Domino’s Back-Stage And Front-Stage Operations: Significance Of Service Encounter And Managerial Implications

Choose a real-life service organisation that you are familiar with (See attachment).

Prepare a flowchart of the back-stage as well as the front-stage operations of this business.

Using this flowchart, explain the significance of the service encounter, and its managerial implications.

1. Flowchart

Backstage

Front stage

2. Explanation of significance of the service encounter

3. Analysis of managerial implications

4. Essay format & presentation

Brief Introduction

Domino’s is a multinational pizza corporation which is one of the largest American Pizza Restaurants founded in 1960 and with more than 13,000 restaurants across the globe, organization has become the largest pizza seller in the worldwide locations. When Domino’s entered into the Pizza industry, Pizza Hut was the big player but with the unique style of leadership and managerial skills, Domino’s has marked its unique presence and acquired the leading position in the target market. The major reason behind their success is their mission statement for delivering pizzas to their customers within 30 minutes with regards to the attainment of desired goals and objectives. Apart from this, organizational customer centric policies are other critical success factors of the organization.

Service marketing is one of the effective elements for an organization and it has a huge role in the organizational success and growth. The major elements of service marketing are honesty, quality of service, and the nature of the service which is being rendered to the customers. With regards to these elements, organization could move towards the customer satisfaction and in this essay, Domino’s front stage as well as back stage operations will be discussed in the form of reflection. In addition to this, the last part of the essay will discuss managerial implications in terms of service encounter in a service organization (Ye and Grant, 2017).   

Blue print is a theory of service which also acts as a tool which is used for providing guidance to the organization for directing a way for rendering the services. This tool also helps the organization in operational planning for rendering the services in the target market. Service blueprint also contains the information in relation with the front stage, back stage, nature of service, tangibility of service and on the support activities which plays vital role in rendering service. Flow chart is a detailed plan which helps in rendering services to its target audience and potential customers in an effective manner. Service blueprint is essential for both B2B as well as B2C types of businesses. Domino’s service blueprint consist of all front stage and back stage operations which plays major role in satisfying customers’ needs along with making a significant image in the service industry.

The above chart shows the flow of Domino’s flow of services in relation with their ordering. This chart describes the front end operations of Domino’s and it could be evaluated that front stage customer action, physical evidence and customers’ actions are the major components. Their services could also be evaluated with supporting elements such as infrastructure provided by the Domino’s in their stores, organizational logo, discount coupons and various other services like informing the customers regarding the updates of their orders. Apart from this, front stage flowchart also describes that there are mainly three elements of Domino’s service marketing i.e. people, physical evidence and process (Sotolongo and Copulsky,  2018).

Flow Chart Concept

In terms of front stage operations, customers are the major components and as they enters the restaurant, customers are required to approach to the counter and there a representative helps the customer to place their order as per their requirements. After placing the order, back stage operations and other supporting activities gets activated. While placing the order, attendant verifies the customer’s contact number so that in future, they could get information regarding offers and discount schemes running in the restaurant. Following to this procedure, bill is provided to the customer along with asking them to wait for a reasonable time period so that they could be served with their ordered items. Thus, the whole front stage operations of Domino’s includes entrance of customers in the restaurant, meeting with representative, placing order and sending the notification to the back stage operations along with activating supporting activities to provide appropriate payment options. Along with this, customers are also provided with an option that they want to take away the order or they want to have it in the store only (Chen, Huang, Chen and Ku,  2015). The last operation in this process includes serving delicious hot pizza. Hence, it could be said that front stage operations plays vital role in satisfying the customers’ needs which results in customer satisfaction and with regards to this, organization provides appropriate and relevant training sessions to its employees to deal with the customers in a polite manner for providing them every information regarding their query along with serving them with their requirements (Selvakumar,  2014).

Back end operations are intermediate layer between support actions and front end operations; it acts as a baseline for execution of front end operations. Back end operations store complete details regarding the order that is placed like it covers the detail of customers and detail regarding the order that is placed. The data that is stored ta back end is then transferred to the support function so that appropriate actions could be taken like preparing the meal, packing it and placing it at the front end store so that it could be delivered to the customers. To be more presided, considering the case of Domino’s the backend operations covers all the details regarding the customer and the order. This information is future transferred to the support action team which executions the command and delivered it to the customer. The main motive of back end operations is to satisfy the demand of customers and completing all the front end operations (Seethanaik, 2015). The flow chart helps in understanding the flow process so that good services are delivered in a short span of time. The flow chart is beneficial as it allow every individual to know their job roles so that they can effectively execute them.

Service encounter plays an important role in every organisation as it helps in understanding the transactional interactions between different individuals.  Service encounter has different meaning from the point of view of customers. For customers, service encounter is a way through which they respond to the quality of service they have received. It is a way through which customers can interact with the service firm and tell the truth about the service. Service encounter supports the organisation to find out the level of satisfaction customers have received in the services (Robertson, 2017). It also helps in finding that organisation have met their promises they have made with the clients or not. Service encounter is very beneficial for the firms as it helps in knowing the point of view of customers so that they can make improvement according to it. In case of Dominos, it makes use of three types of service encounter so that brand name is managed along with customer satisfaction. The three service encounter used by Dominos that was found while placing online orders. Once, there was an occasion at my place and we mutually decided to order pizzas from Dominos. While ordering I felt it is extremely use friendly application. It offered the ease while switching between the tabs and making estimates before placing order. I finalised my order within few minutes while order was placed it was found that it will be delivered in next 30 minutes otherwise it would be free. They service boosted my confidence of getting the order on time and it was delivered within 20 minutes. The delivery boy greeted me and he was in an appropriate uniform, this led me to give five star rating to its service. Thus, from that date I have created a good brand of Dominos and have always promoted others to use its service. Additionally, it can be stated that it helps in knowing positive advocacy or the negative encounters that are faced by the customers (Perez-Rivera, 2015).

Back End operations

The second service encounter that was faced by me was the promise of delivering the order in 30 minutes. It helped them to get more customers by building the trust and good relations with the customers. The reason behind this success was working on a systematic process by linking back ad front end operations. The dedication and the service culture of dominos promoted me towards it. Thus, it can be said that service encounter plays an important role as it can easily make or break a service organization (Olszewski, 2015).

The other service encounter was while interacting with the customer support team. I faced an issue while making my payments I directly connected with the support team of Dominos. I preferred of talking to someone rather than getting engaged in a chat process. When the call got connected, staff greeted me with a promise that they will help me in resolving my issue. They patiently listened to my concern and guided me what need to be done next in a relaxing and comforting way. They ended up a call with the surety that my concern related to payment option will be resolved soon. They called me within 10 minutes and told me that my issue is resolved and I can precede future. They apologised for the inconvenience and provided me an additional discount offer. On my behalf, I appreciated the customer support team by giving them a positive feedback. It was a positive and pleasant experience with Dominos (Alexander and Jaakkola,  2016).                             

Managers and leaders have a big and pivotal role in every industry and with regards to the service industry; it is required for the managers to understand the capabilities of the organization in relevance to the requirements of target audience. There is a slight difference in product and service and in terms of service encounter, managers have significant role. Services are rendered on instant basis and these cannot be packed to avail it on later basis which is one of the major differences between service and a product. After getting requirement from customers, service needs to be rendered at that moment of time and till the time, customers gets their required services, it is required for the managers to engage them with the environment along with providing relevant services such as Wi-Fi to make them busy while their services or products will be prepared. With regards to these services, managers will be able to retain the customers and the fast service will customer get at the restraint, the more his or her requirements will be fulfilled (Mohideen and Suresh,  2016).

Getting feedbacks from the existing customers after availing the services is an effective element for the organization as it provides true reflection for the reputation of the brand as well as for the brand services. In relation to this, manager needs to ensure that every customer is giving their feedback and the method which could be used for collecting the service could be surveys, employees, short interviews, questionnaire, etc. through which relevant details could be gathered through which gaps could be identified which are affecting customers’ satisfaction. In terms of delivering services in an effective manner, it is required for the managers to concentrate over factors such as employees’ uniform, cleanliness in the store, and hygiene conditions in the store along with motivating the employees to serve the customers in polite manner (Mathews and Lee, 2018). This is helpful in enhancing customer satisfaction, customer engagement along with building an effective brand image amongst the customers. Quality is the crucial factor for service organizations which should be maintained. This is the only element which satisfies the customers’ needs and it also helps the organization to make their products and services effective enough to set up an effective and unique image amongst the target audience. Thus, it could be said that manager’s role in enhancing customer satisfaction and building brand identity is huge which also helps in attaining competitive advantage (Constantinides,  2014).

Conclusion

From the aforesaid information, it could be concluded that services are equivalent to the products and both are consumed by a customer in their daily routine. Primary characteristics of services are perishability, intangibility and inseparability and these differs services from the products. When a customer interacts with representative of the customer is known as the survive encounter. With regards to this, organization needs to deliver appropriate services and products to their customers for enhancing their satisfaction level and if the company successfully reaches to the level of customer’s requirements; an effective and positive brand image gets developed amongst them. For retaining the customers along with converting them into loyal customers for the brand, consistency needs to be maintained in terms of quality of services, promoting the products and services as well as by identifying the gaps in the organizational services and customer’s requirements.

References

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