Services Marketing

Assignment No 2

Submitted to:

Miss Javeria Tariq

Submitted by:

Hina Ghafoor
Mehwish Farooqi
Noureena Siddique
BBA-VI

Submission Date:

7.06.2010

Fatima Jinnah Women University, Rawalpindi

 Introduction

This assignment is based on analyzing the front stage and backstage elements of service
i.e. library. It also highlights those tangible aspects through which customer perceive the
quality of library service. In addition, it also tells that how mush the library service
should standardized. Furthermore, the bottle next of service have also been identified and
recovery system has also been suggested.
 Name of the service: Library

The service that we have chosen for the assignment purpose is ’library’. A library is a
source of books and information to the people. The reason for choosing this service is
that the library is a service of which we are completely aware of, and we can easily work
on it. Specifically speaking, we have chosen HIT library for the assignment purpose. It is
located in the heavy industries Taxila and has been providing the services for more than
10 years. The library is regulated by the administration of HIT. It is also known as the
‘Central Library’ as it is present in the centre of city and when it was founded it was the
only library in the locality. However, 3 years back a new library has been emerged
known as HITEC library (Heavy Industries Taxila Education City Library). This library
is actually the part of an educational institute but it is open for the general public as well.
The HITEC library is very huge and it is facilitated with all the latest services that a
library can provide to a maximum level, hence catering more number of people than what
the HIT library does. In this way it provides a huge competition to the HIT library and it
is a massive challenge for HIT library to standardize its service and to implement the
service recovery process to attract the people towards it.
 2. Backstage processes

Maintaining Parking Area and lighting

Training of Security Guards and Salaries

Maintaining Separate shelves for keeping personal items

Printing Tokens

Installing Library Information System

Hire Librarian
Library Card Printing
Keeping books logs of books Issued
Purchasing Furniture
Purchasing up to date Books
Labeling each book Shelves
Electricity Fitting

Cleanliness and maintainers

Libertarian Salary
Pasting, listing and printing the
instructions
3. Tangible aspects or indicator of quality from customer’s perspective
considering the line of visibility:

It includes all those physical features of library service that are visible to customers and
through which customers develop their perception about the quality of service.

Indicators of Description Yes Customer

Quality perception about
quality
The library reading room has Library is
sufficient furniture (tables and equipped with
chairs) or not? sufficient and High quality service
Furniture: Furniture (tables, chairs, new furniture. perception
bookshelves) is in good
condition or not?

Labeling of Bookshelves are properly Bookshelves are High quality service

bookshelves labeled or not? properly labeled perception

A variety of
Books and reading material are newspapers High quality service
Condition of in good condition or not? library and books perception
books and How many different newspapers are available in
reading material are available? good condition.

Library computer
Performance of Library computer with library system works
Library computer information system installed, is effectively and High quality service
system working efficiently or not? provides quick perception
search to
customers.

Rules and regulations of library The walls of

Pasting of library (opening and closing timings, library are pasted High quality service
guidelines phrases like keep silence) are with all theses perception
pasted on walls or not? items.

Book logs are maintained in Registers filled

Maintenance of order to keep record of books with books data High quality service
book logs issued or not? are placed in perception
library
Are the air conditioners and Air conditioners
heaters installed or not? and heaters are High quality service
Library Settings There is appropriate electricity also installed and perception
fitting or not? electricity fitting
is appropriate.
4. Extent to which standardization is possible and advisable throughout
the process:

Standardization: The adoption of generally accepted uniform procedures and materials,

that directly affect the design of a product, service or a facility Standardization means
making something fix or same for all.

Possible and advisable standardization in library service:

All of the processes that are possible to standardize are actually advisable to standardize
since they relate directly to establishing rules and regulations of attaining library service.
By making the service standardize, customer’s grievances and feeling of prejudice will
not arise. Each customer will perceive himself equally important to the organization.

Standardization aspects:

o The fee for membership card of library should be standardized. It is advisable to

standardize it i.e. Rs 500.
o The security fee should be fixed i.e. Rs 1000.
o Three books should be issued against one card at a time.
o Any book should be issued for one week only at one time, but customer should be
able to reissue the same book.
o In case, customer loses the book, then he or she has to pay the cost of that book.
o In case of late return, Rs 20 per day will be charged as penalty. In addition,
customer will not be able to reissue that book for two weeks.
o Opening and closing time of library i.e. 9a.m to 5 p.m
o The customer can enroll the names and details (e.g. identity card number etc) of
three people to allow them to use his/her library card.
o The hiring criteria for librarian which is a backstage element should also be
standardized to make it transparent hiring. The librarian should be at least
graduate and having three years of diploma in same field.

5. The potential bottlenecks located in the service, redesigning and

applying service recovery procedure:

Ans. HIT library is a traditional sort of library and it is devoid of the latest educational
facilities of today. Today is the age of competition and every one is short of time. Every
one wants to complete his task as soon as possible, which cannot be possible if the person
who wants to search some material for the study has books, are the only source available.
He can complete his task at a maximum optimum level only when he has the new, fast
and timely resources available to him. The bottlenecks and their recovery procedure are
explained as follows:
1. Unavailability of updated books:
The 1st bottle neck that is the biggest hurdle in the efficient service providence is the
unavailability of up dated books. Here the term up dated refers to that every now and then
the old books that are no longer the requirement, should be replaced with those books
which are the requirement of people today. What happens in HIT library is this that once
the books are brought in o the library (given by some donor or as a gift of some important
personality having passion with the books); they are kept in the librarary for years. This
keeps the people away from the library, as the library books are not meeting their
requirements.
This problem can be removed if the service provider keeps a proper record of the books
that are brought in the libraray.They should make a data base of those books and then
they should work on following two aspects::

• How long a book has been kept in the library?

• What is the number of issuers who have issued that book?

On the basis of this work they can determine whether the book should be placed in the
library for a longer period of a time or should it be replaced with some other book
For example:
Consider two books.

Books category Time duration the Number of people Should be replaced/

book has been in who issued the Not be replaced
library book
Book A 1 year 2 Replaced

Book B 1 year 25 Not replaced

The data in the table shows that both books, book A and book B have been kept in library
for one year. If at the end of the year, after going out through out the data base, the
service providers find that in the whole year only two people issued book A while 25
people issued book B then it shows that there is high demand for Book B but very low
demand for book A. Some other important book can be replaced with book A which
would be according to the requirement of the visitors. Book A is taking an extra place in
the library which is of no use, so it should be replaced with some other better book, while
book B should be kept as such in the library.

2. Unavailability of computer and internet:

The internet has restricted book readers to computers only and has reduced the rate at
which people visited the libraries. In order to facilitate them and keep the library still
attracted to them most of the libraries have started to provide computers along with high
speed internet. But HIT library has not provided this service which is a bottle neck
located in it. On the other hand the HITEC library, located at the other end of the city is
providing with a large number of computers along with the DSL. This additional service
has provided the HITEC library a competitive edge over the HIT library.
The HIT library should therefore take initiative to introduce a computer room in a
separate section of the library where there should be computers in rows along with the
comfortable chairs. The internet should be provided which should have high speed
making the downloading fast for the visitors.
Another important redesigning of the service can be the introduction of ‘online library’
where every user can log in with his ID and password.

3. Unavailability of CD’s:
As the HIT library is traditional one so it provides only books as source of information.
There are no CD’s or cassettes available for educational purpose hence unable to attract a
particular class of people who are the high users of CD’s and cassettes.
The service providers of HIT library should have changes their old thinking and come
towards innovation. Separate section in the library should be introduced in the library in
the name of CD’s section where different categories of educational CD’s, DVD’s and
cassettes can be introduced and practiced. Some of the categories can be as follows:

• Religion
• Science
• Literature
• Children movies and so on

6. The potential measures of performance from the customer point of

view and company point of view:

The potential measures of performance that are from the customer’s punt of view are:
•There should be a large variety of books covering almost every topic and every
issue.
• Books should not be the only source of information in the library; other means
should also be used
• There should be separate shelves for different categories of the books and they
should not be in messed up form
• All the shelves and cupboards should be properly named and labeled so that the
visitors find it very easy to search for the book of his need by spending as little
time as possible in the tine of search of books
• The librarian should be very helping, cooperative and curious. He should help the
visitor if he is unable to find a particular book. The librarian should listen to
complains and feed back of the visitors very patiently and should take proper
action for that.
• The library should be neat and clean. The environment of the library should be
such that the use of cigarette should be sticky forbidden and there should be
complete silence in the library so that the concentration of the reader does not
deviate here and there
• There should be proper security. The personnel things of the library that are let
outside the section should be properly guarded.
 • There should be proper lightening and some other alternative should be there if
the load shedding problem arises because in the absence of light the readers
would be unable to continue study and the absence of light would affect the work
of the people working on computers as well.

These are the potential measures of performance from the customer point of view. If we
talk about the company’s perspective than the same, measures are for company as well.
The difference is that if customers ‘wants’ these quality measures than the company has
to ‘provide’ them. For example if from the customer point of view the performance
measure is that there should be variety of books and the shelves should be labeled then
from company point of view it is its duty to provide theses services.