Question

Case study: Service Blues!

Jyoti had given her branded laptop for servicing to an authorized service centre to repair a damaged USB port. The laptop was to be given the next day, but when she went to take it that day, she was told that it was not ready. Jyoti had to wait for four more days before she was finally given her laptop. Because she was in a hurry while receiving the repaired laptop, she did not check the workings of the laptop at that time. On reaching home and switching on the laptop, she noticed that that LCD display had become problematic. The next day, she again went to the service centre and reported the display problem. Jyoti was aghast when she was informed that as she had signed the delivery documents, the service centre cannot take responsibility for the display problem. She was asked to fill up a fresh service requisition form to get the problem rectified and further was told that all expenses incurred in rectifying the problem had to be paid by her.

Answer the Following Questions:

(a) Do you think that After Sales Service through a third party is a cause for concern? Justify.

(b) There seems to be a breach of trust in the given caselet. How is breach of trust related to quality of service?

(c) In the context of the given caselet, formulate a Quality Service Policy to ensure customer satisfaction.

Answer 1

(a) Do you think that After Sales Service through a third party is a cause for concern? Justify.

· After Sales Service, sometimes it is also called after-sales-support, through a third party means when manufacturers outsource those services, which a customer needs after purchasing a product, to other agencies and firms. These services include maintenance, guidance, repair, online support, warranty services and effectively catering to other complaints related to the sold products and many more such services.

· Indeed for a manufacturer, after-sales-service through a third party has its own benefits like cost reduction, effective utilization of scarce resources, etc. But, in recent times due to the inherent issues of this “after-sales service through a third-party system,” it has become a cause of concern for both the manufacturers as well as for the customers. As it is evident from the given case study, these third-party service providers don’t much care about customer satisfaction. The reasons for this carelessness on the part of the third-party service providers are- non-compliance of the rules and regulations set by the manufacturers, improper training of their employees, no sense of loss, lack of modern tools and techniques to solve the problem, lack of resources, use of cheap parts, etc. Moreover, the priority of third party service providers is profit, not customer satisfaction. Hence, these days after-sales-service through a third party has become a cause for concern for the companies.

(b) There seems to be a breach of trust in the given caselet. How is the breach of trust related to the quality of service?

· Trust is very crucial in the business world. In the absence of trust, no business transaction can happen between two parties. But trust becomes even more important when it comes to the question of quality of service as trust and quality of service are very much inter-related. If a customer does not trust a service provider, he/she will never be satisfied and hence the chance of doing business with that customer in the future will become obsolete. Hence, not only service providers should make sure that in no case the trust of customers is breached, but also they should take all necessary steps through which the trust of customers can be increased on the services provided by them as it will lead to the customer satisfaction which will lead to the customer loyalty and which will lead to future business opportunities with them. In order to increase trust with customers, the service providers can do a lot of things like continuous follow-ups, improving security, under promising and over the delivery of service quality, replying to the queries of customers as soon as possible, etc. Hence, it can be said that trust and quality of service are very much inter-related and a good company should always honor the trust of customers and never breach the trust posed by customers on them.

(c) In the context of the given caselet, formulate a Quality Service Policy to ensure customer satisfaction.

The need of having a good and sound Quality Service Policy is very much evident from the given caselet. There should not only be a Quality Service Policy for a firm but this policy should also be followed in its true spirit so that the customer satisfaction can be ensured. In the context of the given caselet, we can formulate following Quality Service Policy, so that the same kind of mistakes can never be repeated by the firm. The policy may be like as follows-

i. the service provider should record all the details of product (in this case laptop) which needs to be repaired/replaced and get it signed from the customer

ii. the service provider should make sure that the product is being repaired/replaced and delivered to the customer within the promised time period otherwise a fair compensation should be given to the customer.

iii. During delivery of the product to the customer, the service provider should show to the customer that every issue which needed to be fixed have been resolved and should also ask to the customer to verify the same.

iv. The service provider should also promise to the customer that if any issue arises within a given time period, then they will resolve those issues free of cost.

v. And the most important thing for customer satisfaction is that the entire process should be transparent. At no point, the customer should feel that he/she is being cheated.

Hence, this would be the best Quality Service Policy in the context of the given caselet.