The Role of Employees Within the Organisation

Employees are as vital for delivering a brand’s message as they are for delivering the business’ product or service. Their performance and satisfaction drives external service value and customer satisfaction, and their labour is as much emotional as it is operational. At Canary Jane’s Flowers, the nature of their products mean that customer relationships are particularly personal, and so the emotional labour of running the shop is increased.

The service profit chain model (see Figure 10.1) establishes the link between internal service quality and profitability, via employee and customer satisfaction (Heskett et al. 1994), the two of which are interlinked and feed from one another. In small business, the relationship between customers and employees is particularly close, and particularly important for profitability.

These relationships require emotional labour from employees, which is the performance by of expected emotions, which can be performed through changing facial expression, termed ‘surface acting’, or changing inner feelings, termed ‘deep acting’ (Grandey 2003). Deep acting is much more convincing to customers, and as such it is more desirable. Both forms of acting form part of the ‘labour’ in ‘emotional labour’, as it is mentally strenuous to maintain such a performance.

Better even that deep acting is the display of genuine emotion that aligns with the needs of an organisation, although it is much more rare and cannot be taught (Ashforth & Humphrey 1993). This has the advantage that it is not laborious, as it doesn’t involve any acting at all.

Emotional labour also includes the management of service-related conflict, and can markedly affect perceptions of service quality. Empathy, responsiveness, assurance, and reliability are all measures of how an employee connects with customers and are important factors in crafting customer satisfaction (Lee, Lee & Yoo 2000).

The application of the service profit chain to Canary Jane’s Flowers results in a somewhat simplified model; with a single owner-operator in Rebecca Stacey, employee retention stops being a consideration. Similarly, employee satisfaction, productivity, and internal service quality are merged as almost all customer service responsibilities are on one person.

Employee and customer satisfaction are also interlinked very strongly at Canary Jane’s Flowers because both parties are particularly involved in their service encounters. Ms Stacey’s emotional involvement is enhanced by her role as both floral designer and business owner, meaning she has a greater stake in business performance and ownership over the products she designs and sells. The customer’s involvement is also increased by the nature of flowers as a product, because they are so closely linked with relationships and emotion. This involvement necessitates engagement between parties on a personal level and requires a high level of emotional labour.

Typically, in service encounters with high involvement and emotional stakes, such as Canary Jane’s Flowers, deep acting is necessary. As mentioned above though, Ms Stacey has a genuine emotional stake in the business and its transactions so isn’t as affected by the emotional labour of acting. Often service employees require systems of support to help continue their acting without burn-out (Stevenson 1994).

References:

Heskett, J, Jones, T, Loveman, G, Sasser Jr., W & Schlesinger, L 1994, 'Putting the Service-Profit Chain to Work', Harvard Business Review, vol. 72, no. 2, pp. 164-170.

Grandey, A 2003, 'When "The Show Must Go On": Surface Acting and Deep Acting As Determinants of Emotional Exhaustion and Peer-Rated Service Delivery.', Academy of Management Journal, vol. 46, no. 1, pp. 86-96.

Ashforth, B & Humphrey, R 1993, 'Emotional Labor in Service Roles: The Influence of Identity.',Academy of Management Review, vol. 18, no. 1, pp. 88-115.

Lee, H, Lee, Y & Yoo, D 2000, 'The determinants of perceived service quality and its relationship with satisfaction', Journal of Services Marketing, vol. 14, no. 3, pp. 217-231.

Stevenson, J 1994, 'Employee burnout and perceived social support', Journal of Health and Human Resources Administration, vol. 16, no. 3, pp. 350-367.

Monitoring and Researching Service Success and Failure

Monitoring and evaluating service performance is important because it allows for improvement throughout the service profit chain. Measurement and analysis allows businesses to make decisions based on data, lowering their exposure to risk and providing more predictable results (Gale 1992). Small businesses such as Canary Jane’s Flowers have less need and means to monitor performance, due to smaller sample sizes and more intimate existing knowledge of the business and customers, but such research still holds substantial value for service improvement.

It is common and natural for business operators to self-assess their performance against their past performance and objectives, but it is generally unreliable when done without structure, analysis and impartiality (Parker 2012). Canary Jane’s currently has unstructured performance measurement without formal metrics, consisting of a personal awareness of repeating customers, and reviews on external websites. The business is incidentally reviewed extremely well, with an average 4.9 star rating from 35 reviews on Facebook, Yelp, Yellow Pages, and Etsy. Reviews and ratings are currently the only impartial measurement of Canary Jane’s performance.

Measurement of returning customers is important as it is much cheaper and easier to retain customers than it is to attract new ones (Hennig-Thurau & Klee 1997). As such, customer retention rates are a very important metric to measure. Measuring retention rate is a simple calculation comparing a quantity of new customers to existing customers, but requires those two points of data. Returning and new customers can be counted simply by asking all customers if they have shopped at Canary Jane’s before, with figures stored and compared and monthly intervals to assess retention and attrition rates. A services success or failure will also be impacted by the organisations ability to manage capacity and demand.

References: 

Parker, D 2012, Service Operations Management, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham: UK, pp. 285-287.

Hennig-Thurau, T & Klee, A 1997, 'The impact of customer satisfaction and relationship quality on customer retention: A critical reassessment and model development', Psychology and Marketing, vol. 14, no. 8, pp. 737-764.

Gale, B 1992, Monitoring customer satisfaction and market-perceived quality, American Marketing Association, Chicago.

Service Quality and Service Guarantee

Service quality defines the level a customer is satisfied because it is the critical element customers use to evaluate service (Zeithaml, Bitner & Gremler 2013, p. 87). Therefore in a consumer service experience within a store, service providers must reach out to customers and listen to their desired fulfilments while also assisting their journey from enquiries, selection process, purchase process through to the possible post purchase issues. Ensuring service quality and eliminating the need for service recovery is “doing it right the first time”, this shows the business is reliable (Zeithaml, Bitner & Gremler 2013, p. 201). Canary Jane’s Flowers is a floral service combined with highly priced yet small sized gift goods, for example candles, rosedale hankies and hand creams. The higher costs of the small gift products would naturally create an implied higher service quality. “The intangibility and unpredictability of services generally cause consumers to perceive a higher risk associated with a service” (Sharma & Varghese 2013). Customers can have uncertainty and be unconfident of the service quality for particularly high priced stores, like Canary Jane’s (Sharma & Varghese 2013).

A method to reduce consumer’s uncertainty with the quality of a product is guarantees, which ensure the customer is 100% satisfied (Hart 1988). “A service guarantee is a promise by a company to compensate the customer in some way if the defined level of service delivered is not met.” (Sharma & Varghese 2013). There are several characteristics of effective guarantees that will be explained relating to Canary Jane’s Flowers and the benefits of having an effective guarantee will be illustrated. Effective guarantees should be unconditional, meaningful, easy to understand and easy to invoke (Zeithaml, Bitner & Gremler 2013, p. 202). Canary Jane’s guarantees that the flowers will last at least 4 days after buying them, this is unconditional because it “promises customer satisfaction unconditionally, without exceptions” (Hart 1988). This guarantee is meaningful because it covers the aspects of the service that is important to the customer, which is the freshness and quality of the flowers. It is also meaningful financially; a full refund or replacement is given. The guarantee is easy to understand as it is simple and pinpoints the promise (Hart 1988). A guarantee must be easy to invoke, as explained by Hart (1988) “A customer who is already dissatisfied should not have to jump through hoops to invoke a guarantee.”

“Service guarantees have been advocated as a potentially powerful weapon today in trying to differentiate between services and gain the competitive edge” (Sharma & Varghese 2013). Another benefit of service guarantees is maintaining quality (Zeithaml, Bitner & Gremler 2013, p. 204).The organisation can maintain quality as the guarantee is an indicator of what the service should provide, for instance at Canary Jane’s Flowers they guarantee same day delivery if you order before 2pm. By having this benchmark an employee knows the minimum needs that need to be met for the customer, which in this case is getting the flowers delivered to the customer on the same day. Canary Jane’s Flowers uses Murphy Alan Johns for the delivery of their orders and if for any reason there is a disruption with the process, then the staff will assist with the delivery to ensure that the guarantee is met. Small to medium enterprises often bestow less service guarantees due to less workers to help achieve promises, avoiding over promising is considered safe in the employer's eyes. The low number of apparent written and verbal guarantees from Canary Jane’s will ultimately impact the “willingness of the customer to make frequent visits” (Sharma & Varghese 2013). Ensuring the guarantees are used effectively, they will benefit the business. Canary Jane’s will increase loyal customers through the use of guarantees, which equates to profitability in the long run. Guarantees are irrelevant if the organisation does not monitor whether they are successfully delivering a quality service.

References: 

Zeithaml, V, Bitner, M & Gremler, D 2013, Services marketing, McGraw-Hill Irwin, New York.

Sharma, K & Varghese, M 2013, 'Influence of Service Guarantee on Consumer Behavior in organized retail stores', Romanian Journal of Marketing, vol. 1, pp. 10-17.

Hart, C 1988, 'The Power of Unconditional Service Guarantees', Harvard Business Review, vol. 66, no. 4, pp. 54-63.

Servicescape Strategy

Physical surrounding, also called servicescape coined by Bitner (1992) are fashioned by service organizations to facilitate the provision of service offerings to customers. According to Biggers and Pryor (1982), the elements of physical evidence help to influence perceived performance in the service encounter and also affect the perception of an experience independently of the actual outcome. The physical evidence elements are categorised into four distinct areas: package, facilitator, socialiser, and differentiator. Bitner (1992) defines it as all of the objective physical factors that can be controlled by the firm to enhance (or constrain) employee and customer actions. The first of the four areas is ‘Package’, which conveys the expectations and can also influence consumer perceptions. In regards to Canary Jane’s Flowers, the beautiful interior along with the pretty arrangements of flowers scattered around the shop make for a very appealing flower shop. The scent from the flowers, the subtle music heard in the background and the art deco beautifications all add to the overall package of the servicescape. This is very important for new customers as they need to be persuaded to come back again and again to the store.  

Facilitating the flow of the delivery service is not an easy task. The shop keeper or clerk needs to be able to provide information, carry out the ordering process and also facilitate the delivery service adequately in order to achieve a good servicescape outcome. After visiting Canary Jane’s Flowers in Hawthorn, I was immediately amazed at the vibrancy of colour and the overall presentation of the shop. At a first glance the shop is flustered with different assortments of flowers that range from small garden flowers to a bouquet (See Appendix 5.2). There is also a lot of knick-knacks displayed around the store symbolising the type of quirky style that the shop inhibits. (Aubert-Gamet 1997; Baker 1987). Baker (1987) considers servicescape as “not only a material stimulus but also a social construct containing humans who play a significant role in influencing behaviour”. At Canary Jane’s Flowers the customer and employee relationship is very friendly, together with nice gestures and a friendly greeting the overall experience was very pleasing. The customer service exceeded average expectations, even with many customers at once the store clerk was able to deliver excellent service and kindly told some customers they would be with them in a minute when it was necessary. “It is further postulated that the performance of these social factors within the servicescape can serve to either enhance or inhibit the service experience, thereby leading to the display of either approach or avoidance behaviour by customers” (Aubert-Gamet 1997; Bitner 1992).

The shop face uses a window display to entice customers to look into the store. In the window there is sometimes promotional banners associated with special days of the year such as mother’s day or Valentine’s Day. “In Babin and Attaway’s (2000, p.93) estimation, the servicescape “evokes emotions, which help to determine value, and this value motivates customers to patronize a given choice repeatedly”. The shop face itself is simple, the design is friendly with a natural colour yellow painted over the brick veneer. ‘’According to Bitner (1992), [these] controllable physical factors such as signage, furnishing, layout, colour, cleanliness, scent, music etc. can be systematically manipulated to produce desired effects in the form of a favourable disposition towards the servicescape – and by extension, the providing organization’’ (Arnould, Price & Tierney 1998). Many of these physical factors are present at Canary Jane's Flower shop, flowers themselves give off a vibrant colour array that entices consumers as well as the scent of the flowers which smells inviting. Together with other factors like colour and cleanliness the shop has the desired expectations of consumers and also influences the perceptions of customers with its package physical elements clearly evident at the flower shop. The shop window at the front of the store displays the logo on the glass and there’s a bunch of flowers lining the bottom of the window. Inside there’s a whole display of cups and other products for sale which can easily catch the eye of a passing consumer. The overall style of the shop is art deco (1950s) posters hang in one corner of the store and the floor is a black and white tile pattern. Once inside the store it is easy to tell that is no ordinary florist, every inch of the store is taken up with products that create this sense of organised chaos. As well as the flowers odour filling the small store space there are also hand creams and scented candles that fill up the room with a love aroma of jasmine, rosemary and other flowery type scents.

“Whilst accepting the importance of servicescape variables, Kotler (1973) contends that there is no ideal servicescape composition for all industries. He argues that since each market is made up of customers with varying tastes, servicescape composition should be based on (a) the target audience, (b) what that target audience is seeking from the buying experience, (c) the servicescape variables that can fortify emotional reactions sought by the buyers and (d) the ability of the servicescape to compete with the servicescape of competitors” (Kotler, 1973). Largely the servicescape of Canary Jane’s Flowers is quite simple is design and style, using the 50s art-deco theme reveals a different experience than customers are used to. The retro style that the store so beautifully represents is like stepping into a time machine and the experience is unlike what you could expect in ordinary florist shops. The experience transitions your typical perception of a florist from entrance to pre-purchase to exit and post-purchase, you come away feeling satisfied, and therefore all the elements of servicescape have an impact on the services quality.

References:

Bitner, M 1992, 'Servicescapes: The Impact of Physical Surroundings on Customers and Employees',Journal of Marketing, vol. 56, no. 2, pp. 57-71.

Baker, J 1987, 'The Role of the Environment in Marketing Services: The Consumer Perspective', in J Czepial, C Congram & J Shanahan (ed.), The Services Challenge, 1st ed, American Marketing Association, Chicago, pp. 79-84.

Aubert‐Gamet, V 1997, 'Twisting servicescapes: diversion of the physical environment in a re‐appropriation process', Int J of Service Industry Mgmt, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 26-41.

Babin, B & Attaway, J 2000, 'Atmospheric Affect as a Tool for Creating Value and Gaining Share of Customer', Journal of Business Research, vol. 49, no. 2, pp. 91-99.

Arnould, E, Price, L & Tierney, P 1998, 'Communicative Staging of the Wilderness Servicescape', The Service Industries Journal, vol. 18, no. 3, pp. 90-115.

Kotler, P 1973, 'Atmospherics as a marketing tool', Journal of Retailing, vol. 49, no. 4, pp. 48-64.