Learning Objective. To have students identify, describe, and assess the elements of service to understand the activities that employees and customers perform during the service delivery process.

Nature of the Activity. To have students develop a simple customer contact audit for a service they are familiar with.

Most of you have used or are familiar with financial, hospitality, entertainment, and educational services. As a result, you have participated in the service delivery process by opening a bank account, checking into a hotel, renting a video, or enrolling in this class! Providers of financial, hospitality, entertainment, and educational services need to match its delivery with customer expectations.

To do this, marketers use gap analysis, which identifies the differences between a consumer's expectations about and their experiences with a service based on specific dimensions of service quality, such as reliability, tangibles (equipment, etc.), responsiveness, assurance, and empathy. The customer contact audit, which is a flowchart of the points of interaction between a consumer and a service provider, can help in this analysis.

The customer contact audit graphically depicts the service delivery process and the points of customer contact, or service encounters, so that marketers and employees understand what the service is and their roles in its delivery. A customer contact audit breaks down a service into its components and depicts:

a. The logical steps or tasks in the process. These include the activities and interactions that contact and support employees, as well as customers, engage in during the delivery of the service.

b. Service encounters. The tangible aspects of the service delivery process as seen by the customer, such as reliability, empathy, courtesy, accuracy, timeliness, etc. These become the indicators of service quality from the customer's perspective.

Any deviations between customers' expectations and the service that is delivered indicate a service failure or bottleneck that can be used to improve service quality.

Deliverables for this Assignment

Using the Customer Contact Audit Handout as a guide, creat a customer contact audit for your service. The service you are evaluating is at a Fast-Food restaurant. The customer is ordering food at a local fast-food restaurant.

1. Identify the service delivery process to be audited.

2. Analyze the service delivery process from the "customer's" point of view. Answer these questions:

1. How does the "Customer" initiate the service?
2. What steps, activities, etc. do the "Customer" perform during the delivery of the service?

3. Identify the "customer contact personnel" who actually deliver the service to the customer.Answer these questions:

1. Who are the "Customer Contact Employees" that deliver the service to customers?
2. What steps, activities, etc. does each "Customer Contact Employee" perform during the delivery of the service?

4. Identify the service "support personnel" who assist the customer contact personnel in delivering the service. Answer these questions:

1. Who are the "Support Personnel" that enable the customer contact personnel to deliver the service to customers?
2. What steps and/or 'behind-the-scene activities, etc. does each of these "Support Personnel" perform during the delivery of the service?

5. Identify the service encounters and the potential contacts where service failure can occur.

6. If you have experienced a service failure for the service your team is analyzing, what could the organization do to recover from it?