Course description
What a business does after the customer enters the hotel. How you co-create value with customers via people (staff), the physical environment and process (service flow) - or the the 3P's of Service Marketing.
Why do so many companies fail even though their marketing plans appear sound? Do you know how to co-create values with your customers and make them your frequent guests? How to ensure every interaction between customers and employees goes well?
This course gives you a toolbox for attaining customer satisfaction and optimising company success.
Course learning outcomes
How marketing in service-producing organizations differs from marketing in manufacturing organizations; marketing strategies and tactics for addressing the differences between goods and services;
• service marketing research techniques to help you collect information to guide your marketing decisions;
• tools for developing innovative services and improve existing services;
• strategies for satisfying your customers and creating customer loyalty;
• how to use customer service to create, maintain, and improve customer relationships and to design techniques for designing new services and improving existing services
• how to “recover” from a service failure;
• how to use hard and soft customer metrics in evaluating service performance;
• how to create a “Service Plan.”
Course content
Session 1
- Introductions
- After the marketing plan: Moving from value proposition to value co-creation
- Creating value with the service-marketing mix: The service marketer’s toolbox
- Is 100% customer satisfaction possible?
- A reality check: employee satisfaction before customer satisfaction
Session 2
- What is Service Marketing?
- Understanding key challenges regarding product and service differences
- Service as Theatre: “Work is Theatre and Every Business in a Stage”
- Moment-Planning with customer clues
Session 3
- On the path to creating customer satisfaction
- Understanding how/why customers form service expectations
- Responding to customer expectations via the zone of tolerance
Session 4
- On the path to value co-creation
- How customers perceive service quality
- Using the SERVQUAL scale in practice, as well as other survey techniques
- Connecting SERVQUAL to clue management (functional, mechanic, social, brand, and restorative clues)
Session 5
- When the service firm is the “target”
- The 3C’s of service marketing
- Understanding the importance of community, customer care, and conversations
- Homework: Group Project on moments-of-truth and clue management
Session 6
- Reviewing the Servicescape/Atmospherics
- How employees and customers are affected by physical stimuli
Session 7
- Creating a customer-driven firm
- Understand how to create hard and soft service standards
- Is it micro-management?
Session 8
- Planning for service failure and recovery at the moment
- Planning front-line communication with formal and informal scripts
- Understanding how office supplies, technology, and equipment are related to service quality
- Services in the 21st century: A discussion of service sustainability
Session 9
- Creating the 8-step service blueprint
- Practice creating the blueprint
Session 10
- On the path to creating customer satisfaction
- Understanding how/why customers form service expectations
- Responding to customer expectations via the zone of tolerance
Session 11
- The hidden truth: The secret of customer loyalty
- Understanding how to move customers up the “relationship ladder”
- Using customer segmentation and customer comfort to build relationships
Course Assessment
Final Service Plan and Service Blueprint
Student Learning Activity
Continuous hands-on activities. The course will be taught with interactive lectures that require student participation. It is an Active Learning Course.
Certification
Upon successful completion of this course, you will receive a certificate of completion from American Hotel Academy and Manhattan Institute of Management.