Q4. One Service that has a lot of Customer Variability is teaching at XLRI. What are these and how should they be managed?

An insight into Customer Variability

There is afamous scenein the 1970 movieFive Easy Piecesin which a young and surly Jack Nicholson is stymied in his effort to get a side order of plain wheat toast at a roadside diner. Told by the waitress that the diner doesn't serve plain toast (it's not on the menu), he asks her whether he can get a chicken sandwich on wheat toast. When she says yes, Jack says OK then, bring him a chicken sandwich on wheat toast no mayonnaise, no butter, no lettuce, and then adds now hold the chicken.

According to Francis Freis article, Breaking the Trade Off between Efficiency and Service, dealing with customer variability is a necessary challenge in making a service offering profitable. Its never advisable to drive out variability as customer judge the quality of the service offering with the customisability of the service and how much are their variabilitys are accommodated.

Let us introduce the 5 types of Variability in the context of XLRI and explore possible solutions in the above context;

A). Arrival Variability: Customers do not necessarily want the services at the same time according to the convenience of the company, but would like to influence the time of service themselves. Applying this to XLRIs context, we feel this could possibly mean students not wanting the lectures to be delivered at the same time. In other words, there might possibly be students whore morning people and would want their courses to be clustered in the mornings and similarly people whod want their courses clustered in the evening.

Possible Management Opportunity: Though its a difficult customer variability to control, one possible solution could be the division of elective courses on Morning and Evening classes instead of the current way of division on the section wise basis.

B). Request Variability: The example quoted at the start of an answer is an example of Request Variability. It is when the customer wants a particular service and would not compromise on the nature of his demand with a substitute. This could mean that a student expecting a certain level of learning (though learning as discussed in class is a difficult to define, subjective measurable), would not be satisfied with the level of service until his expectations from the course are fulfilled, or the assurance of learnings in the course outline are adhered to.

Possible Management Opportunity: A dynamic feedback system instead of a post semester feedback one. Possibly basic pointers on the evaluation of the assurance of learning after every 5 sessions might be a good step to control Request Variability among the customers.

C). Capability Variability: Some customers require more handholding than other customers. This means their might be students who have interest in learning, but take time to grasp the subject. There are always a major capability variability in a service like Education.

Possible Management Opportunity: The possibility of reducing Capability variability is to dependent largely on the course instructor. The course pedagogy needs to interesting and detailed so as to not lose the interest of the sharper customers (students), while it cannot be so intensive so as to demoralize the lesser equipped customers. Personal touch and gradual increase in course complexities can be a possible solution to the problem.

D). Effort Variability: Service interaction involves extracting effort out of the customer too; now whether or not a customer apply effort for this service interaction is dependent on the customer. In the XL, this is simply the difference between the sincere / interested students and those that merely sit in the class for attendance. How does one ensure less variability in overall performance of the class and reduce outliers is the question?

Possible Management Opportunity: While some answers can involve OB related nuances of motivation etc, those can be considered outside the scope of this course. In a services management context, the subject should be above the accepted service level of the class and in the Zone of Tolerance. Ensuring participation through risk / reward benefit, well defined pedagogy, as well as well construed and extremely relevant course material / hand-outs can probably reduce the extreme outliers.

D). Subject Preference Variability: One likes chocolate for its taste, one for its smoothness, one because it relieves tension and one because he prefers something sweet after every meal. The product is the same, a chocolate, but the subject preference is different for each customer.

Possible Management Opportunity: This is possibly the most difficult customer variability as it involves personal handling of each customer. Knowing each student and what drives / motivates them might be a good start to understanding their preferences. Again the answer might border on OB, but subject preference variability reduction is again that might change from instructor to instructor due to the nature of the instructor and their class demeanour and method of teaching.