Exercise on Employee Roles in Service Delivery. Your textbook describes a process called service blueprinting, a concept that I think is interesting and valuable and can be usefully applied to a library. The service blueprint is a picture or map that portrays the service from a variety of perspectives so that all the different people involved in can understand and deal with it objectively. For example, from the employee perspective there is a process, part of which is not visible to the customer and part of which is; there are the points of contact where the employee (or the system) and the customer come in contact; and there is the evidence that the customer sees and from which he/she draws inferences about the quality of service provided.
To create a blueprint, one needs to chart the customer actions, that is, the steps, choices, activities, and interactions that the customer performs in the process of purchasing, consuming, and evaluating the service. For example, for a customer to find a book to read, he/she must first decide to borrow it from the public library, then he/she must get to the library (by car, on foot or on public transport), then select a book by using the various mechanisms the library makes available (catalog, book lists, displays, recommendations, etc.), then check the book out (might entail registering for the first time), receive some indication of the date due, and leave.
Paralleling the customer actions are two areas of contact employee actions. Some are visible to the customer and can be called the Onstage Actions; other are behind the scenes to support the onstage activities are these are the Backstage Actions. Onstage are the welcoming reception (or lack thereof), possibly an interview to orient or to recommend a title, the transaction interaction at the circulation desk (wanding, stamping, etc.) Behind the scenes are all the work the library staff has done to prepare for this interaction -- training the circulation staff, making sure this customer's file is available, preparing the book for checkout (ownership stamp, call number, date due slip).
Finally there are the support processes These are the internal services, steps, and interactions that take place to support the contact employees in delivering the service. For example, the catalog update, the design and implementation of the circulation system, the acquisition, processing, and shelving of books.
Many organizations create process flow diagrams, especially of technical services department or a systems analysis in preparation for a change in work flow, but few include the customers and their views of the service process. Several examples of blueprints that do include the customer are provided in your textbook.
Some important action areas are:
- the line of interaction, that is the line between the customer and the organization and the direct interactions that take place across from it;
- the line of visibility, that is the line that separates all the service activities that are visible to the customer from those that are not visible. The visible evidence of the service is what the customer uses to judge the quality of the service;
- the line of internal
interaction that separates the contact employee activities from those
of other service support activities and people.
For this exercise, choose a service offered by a library or information agency that you are familiar with and try to create a blueprint. You may have to imagine some of the systems and services that take place backstage.
Exercise on Customer Roles in Service Delivery
The importance of customers in successful service delivery is obvious if one thinks of service performances as a form of drama. The drama metaphor suggests the reciprocal, interactive roles of employees (actors) and customers (audience) in creating the service experience. The service actors and audience are surrounded by the stage setting or the servicespace. Because the customer receiving the service participates in the delivery process, he/she can contribute to a service gap (not delivering according to service standards) by appropriate (or inappropriate) behavior.
The level of customer participation varies across services. In some cases (low level of particpation) all that is required is the customer's physical presence with the employees doing all the work (for example, in the case of a symphony concert). The products are standardized and the service is provided whether or not any customer is present. In other cases (moderate level of participation), the customer must take action or provide some kind of information in order for the service to be delivered (for example, for a tax preparer to prepare your taxes, you must first provide a lot of information and gather and organize a lot of material that you provide physically to the tax preparer). In still other cases (high level of participation) the customer cocreates the services. The active customer participation guides the customerized service (as in the provision of reference services). The service cannot be created apart from the customer's active decision and active participation.
Consider three services offered by a library or information agency of your choice and describe what you perceive to be the level of customer participation involved in each of these services. For the service that requires the highest level of customer involvement, describe the technical and interpersonal contributions the customer can make to create a satisfying service delivery situation. Can/does the library assist the customer in moderate or high level situations to make the customer contribution more effective?
Select one of these exercises. If you select the service blueprint, you can hand in a physical diagram (even a poster) unles you are very skilled in web work and want to try a web page. If you select the customer roles option, please post your response to the Customer Roles discussion forum and submit your findings via an attachment to a listserv message (for the customer role task) or a physical diagram (even a poster) for the employee role task.
August 15, 2002.