A Restaurant Service Blueprint for Ordering Drinks at the Bar Essay Example

planning a specific activity can help make the service delivery of an employee more pleasant or appealing to the customer. Backstage contact employee actions are those processes done by employees that help the delivery of the service to the customer without actual face to face interaction with the customer.

Keeping the role of backstage employees in mind when evaluating a certain activity can help speed up the processes of the functions needed to deliver the services to the customer. Support processes are actions done by non-contact employees that help make the services delivered to the customer a possibility. Looking at the systems involved in supporting activities between employees and customers during the planning stage can help uncover problems within the systems themselves. Lastly, physical evidences are all the tangible things the customer sees that can influence the customer’s perception of the quality of the service provided. Brown and Swartz, 1989, p. 95) Paying attention to how physical ambience can affect the customer’s perception of quality when planning for an activity can greatly help in choosing the right design for a place of business. The service blueprint for ordering drinks at a restaurant bar could be as follows: Physical Evidences: Bar, Glasses, Lighting, Alcoholic Drink Bottles, Music, Drink List, Bar Stools, Decor, Signage, Cash Register Customer Actions: Walk to the Bar, Sit on Bar Stool or Stand at The Bar, Ask for Drink List, Waits for Drink, Receives Drink, Pays for Drink

Onstage Employee Action: Greets Bar Patron, Take Order, Serves Bar Nuts, Delivers Drink, Accepts Payment Backstage Employee Action: Prepares Drink, Prepares Bar Nuts, Arranges Alcoholic Bottles, Takes Payment to the Cashier Support

Processes: Order System, Cash Register System, Inventory System The service blue print above can be used to help make the process of ordering a drink in a bar more efficient for both the customer and the business owner. For example, the business Service Blueprint 3 owner can see what actions are directly responsible for creating customer loyalty in the interactions between the onstage employee and the customer.

Managers can greatly benefit from the using the service blueprint as a tool in making decisions that can help increase business revenues like creating customer loyalty as in the example stated above. Since actions are clearly mapped out in a service blueprint, analyzing these actions can greatly help managers in creating service innovations, quality improvement, customer service design, and other strategic changes focused on customers. For example, in the sample service blueprint above it is seen that one of the customer actions is waiting for the drink from an onstage contact employee or the bartender.

The manager then can try to come up with new actions for the onstage contact employee to perform so that the customer can be more comfortable while waiting. Using a service blueprint as a tool in dealing with service oriented task problems in business has many advantages. The service blueprint is easier to understand than verbal description of tasks alone. Problems can be solved before they happen when a service blue print is used because one can easily see the relationships of the different employees and systems involved in delivering a service to a customer.

Also because of that reason, service blueprints make it easier to see where failure occurs

in the system. As with any tool, using a service blueprint also has some disadvantages. Strictly adhering to a service blueprint can cause problems. If an onstage contact employee only adheres to the blueprint and nothing else, he may not be able to cope with a customer need that is not included the blueprint. Another disadvantage of using a blueprint is that only specific actions are included in it. This can lead to confusion in action when specific functions of tasks are left undefined.