Domino’s Pizza Incorporation which is now called as Domino’s is an American Pizza Restaurant which was founded in the year 1960. Domino’s has over 13, 8111 locations Worldwide and in February 2018 the Pizza chain became the largest Pizza seller worldwide. Pizza hut was the largest Pizza chain or the seller before Domino’s marked its presence, it was the dedication, commitment, vision of the organization which took the organization to envisioned heights. Domino’s branding which says “30 minutes or free” was the commitment of the services of the company towards its success. Domino’s won the competition owing to its customer centric policy, strong service culture and focussed approach to provide the best service in the fastest time possible.
Service marketing is an important concept and a concept which differs hugely from product due to the inseparability, heterogeneity, intangibility and perishability elements. Thus, it becomes difficult to estimate the satisfaction related to the delivery of services akin to that of product. The essay here is a piece of reflection which will discuss about the flow chart or the service blueprint of Domino’s for both its front stage and back stage operations. Towards the end, the essay will also provide for the managerial implication related to service encounter with a service organization.
A service blueprint in theory can be seen as a tool which is used for operational planning and provides guidance on how a service should be ideally provided. A detailed service blueprint or flow chart contains information on the front end, back end, support activities and even the tangibility’s in the service offering. A flow chart is primarily important to systematically follow the plan and deliver exceptional services to the customers. A Service blueprint finds significance in all the service organization which may be B2B or B2C. Dominos has a detailed blueprint providing clarity of its front end and backend services, which ultimately help the service organization to deliver high customer satisfaction every single time, doing away with the problem of heterogeneity in the service delivery.
(Source: Jia & Li, 2018)
The chart above shows the flow chart of Dominos on service ordering. This is the front end operation flow chart of Domino’s, and it can be clearly seen that it encompasses heads like Physical evidence, customer action and the front stage customer action. As seen in the flow chart, Domino’s provides tangibility to its service by its logo, menu cards, discount coupons, uniform, seating arrangement, aroma and warmth of the store. This physical evidence adds the component of tangibility to its service offering. Domino’s in its flow chart encompasses the three element of service marketing which are the people, process and physical evidence. Reflection of the process can be drawn from this neat flow chart; people are the ones in uniform taking orders and helping out the customers and so on.
The front end operation can be summarized as the customer enters the restaurant; he/she is greeted by the attendant at the counter. The customer then places the order, attendant verifies the order and customer information and the information goes to the back end or to the support functions. The attendant provides the bill to the customer and takes the payment, and within the prescribed SLA provides customer with delicious hot Pizza. Thus, the front end operation of Domino’s is guided by customer meet and greet, taking orders, processing the order by sending it to the back end team or the support function and in the end takes the payment from the customer and gives him delicious hot Pizza in a box. Thus, it can be implied that front end operations of Domino’s are a reflection of its excellent customer service which it provides through its trained service professional and make the customers feel warm in the restaurant. A number of training hours goes behind carving the excellent customer service staff at Domino’s.
The Back end operations of Domino’s help the front end function and act as an intermediary between the front end operations and the support actions. For instance, the back end operation shows that the details of the customer and his order are stored in the computer system and the order is placed for the Pizza. The information from there then goes to the support functions which takes the order, prepares the Pizza, packs it and places at the counter for the attendant. At Domino’s the Back end operation is a system which encompasses all the information related to the order and customer information, which is then pushed to the support function to prepare the Pizza and place it across at the counter. Thus, it can be said that backend operation ably supports the front end operation and ensures a good customer satisfaction in the overall customer service delivery.
Thus, it can be said that a detailed Flow chart helps Domino’s to create a good service culture, at the same time ensure a good customer satisfaction index. At the same time, the employees know about their individual roles due to this flow chart, which helps them to effectively carry out their jobs.
Before understanding the relevance and the importance of service encounter, it is of prime importance to understand the meaning of service encounter and why it is so important for service organization. Service encounter in the simplest of ways can be understood as transactional interaction in which one person provides a good or service to another person/customer. From the Point of view of customer, service encounter is the most vivid impression of the service they receive. This is also called as the moment of truth and is known as the moment when the customer interacts with the service firm. This is also known to provide foundation to “Satisfaction of Service Quality” and it is the moment when the promises by the service organization are kept or broken. Thus, service encounter is when the perception of the customer is put into real life experience in relation to the brand. All the promises which the brand makes are reflected in the service encounter (Lariviere et. al., 2017). I have faced three types of service encounter with Domino’s and I would say that I am impressed with how the brand carries out its service delivery while managing the customer satisfaction every time.
The first type of encounter I faced with Domino’s was while place an online order. I wanted to order for friends get together at my place and everybody was in favour of Domino’s. I logged onto their customer friendly app, and to my surprise the app was extremely customer friendly, with easy navigation tabs, and plethora of information to browse before making the actual purchase. Within 12 minutes I was able to order for Pizza, sides and other thing and I was provided with a tab that Delivery in 30 minutes or Pizza will be free. This claim by Domino’s gave me a confidence in their delivery services, and to my surprise the pizza reached to me in only 25 minutes. The delivery guy was in uniform, he greeted me nicely and even wished be Bon Appetite. In my head, I would rank Domino’s 10/10 as there was not even one glitch in their service delivery. It made me a big supporter of Domino’s and ever since I have spread a good word about the brand. Thus, it shows that a positive service encounter leads to customer satisfaction and creates positive advocacy and vice versa in case o negative service encounter.
The second encounter I had with Dominos was over phone to their customer support systems. I called the customer support team due to some billing issue, and I was of the opinion that it is better to get hold of a human, rather than chatting to some bots. On calling Domino’s I found a very relaxing, soothing and helping office and the person greeted me with my initials and patiently listened to my query without even uttering a single word. Once I was finished with my problem, the agent assured me that he will make sure that he provides a First call resolution to me. I was super pleased to hear this, after some 5-6 minutes of taking time, taking all details, getting in touch with the refund team, the customer agent was able to help me with my query. I was so happy that I even wrote a mail to the Domino’s team and made sure that they appreciate the guy who spoke with me over phone. I would again rate the experience with Domino’s to be pleasant and satisfactory.
I had a very neutral perception about Domino’s and I was of the opinion that the 30 minute delivery promise is just a marketing gimmick to get more and more customer on board with the company. But on realizing that the company strictly follows a systematic operation process at their back end and front end, and they take their promises seriously, I was literally amazed by their dedicated towards their service culture. This implies that Service encounter can easily make or break a service organization.
Managers in a service organization have a major role to play, akin to the managers working in a product company. Due to the four elements of differences between the services and the products, the role of the managers becomes quite critical in the service encounter. The services cannot be stored, they are perishable, and thus customer has to wait in order to receive service. Implication for manager here is that he provides customer with an engaging environment which keeps him busy while his product is being prepared. It is the look out of the manager to ensure the customer is engaged and enjoying the environment of the restaurant, else there are chances that customer might not wait and leave.
Input from customers after experiencing the service is of prime importance as well, as it is the customers who can provide a true reflection of the brand service practices or rate it accordingly. The manager has to ensure here that they effectively collect the feedback from the employees, either by survey, questionnaire, one to one interviews or other technique and analyse the same data to improve the working in the store. Thus, the implication for the manager here is to identify the gaps in their current service practices and come up with a plan to improve customer satisfaction.
Service are intangible in nature, thus the manager has to add tangibility by its store layout, uniforms, logo, aroma of the store and other tangible points. It is the duty of the manager to make sure that customer without even experiencing service is engaged with the brand. Secondly, services have a problem of heterogeneity, because it is the people who provide services, thus services might differ. TO a certain extent this can be standardized, and this happens by virtue of providing quality training to the workforce at the store. Hence, it can be said that the role of manager is to add the points of tangibility, do away with the problem of perishability, inseparability and heterogeneity from the store. It is after all this, Domino’s is able to provide an encapsulating customer experience to its esteemed customers.
Conclusion
Services are different from products, primarily because of their characteristics of Perishability, heterogeneity, intangibility and inseparability. It is due to these striking difference services are oddly different than products and require a separate branch of study. A customer when interacts with the brand or a service organization is called as the service encounter or the moment of truth. It can also be seen as the make or break part of the organization with the customer. If the brand is able to deliver the expected level of services as perceived the customer turns into a loyal customer and spread a positive word of mouth about the service organization. The implication for the managers is to identify the gaps in the current practices and infuse the elements of tangibility to engage the customers while waiting for the services to be delivered.
References
Larivière, B., Bowen, D., Andreassen, T.W., Kunz, W., Sirianni, N.J., Voss, C., Wünderlich, N.V. and De Keyser, A., 2017. “Service Encounter 2.0”: An investigation into the roles of technology, employees and customers. Journal of Business Research, 79, pp.238-246.
Jia, S.S. and Li, F., 2018. Customer value co-creation in KIBS firms’ new service development: Patterns and antecedents. International Journal of Business and Social Research, 8(1), pp.19-28.
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