design
is a usercentric approach by including service provider.

Hospitals would benefit from using tools from service design when managing and implementing
change. The findings show how hospitals could benefit from a broader meaning to the phrase
“patient-centred care” to involve patients when improving the experience of how care is
delivered. Furthermore, service design’s iterative approach, holistic view and usercentric
methods are argued suitable for a hospital context. Service designers need to be aware of the
extraordinary context of hospitals and its effect of the design process. It is argued that a service
design process has the ability to challenge hierarchy and silo-mentality by facilitating co-
creation.

Q 2. Discuss the Role of Service Engineers in ‘Engineering’ Service Operations. Explain the
three techniques used to evaluate service operations with reference to a setup for an
Educational Institute. (10 Marks)

Answer 2:

Introduction

Service engineers are at the rate of various tasks both inside and outdoor of the workplace,
including the design, installation, and preservation of mechanical, electrical and general
prosperity security systems. Individuals in this profession may be building groups engineers,
agency engineers, the main problem remember experts, building planners, or administrative
center coordinators. As clients and specialized companies create new costs through globally
connected assistance endeavors, management engineers are coming across new liberties to
create, prepare, and manage the aid duties and cycles of the new assist-based economic system.
Prologue to provide Engineering affords the strategy and statistics required through a help
engineer to complete this fundamental new venture. When it comes to dealing with a company,
the most important thing of the firm is the personnel. Area organization modelers and
professionals are the organization's representation. No matter that their primary duties are
restored and help, they're furthermore required for client touch and up-selling possibilities.

Discussion

Management and board operations, consisting of administration name, targeted quality

administration, from making plans activities via customer contacts. In keeping with quality
specialists, assessing “purchaser delight at an academic organization may be regarded by way of
instructors as one of the maximum hard duties of best mobility”. This is one of the many
challenges surrounding the efforts to enhance pleasure in higher academic institutes. “This paper
focuses on identifying and comparing strategies used to address the challenges of quality
improvement in higher education”. Three strategies used are:

Educational first-class development software: usually, accreditation and checking out at

universities makes a specialty of statistics assets and device harvesting at the same time as the
TQM method assists and gets rid of in all three stages - data sources, cycles, and harvesting.
“Choices for accreditation for higher schooling were changed through the advent of the learning
program development Plan”. “AQIP will probably enter into the manner and benefits of
continuous improvement in the way of life of faculties and universities to ensure and power an
excessive stage of schooling idea”. By focusing on the interdependent social issues of the cycles,
AQIP helps relationships by setting apart, understanding, and making plans to eliminate those
cycles. As AQIP became designed for high-quality training, it is predicted to be high-quality in
exercise. Thus far, many discussions approximately AQIP were unsupported.

Six Sigma: While Six Sigma's thinking has seen significant consolidation inside the enterprise,
little has been stated approximately its use in better schooling. But a few propose that this
manner can be an asset to better education. There are no examples of superior schooling
exercises for six Sigma efforts from creation. The establishment of better training can be
reluctant to try and follow the Six Sigma approach because practice regularly requires complete-
time energy to guide an excellent development group. These ‘green Belt’ or ‘dark Belt’ certified
pioneers are specialists who frequently focus on business settings in enterprise settings. Their
philosophy is restricted to a specific place of the corporation.

Similarly, higher education institutions can be less profitable for directing clients than financially
pushed partnerships. Six Sigma is a way to degree development. The Six Sigma rating calls for a
pre-made satisfactory development expert, or ‘Dim Belt,’ to guide a group that improves
collaboration.

ISO: “ISO 9001 is an international high-quality preferred maintained through the worldwide
corporation for Standardization (ISO)”. The ISO 9001 guarantees a‘cycle’ rather than an
unmarried object or control. “ISO presents a set of recommendations for dealing with nice
development that consists of 20 objects, together with consideration of purchaser wishes, non-
stop improvement, adherence to effective control necessities, and authority action”. This is one
manner for the organization to be taken into consideration as an attempt in high-quality control.
“But, the Malcolm Baldrige national best Award is a comprehensive technique”. Because ISO
9001 requirements are designed generally for collection conditions, they must be modified in
academic settings. This machine represented seven holons, combining purchaser interface, plan,
resource acquisition, resource affiliation, organization delivery, exemplary company
management, and enterprise best development. However, all of those advocated strategies make
ISO standards more applicable to the excessive-stage academic setting.

Conclusion

Operational innovation improves organizational processes that are needed for effective and
seamless interactions among teachers, administrators, and student as customers in academic
institution. Also, operational innovation can support reduction in lead time and consistent
educational service quality [12]. Thus, educational institution should promote operational
innovation to search for new opportunities for customer value creation using the blueprinting
approach. A capable designers are critical to maintaining a seamless discipline corporation
company. Regardless, being innovative is a complicated process. In a ramification of projects,
specialists have to have protracted-time faculty schooling in a vast difficulty. Similarly,
considerable schooling is an essential issue that can be required for senior-level professionals. As
a result, chasing down the maximum capacity will be inconvenient. Alternatively, having a well-
known understanding of the area may also help with both locating and regulating engineers. As
required, we have displayed all of the crucial data – from the essential duties and the function
they play in affiliation to managing all-around usefulness—the position of carrier technology in
growing a brighter global. Control efforts, as an example, mission esteem improvement, the
layout of service associations, management challenge showcasing, and frameworks for
frameworks designing to administrations. Configuration of management, incorporating
community-oriented e-management frameworks and the new help advancement measure. the
primary functional lines should be clearly developed to facilitate speedy analysis of stakeholders
in the process for the success of the organization. The line of visibility provides the process
analyzer to improve each encounter to take advantage of both the lines of external and internal
interactions.
Q3. The Hospitality sector is a good example wherein the businesses involve both
manufacturing (food preparations) as well as service operations. The sold products are
evaluated by the customers and they are also rated based on the service that the seller
provides. With reference to the industry discuss the following aspects of service operations

a. Discuss the elements that need to be planned in a Service Framework of a Hospitality

setup. (5 Marks)

b. What are the challenges faced by the Service Managers who manage these service
operations? (5 Marks)

Answer 3 a:

Significant aspects of service as a product are a basis for guiding decisions made by service
operations managers. The extent and variety of services industries in which operations managers
make decisions provides the context for decision making.
While the ordinary maintenance looks like the identical aspect, there are several significant
variances. In different words, the planned maintenance specifies how and what work is to be
performed; the scheduled protection defines who will perform the work and while. Planned
renovation gives a high-quality danger for upkeep costs to be reduced.

Planned maintenance is a method for identifying the essential materials, units, activities, and
services to treat a problem. The objective of the scheduled upkeep is to determine which work
are to be finished and how. The planned maintenance starts with a problem and determines the
necessary materials, system, and sports to deal with the hassle. Planned preservation starts
offevolved while the quantity of the work to be finished is defined. This is often done in response
to a work order; however, the work plan may also be repeated. Open records are required
anyhow. The operator or manager who identifies the problem has to provide the upkeep planner
with accurate information. These statistics include specifics on the hassle, the asset, and some
other difficulties associated with it. The scheduling degree begins while the planning step is
whole. The preservation planner can manage the scheduling or take over a distinct programmer.
Plan renovation is an excellent system. However, each depends significantly on the other to
make sure that preventative upkeep is done efficiently.
The maintenance planner describes the information of the work to be achieved after
accumulating all required information and identifying the real trouble. This covers the quantity
of the challenge, the equipment, and the necessity to replace the additives or specific substances.
Moreover, the workplace must be inspected – brief facilities, materials, and timing, affecting
how the assignment is completed. The tactics required to execute the undertaking efficaciously
also need to be exact. Gadgets like shutdown protocols get admission to wishes, and security
precautions are all crucial for completing a protection operation, and worries should be
mentioned. Once the activity is specified, precedence must accept it, and any required substances
must be obtained. The carrier planner has to perform these moves to ensure that the work is
prepared after it's been deliberate.

The making plans process comprises inspections, ordering of components, descriptions of the
method, and priority duties. The maintenance planner handles these responsibilities. The
scheduled facility maintenance software, but once in a while, takes vicinity one at a time via a
renovation scheduler. Minor problems and reasonably-priced fixes may be enforced through
drawing up a preventative renovation plan earlier than they grow to be the most critical failures
and high-priced restorations.

Answer 3 b: Top 10service management challenges in detail and how you can use the
challenges to your advantage and how you can take advantage of them to improve your
service process.

1. Scheduling Conflicts
Scheduling conflicts occur when two events hold the same slot on your service
representative calendar. If it is happening frequently, it could pose an existential threat to
your service business and so you must find a remedy immediately.

Mostly there are 3 types of scheduling conflicts, which are:

 Overlapping events: It happens when two events are scheduled in the same time
slot.
 Double-booking: This happens when two service representatives are booked for
the same event.
  Unavailable time slot: This occurs when a service rep is booked for a slot when
the person is already engaged in another event.

Frequent conflicts could result in reputation damage or increased frustration among service
reps. Such results are axiomatic that the cost of service delivery has increased.

How have you decided to deal with this service management challenge while taking
advantage of the situation to improve your process?

What if along with preventing scheduling conflicts from the service delivery process, you
are also able to track and monitor on-site activities in real-time?

In that case the ideal scheduling model could be where you (in the office) schedule a
technician on-the-fly and the technician (in the ) gets to know about his/her new schedule
instantly.

Use this challenge as an opportunity to renovate your scheduling and dispatching process.
Seek support in service scheduling apps that alert you to potential conflicts and also help
you create a set of back-up reps for the same assignment.

2. Travel Cost
Let us see how you can kill two birds at one shot—reduce the travel cost of your service
representatives and simultaneously increase their productivity.

Well, there is one quick and easy way—to get visibility and control over the route planning
process. When you know the existing and the next service location of your technician, you
can guide them to take the best route for the visit.

3. Work Order Management

Work order management challenges come in manifolds. If you are facing problems in work
order management, it means various units in your service business are at risk.

It indicates that most of the teams in your service management process are facing problems
in certain segments. The worst part is you will never really be able to find it out, unless you
bring every disparate strand of the process together.

A work order in service business has 5 key phases:

 1. Identification of the task
2. Allocation of the task
3. Completion of the task
4. Inspection of the task
5. Recording of the task

In between these phases falls a number of tasks which must be completed on-time and with
quality to complete the work order.

For instance, the scheduling manager allocates the task to a service representative, and then
the rep (with the right skills and tools) reaches the client location at the right time to fix the
issue.

As the success of the task depends on multiple factors, such as:

 Scheduling manager’s ability to select the right person for the job.
 A well-organized inventory having tools available to perform the task correctly.
 Rep’s availability for the scheduled tasks, including mode of transportation and the
best route.
 Client’s availability

4. Real-time Communication
Typically, service managers rely on phone calls and messages to communicate with their
representatives in the .

But many of them have reported that often their workers are not in the network area or the
job involves such minute detailing that it consumes a lot of time of staff in the office to keep
them informed.

Does this service management challenge resonate with you?

Usually messaging applications on personal devices does not work in maintaining real-time
communication with the team as it lacks accountability.
We often see three main provider control troubles that make contributions to this within the
benchmarking and consulting work:

• To begin with, several affiliations have problems conveying customer care benefits in
economic phrases and calculating the actual rate of inclined assistance. This creates obstacles
while attempting to fee-justify pastimes in aid development tasks and when attempting to
provide an explanation for in business terms why consumer loyalty is so important.

• Secondly, reformist importance chains and departmental plans avert and bottleneck
consumer measures in diverse connections. There's always a loss of installed consumer
preservation methods or advances for purchaser-driven price generation. This results in an
unbalanced supposition propensity closer to physical games that emphasize more extravagant
purchaser obtaining strategies than all of the extra value-powerful client care techniques.

• Third, one occasionally observes a loss of giant patron assessment and defenceless use of
purchaser evaluation as a powerful source of understanding for organization improvement and
organization leaders. Frequently, this provides the critical element of organizing the weight,
giving discrepancies in assist, and motivating extra attachments. Everything flying outwardly
hampered or growing an overreliance on much less grand execution strategies.

Within the current problematic economic ecosystem, these factors structure considerable
problems for the board and hurdles for growth for any partnership. In the end, extra than ever,
private and public quarter associations have to empower the board to broaden a purchaser-
pushed attempt that can cast off these impediments, discover and remedy the difficulties that
consumers encounter, and outmaneuver their opposition. Following are the roles of a carrier
supervisor:

• provide clients with the know-how they need to rent or accumulate a suitable gadget for
their project.

• Increase agreements for company contractors and developers which have non-stop device
leasing or purchase demands

• Shape the income personnel with excellent preparation to sell, satisfy their customers,
and sell brands.
5. Reduced Team Efficiency
if your field service representative is not meeting daily targets, although it indicates an
efficiency issue, the actual problem might lie in ineffective scheduling or routing or poor
time management.

When you have visibility into the field service process, you are able to uncover those
underlying problems that are causing inefficiency in the team.

6. Overhead Cost
All the effort you put into making your operations successful can go down the drain if you
don’t reduce your overhead costs.