Service and relationship marketing Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2750 words

Service and relationship marketing - Essay Example The exterior facilities include waiting areas consist of benches, sofas and chairs and external sitting areas for customers who wants to enjoy their meal outside the restaurant. Subway has a typical green colour dominating its physical landscape which implies nature and warmth. Also, the fast food joint have established signboards for travellers and onlookers. The subway store signage is uniform as established by uniform standards. Glass branding such as on windows and door panels is not usual in Subway as the store size is generally small. The interior facilities can be described as cosy and comfortable. Internally the store is not very brightened but has sufficient lighting and consists of minimalist sitting areas. The company is also engaged in home delivery services. Customer experiences and points of customer contact occur in several places. First is when a customer enters the restaurant and is greeted by the staff members. In the seating area, customers are served with water, if requested. Since subway is a self service restaurant, most of the customer-employee interactions occur in the area where food is prepared. Helping the customer to decide on the food product, recommending choice of ingredients in cases of confused products billing and payment are other customer contact points. Line of interaction divides customer experiences and employee actions. Onstage employee actions and backstage employee actions are divided by line of visibility. ... In the seating area, customers are served with water, if requested. Since subway is a self service restaurant, most of the customer-employee interactions occur in the area where food is prepared. Helping the customer to decide on the food product, recommending choice of ingredients in cases of confused products billing and payment are other customer contact points. Line of interaction divides customer experiences and employee actions. Onstage employee actions and backstage employee actions are divided by line of visibility. The backstage employee actions in subway include housekeeping services and employees involved in keeping stocks and supply, maintenance department coordinating various operations and department for cash management. Finally the support processes include back system operating all the daily activities of the restaurant, technical department involving in market research, customer research and feedback and customer data collection, POS system involved in cashing and in flow of liquid cash etc. Figure 1 Service Blueprint of Subway (Source: Author’s Creation) Front Stage and Back Stage Functions Blueprinting is a tool for service planning. It can be used either for the development of new services or improvement of existing services. Service blueprint is also helpful in ensuring the quality of services offered by a company. The output of a service blueprint is a graphical representation of the overview of service and its related activities. It helps to visualize the development process. During each process, visible contacts are established between the firm and client. It is also possible to discover various areas of innovation and identification of failure points (Hauser, Tellis and