Customer Service Operations and Excellence - Essay Example

The ultimate measure quality of any service is the customer’s perception of the service (Heinonen 2009, 10). An organisation is taken as a social system with an economic purpose. Any strategy taken by an organisation has to ensure fit with the environment of operation, has to be distinct in creating a value chain and increasing competiveness, and has to be sustainable. The strategy has to maintain its distinctiveness and the operating environment changes; strategies basically increase customer value while at the same time reducing the cost of the service to the customer (Anderson, Healey & Locke 2005, 14).

Therefore, achieving operational excellence in process that support the customer leads to greater customer intimacy, making decisions to be taken in accordance with the needs of the customer, which leads to operational excellence in an organisation. 2.0 Service Process at BOI Bank 2.1 Service Background The service process is in BOI bank. . Customers have to queue in lines with the most populated line being the deposit /withdrawal line. There are five counters serving this queue; at any one time five people have to be served simultaneously.

Besides this, at least 25 people must be lining up at the queue waiting to be serviced with the number ranging from 10 in low business hours, to at least 40 in high business hours. Customers have to queue while standing, which becomes a challenge in long queues, though the old and the handicapped are allowed to bypass such lines to be served directly. Though the bank representative at the counters serve with due diligence and commitment, in some cases customers claim to spend unnecessary longer durations, which impacts on their businesses, while at the same time making them tired.

This may be a sign of poor management and lack of maintaining services operational excellence in ensuring customers spend the least time possible in queues. The chart below summarizes the banking process in the banking hall. 2.2 Service Blue Print A blue print is ideal in providing a common point of discussion necessary when developing new services. Baums (1990, 46) argues that blueprint analysis aims at exposing inefficient time usage, unnecessary labor, but may also be used in selection, recruiting and training.

These factors have become real challenges to businesses currently and have an impact on inefficient use of time and increased labor costs (Gemler 2011, 26). A business has to balance between having excess employees, which would be an added cost to the company, and time taken by an employee to queue and get services, which requires the two extremes to meet at the customer comfort zone. The queuing theory states the time taken by customers to arrive at a line, or