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Female consumers often experience marketplace discrimination in service encounters. Researchers have examined women's differential treatment in many settings, but they have yet to study how women are treated during service-recovery encounters. We found evidence that male providers discriminated against female consumers during the service-recovery process in three experiments. Specifically, male providers offered less compensation to female consumers who complained after a failure than to male consumers who experienced the same failure. Further, we found that perceptions of consumer social power may explain this effect. We offer suggestions for how firms can identify internal marketplace gender discrimination, as well as how they can prevent and treat this significant problem. We also suggest that managers create anticipatory protocols and scripts and engage employees in both bias and interpersonal accuracy training.

This supplement to Facelift at Olay (A) explains the major steps Procter & Gamble's skincare brand Olay took to reverse several years of declining sales.

In early 2019, Alan Jay, an executive in the Quality, Safety and Risk Management (QSRM) department of Gloria Hospital, a full-service hospital that specialised in children and women healthcare, had been requested to gather insights and seek improvements to the pre-consultation waits at the hospital's Children's Emergency (CE) department. After an initial study, minor schedule adjustments were put into place, with many shifts starting one hour in advance to reduce snowballing of patients awaiting consultation. However, post-implementation data suggested that the patient load to capacity ratios remained uneven across each day of the week. Subsequently, a team of operations professors and students were assembled to join Jay in a second phase of the Children's Emergency Consultation Queue (CECQ) project, started April 2019, to better understand the actual waiting time of patients at the CE.

By October 2017, Procter & Gamble's skincare brand Olay has been struggling with declining sales for several years. The team has tried many remedies, but none has returned the brand to growth. As pressure grows from Olay's competitors, including hundreds of new direct-to-consumer brands catering to millennial women, North American Skin Care General Manager Chris Heiert must identify a winning marketing strategy that will appeal to women of all ages.

Service that falls below customer expectations is framed as a service failure. While many researchers have investigated service failures, they have tended to focus on large service failures. This is likely because large failures are more noticeable by firms and more likely to prompt customer complaints than small failures. However, we argue that smaller service failures can cause as much damage as larger failures, and in some cases even more. We introduce the concept of service microfailures, which we define as instances when a customer's expectations go unmet in some small way. While minor in isolation, repeated service microfailures that go unnoticed and unrecovered can compound in effect and drive customer defection. For this reason, we propose that service microfailures are a potentially much larger managerial problem than they may appear on the surface. In this article, we conceptualize microfailures as a distinct form of service failure and outline the mechanism through which they cause damage. We then develop a multifaceted approach through which managers can detect, repair, and prevent service microfailures.

Be Well Hospitals - a multi-specialty secondary healthcare chain of hospitals is set up in the suburbs, industrial towns and district headquarters of the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu. The hospital chain co-founded by Dr. C.J.Vetrievel in 2011, fulfills the need of quality healthcare services in secondary healthcare market segment. They provide access to high-quality primary and secondary healthcare services at affordable price to the semi-urban and rural population through their chain of multi-specialty hospitals. In the four and half years, since its founding, Be Well has set up eight hospitals with a combined capacity of more than 280 beds and has treated close to 500,000 patients. The case describes Be Well's extensive programs to achieve service excellence by building a high-quality healthcare delivery system using standard operating procedures (SOPs) in both clinical and non-clinical operations. It provides detailed information on the genesis of the service excellence initiative, the data collection system to understand key operating parameters, converting operating goals into procedures, and the implementation challenges across multiple locations of a multi-specialty tertiary care hospital. The case deals with a leadership challenge of extending the system of controls in both clinical and non-clinical operations while trying to balance it with the need for motivation among both internal employees and contracting doctors. A complicating factor is the accreditation process that the hospital chain is trying to pass which would extend its market reach and strengthen the brand. The top management of the chain needs to decide on the institutionalization of standard operating procedures and metrics, tying them to incentives and compensation systems ,and adding a Health Management Information System to achieve its service excellence goals. And, it wants to ensure that operational excellence does not compromise the patient experience.

Companies looking for ways to stand out from their competition can offer customers data products that enhance the product or service the customer originally came looking for. This data wrapping technique is an innovative option to increase a product's value to the customer and maximize its profitability.

Student spreadsheet to case W20193

DailyFish was an emerging e-commerce enterprise that was started in 2016 by Baby Marine Ventures, one of the largest exporters of frozen seafood from India. Subramanian Sankaran, Head of Loyalties and customer service management (CSM) was facing challenges related to increased missed calls in the call center that eventually led to a loss of sales opportunities. The chief executive officer of the company instructed Sankaran to reduce the waiting time per call by one third, thereby minimizing the missed calls. Sankaran had to find out how to minimize the waiting time without compromising the call quality. He was looking forward to hiring a couple of executives to tackle the issue. He planned to find the best fit using fractional factorial experiment using Taguchi orthogonal arrays.

Chatbots are used frequently in business to facilitate various processes, particularly those related to customer service and personalization. In this article, we propose novel methods of tracking human-chatbot interactions and measuring chatbot performance that take into consideration ethical concerns, particularly trust. Our proposed methodology links neuroscientific methods, text mining, and machine learning. We argue that trust is the focal point of successful human-chatbot interaction and assess how trust as a relevant category is being redefined with the advent of deep learning supported chatbots. We propose a novel method of analyzing the content of messages produced in human-chatbot interactions, using the Condor Tribefinder system we developed for text mining that is based on a machine learning classification engine. Our results will help build better social bots for interaction in business or commercial environments.

This case describes the transformation of the UK's oldest financial services franchise from a product-aligned and brick-and-mortar traditional banking institution to a customer-aligned and digital-first technology organization. The case parallels Lloyds' business transformation with the growth of its digital-focused Transformation division - which commenced as a small hundred-person task force and ultimately grew to comprise one third of the bank's 70,000 employees.

Service systems are inherently subject to variability, whether through customers, service providers, suppliers, or unexpected events. Yet, customers demand excellence and consistency regardless of this variability. In general, there are two ways to handle this variability: with people or with processes. We use the concept of robustness to describe these two approaches and address when one or the other might be appropriate and discuss how and why one might transition from one approach to the other. The relationship between robust people and robust processes within a system can inform and build upon one another in a cycle that mirrors that of continuous improvement. Investing in this cycle can help an organization move toward a system that relies more on robust processes and less on hiring and training robust people, allowing the organization to be scalable while simultaneously creating new opportunities for incumbent robust people.

Elite Chinese law firm Fangda Partners has steered Alibaba and other Chinese and international clients through the complex legal, corporate, and regulatory challenges associated with executing international transactions. "Fangda has traveled a long distance in a short while," reflects senior partner Jonathan Zhou, "but we have a long distance to traverse further. We have lofty aspirations." Fangda Partners seeks to build on its growth and strong reputation to establish itself as a major, high-end law firm in the Chinese market. What needs to be accomplished and how should Zhou proceed?

Service Excellence in Organizations, Eight Key Steps to Follow and Achieve It, is a two-volume book published by Business Expert Press in 2019 and written by Fiona Urquhart, who leads Durham University's MBA module on service excellence and has consulted for an array of service and manufacturing organizations. Volume I deals with the basic tenets of service excellence, while Volume II suggests mechanisms, tools, and techniques to help embed to excellence as the foundation of value that the organization delivers. Both contain practical examples used by well-known companies; both also contain a self-assessment diagnostic tool that enables organizations to identify where they have built significant strengths in terms of service excellence and where opportunities to enhance their operations exist. In the first volume, the first chapter introduces the distinction between customer service and service excellence and some of the drivers behind this. It also outlines the benefits of a systematic approach to service excellence.

Service Excellence in Organizations, Eight Key Steps to Follow and Achieve It, is a two-volume book published by Business Expert Press in 2019 and written by Fiona Urquhart, who leads Durham University's MBA module on service excellence and has consulted for an array of service and manufacturing organizations. Volume I deals with the basic tenets of service excellence, while Volume II suggests mechanisms, tools, and techniques to help embed to excellence as the foundation of value that the organization delivers. Both contain practical examples used by well-known companies; both also contain a self-assessment diagnostic tool that enables organizations to identify where they have built significant strengths in terms of service excellence and where opportunities to enhance their operations exist. In the first volume, the third chapter considers the importance of quality, both of product and service, to establishing the customer relationship. It considers the costs both of achieving quality and of having to put it right when it has gone wrong. It provides suggestions for gaining a deeper understanding of the customer perception of quality and some consideration of evaluation tools that are available to support this understanding.

Service Excellence in Organizations, Eight Key Steps to Follow and Achieve It, is a two-volume book published by Business Expert Press in 2019 and written by Fiona Urquhart, who leads Durham University's MBA module on service excellence and has consulted for an array of service and manufacturing organizations. Volume I deals with the basic tenets of service excellence, while Volume II focuses on approaches that will embed excellence, promote loyalty and advocacy, and ensure freshness of a product or service offering. These are all aspects that help to deliver sustainability for the organization, representing some of the robust strategies available to organizations, building on earlier robust strategies of outside-in thinking, branding, segmentation, quality, and trust building explored in the first volume. In the second volume, the third chapter considers how innovation in products and services, but also in systems, can ensure that the organization maintains its relevance for staff and existing customers, whilst also presenting them with new and exciting alternatives.

Service Excellence in Organizations, Eight Key Steps to Follow and Achieve It, is a two-volume book published by Business Expert Press in 2019 and written by Fiona Urquhart, who leads Durham University's MBA module on service excellence and has consulted for an array of service and manufacturing organizations. Volume I deals with the basic tenets of service excellence, while Volume II suggests mechanisms, tools, and techniques to help embed to excellence as the foundation of value that the organization delivers. Both contain practical examples used by well-known companies; both also contain a self-assessment diagnostic tool that enables organizations to identify where they have built significant strengths in terms of service excellence and where opportunities to enhance their operations exist. In the first volume, the second chapter considers how the brand entices by drawing the customer into a relationship. It addresses questions such as: the role branding plays for company, staff, and customer and its link to service excellence; how to develop engaging brands; how to use the brand throughout the consumer decision-making process to strengthen the customer relationship; what the role a company's core values play in brand development; and how to surface those core values.

Service Excellence in Organizations, Eight Key Steps to Follow and Achieve It, is a two-volume book published by Business Expert Press in 2019 and written by Fiona Urquhart, who leads Durham University's MBA module on service excellence and has consulted for an array of service and manufacturing organizations. Volume I deals with the basic tenets of service excellence, while Volume II suggests mechanisms, tools, and techniques to help embed to excellence as the foundation of value that the organization delivers. Both contain practical examples used by well-known companies; both also contain a self-assessment diagnostic tool that enables organizations to identify where they have built significant strengths in terms of service excellence and where opportunities to enhance their operations exist. In the first volume, the fourth chapter explores the importance for consumers to be able to trust the brands that they buy. It examines the role of trust in the decision-making process, in building loyalty, and its role in customer relationship marketing into the future, as customers become more involved in the development, production, and feedback of services, as well as marketing communications around services. It also considers how business processes support trust in the relationship and deliver the brand promise. Finally, It challenges companies to ask for feedback, deal with it constructively, rather than being defensive about it-own it and do something with it.

Service Excellence in Organizations, Eight Key Steps to Follow and Achieve It, is a two-volume book published by Business Expert Press in 2019 and written by Fiona Urquhart, who leads Durham University's MBA module on service excellence and has consulted for an array of service and manufacturing organizations. Volume I deals with the basic tenets of service excellence, while Volume II focuses on approaches that will embed excellence, promote loyalty and advocacy, and ensure freshness of a product or service offering. These are all aspects that help to deliver sustainability for the organization, representing some of the robust strategies available to organizations, building on earlier robust strategies of outside-in thinking, branding, segmentation, quality, and trust building explored in the first volume. In the second volume, the second chapter explores the shift from transactional marketing to relationship building and ways in which this can be made part of the genetic make-up of the organization, rather than superficial window dressing.

Service Excellence in Organizations, Eight Key Steps to Follow and Achieve It, is a two-volume book published by Business Expert Press in 2019 and written by Fiona Urquhart, who leads Durham University's MBA module on service excellence and has consulted for an array of service and manufacturing organizations. Volume I deals with the basic tenets of service excellence, while Volume II suggests mechanisms, tools, and techniques to help embed to excellence as the foundation of value that the organization delivers. Both contain practical examples used by well-known companies; both also contain a self-assessment diagnostic tool that enables organizations to identify where they have built significant strengths in terms of service excellence and where opportunities to enhance their operations exist. In the first volume, the fifth chapter explores why customer needs are paramount and discusses customer needs versus customer desires-what do customers really want? It looks at customer expectations and satisfaction. How should organizations manage customers when things go wrong-what are the effects of fade or walk away versus active strategies that re-engage customers back into the fold? It also examines what makes service delivery fun for customers and staff alike.