Teaching Services Marketing: Practicing What You Preach

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Teaching Services MarketingPracticing What You
Preach!

• Dwayne D. Gremler
• Bowling Green State University

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What Do We Preach?

• Customer Expectations
• Customizing Services
• Co-Production
• Service Quality
• Service Guarantees

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Customer Expectations

• Setting Expectations
• realistic service preview
• first day detailed overview of syllabus
• some students self-select out of the class
• reducing anxiety and uncertainty
• essay exam study questions provided one week in
  advance
• a subset of questions selected
• Exceeding Customer Expectations
• first day punch cookies
• course web site
• PowerPoint overheads

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Customizing Service Delivery

• Students select teams (for in-class assignments)
• Students select from a choice of assignments
• service encounter journal
• international service watch
• company complaint letter analysis
• service blueprint
• new service development
• case analysis
• Students select from among questions on the exam
• select four questions to answer from among six
• Students evaluate themselves on their class
  participation
• each student assigns his/her own class
  participation score and justifies it with a
  one-page paper

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Co-Production

• Student Presentations
• students identify business press articles and new
  services of relevance to the course
• Discussion Questions (on course web)
• students can anticipate (and prepare for) what
  will be discussed in class
• Customer Roles in Service Delivery
• Instructor as student!!!

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Co-Production Role Reversal

• Instructor as student

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Service Quality

• Reliability
• do what you promise!
• come early to class, keep your office hours,
  always be prepared, hold to dates in syllabus as
  much as possible
• Responsiveness
• provide next day turnaround on evaluation of
  assignments, exams, quizzes, etc.
• Assurance
• know what you are taking aboutbe prepared, be
  confident
• Empathy
• learn students names
• Tangibles
• pay attention to classroom, lighting/temperature,
  syllabi
• use stamps!

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Service Guarantees

• Service Guarantee a formal promise made to
  customers about the service they will receive
• (Zeithaml and Bitner 1996)
• Why provide a service guarantee in the classroom?
  
• (the ultimate way to) practice what we preach
• learning exercise
• accountability
• WOW! factor
• reach disillusioned students
• competitive advantage/differentiation
• (Gremler and McCollough 1997 McCollough and
  Gremler 1999)

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Service Guarantee   Business 327 Services
Marketing Dr. Dwayne D. Gremler,
Instructor Spring Semester, 2000   If you are
dissatisfied with the instructors performance
you are entitled to receive your money back.   --
Terms --   1. The student must be a good
customer and not abuse the product.   2. This
guarantee covers the instructor's performance.
The instructor is not responsible for occurrences
outside his control. Such events include,
but are not limited to, student illness, personal
emergencies, or financial hardship that may
require the student to withdraw from the class or
the university. Likewise, the activities of
other students are not guaranteed.   3.
This guarantee does not apply to the students
satisfaction with his/her final course grade.
  4. A student invoking the guarantee will
receive his/her earned grade and credit for the
course.   5. The guarantee may be invoked by
submitting, in person, a written request to the
instructor or to C. Randall Byers (Chair,
Department of Business). Students who wish to
remain anonymous to the instructor may do so.
Offer void after July 1, 2000
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Services Marketing Syllabi

• SERVSIG Web Site
• http//www.gremler.net/SERVSIG/Syllabi/List.htm