Introduction: Background and Experience in the Company
The TekSavvy Company has been known as one of the key IT services provider in Canada for quite long. The company was founded in the not so distant 1998 and had been providing its services ever since. However, in the course of working for the organization, a range of staff members have noticed that customers file a range of complaints regarding the quality of the company’s services. The specified issue was viewed as rather weird, seeing that the staff members were very responsive in their communication with the customers. A more detailed analysis of the issue, however, showed that it was the inconsistency between the services stated in the marketing campaign and the ones, which the users received, that triggered a major conflict. As it was the false advertising issue that caused the conflict, it is desirable that the company should not only reconsider its services provision strategy but also view the marketing campaign as the tool for listing the key advantages of the organization instead of tricking people into believing false promises.
Environment Analysis: Cause and Effect. Cognitive, Affective and Behavioral Responses
Physical Evidence: When There Is Little Material to Work with
Being the provider of internet and communication services, TekSavvy leaves comparatively little physical evidence as to the proof for its efficacy, or, in this case, the lack thereof. However, even the few facts that can be identified serve as a major proof for the organization to be literally collapsing under the weight of its own inconsistency.
Nevertheless, a significant drop in the number of customers, which was witnessed in 2012–2014, can be attributed to the significant reduction in the quality of the services delivered. Moreover, speaking of the actual evidence of poor services, the fact that a range of customers complained about the problems with the server meant that the maintenance of the company’s equipment was not carried out timely and properly.
Moreover, a range of customers supplied the organization with rather graphic evidence regarding the problems with the services provided. Specifically, numerous screenshots of computer screens with browsers displaying problems with the Internet connection have been delivered to the company’s e-mail. Finally, the tickets, which have been archived rather hastily, and which report about the issues, which the company’s customers had with the Internet and the related services, are very solid pieces of evidence against the company’s policy of handling the process of services delivery.
Process: Desperate Attempts at Putting the Work Together
As far as the processes within the company are concerned, close observation of the latter and the following detailed analysis of the production process have been carried out. Supervision of the key processes conducted in the course of a month will reveal that the organization suffers from the lack of cohesion between its processes and the failure to carry out a proper observation of the latter. For instance, the installation of the Internet services, which the company is supposed to provide, occurs at a rather fast pace and in a rather satisfactory fashion. Likewise, the further provision of Internet-related services is nearly flawless for several weeks. However, as soon as the company transfers to the stage of progress supervision, the quality of the services deteriorates immediately, leading to the dissatisfaction and disappointment of customers, with the following increase in the number of complaints. The problem becomes obvious when the strategy adopted by TekSavvy is compared to the one displayed in one of the case studies conducted by Lovelock: “For each business process (e.g., phone installation), we ask an overall satisfaction (or service quality) question” (Lovelock 362). As the quotation above shows, it is especially important for an organization to remain responsive in order to comply with the statement that it manifests in the marketing campaign. TekSavvy, in its turn, fails to meet the standards in question in a rather obvious manner, which means that there is a major disruption in its key processes, including the production process.
The specified phenomenon can be explained as the effects of the wrong leadership model applied in order to deliver the services, which have been defined as the trademark of the company. In other words, the members of the company’s managers’ team do not display the cognitive appraisal when witnessing the endeavors of the staff to excel in their performance. The specified reaction triggers an affective phase, in the course of which the employees register a complete absence of positive emotions retrieved from the manager and, therefore, identify the process of sustaining the company’s services at the required level as pointless (Coletta 23).
The phenomenon that is very similar to the one described above can be observed once the communication between a staff member and a customer occurs. Defined as the “process of categorizing an encounter, with respect to its significance to well-being” (Lovelock 412), the specified concept allows for understanding the key features of the company’s production processes, which prevent TekSavvy from becoming an adequate service provider. Seeing that the goals of the conversation between the company employee and the client do not coincide, the latter wanting to vanquish the problem, and the former willing to deny its responsibility for the problem, the processes within the company leave much to be desired.
People: Trying to Improve Customer Relationship
Much to their credit, the managers of TekSavvy do put a very strong emphasis on the interpersonal communication process. Not only does the company follow an elaborate strategy of conversing with the clients, but it also has a well-developed framework for communicating with its staff. The specified capacities of the company become especially evident in cases when conflicts emerge and require an immediate resolution; whether the clash occurs between the staff member and the customer, or among the employees, the location of a possible compromise and the following reconciliation is the standard course of addressing issues.
Concepts and Models: Key Frameworks as Analysis Tools
The phenomenon of TekSavvy’s managerial impotence can be viewed from the perspective of several frameworks. The people-related issues can be interpreted from the standpoint of self-worth, which presupposes that the esteem needs of the staff should be recognized. Indeed, the surprisingly good relationships among the staff, as well as successful communication between company customers and the TekSavvy employees, can be explained as the effects of the self-worth model implementation. By enhancing the self-esteem of the staff, the company managers contribute to the employees’ confidence and positive vision of themselves (Lovelock et al. 57). As a result, the employees resolve the emerging conflicts efficiently by navigating the process of interpersonal relationships and being confident in the course of conversations.
The market positioning statement (MPS) of the company, however, is flawed in a number of ways. Instead of providing the services of the stated quality, the company resorts to manipulating the users’ IP addresses in order to avoid the costs without any regard for the efficacy of the services. The degree of customization, which is an essential characteristics of the company’s marketing efficacy (Lovelock et al. 111), thus, is very small in TekSavvy’s case. Therefore, the market positioning statement of the company is entirely incompatible with its corporate ethics.
The service marketing concept (SMC), which is also used to evaluate the marketing strategy of the organization and “clarify the marketable benefits and value offered to customers” (Lovelock et al 112), leaves much to be desired in TekSavvy as well. The official statement issued by the company and publish on its site says: “In the forefront of protecting consumer rights online while providing residential, business and wholesale Internet products and services to thousands of Canadians across the country, TekSavvy is one of Canada’s leading independent providers of telecommunications services” (Lovelock 112). However, as it has been stressed above, the services that the firm has to offer often come out as flawed at their very core, with the company’s unwillingness to give “white” IP addresses to their clients and, therefore, triggering major issues with the access to the Internet. Hence, the SMK is technically designed in a proper manner, as it lists the key benefits of choosing the organization, yet the actual services do not showcase the specified advantages in any way, if not refute them.
The aforementioned inconsistency is especially obvious when comparing it to the service operation concept; designed to identify the “geographical scope and scheduling of operations” (Lovelock 112), the above-mentioned index helps define the success of the TekSavvy’s time management and operation approaches as inconsistent and its decisions in terms of problem solving as half-baked. To be more specific, the location of the operations, which may supposedly help address certain issue related to the efficacy of the company’s services, does not comply with the promises made in the company’s SMC, instead, offering its customers rather unsatisfactory product quality.
The strategic service concept, which “defines the essential nature, distinguished benefits and value of the service(s) to be offered” (Lovelock 110), also seems to have been overlooked in TekSavvy, as the organization has a very clear idea of what the services should be, yet clearly fails to meet the standards that it has set. As a result, the firm is often blamed for false advertizing, although its statement concerning caring about the customers’ feedback seems genuine enough.
The specified phenomenon does not quite comply with the key premises of the Mehrabian–Russell model, which states that environments shape moods and, therefore, alter the staff’s behavioral patterns (Lovelock 282). Indeed, the success of the communication process indicates that the environment, in which the employees operate, is quite favorable and, therefore, does not create the premises for neglecting their professional duties. However, a closer look at the issue in question will reveal that the corporate climate does affect the attitude of the staff, as the emphasis lies not on the quality assurance, but on the communication process. While the staff responds to the suggested stimulus, i.e., the appraisal of a successful communication and information transfer, the significance of quality provision does not register on their radar, as they do not receive incentives for excelling in their performance.
From the perspective of Russell’s Model of Affect, the company staff performs quite well. Herein the major issue with TekSavvy lies, though; while the company staff “allows a direct assessment of how customers feel while they are in the service environment” (Lovelock 285), the reluctance for improving the staff’s performance leads to the inevitable drop in the amount of the latter. The problem can be nailed down with the help of the Flower of Service Model, which pinpoints the key problem of the company, i.e., the lack of cohesion between communication process and services provision. In other words, staff satisfaction is valued higher than customer satisfaction in TekSavvy. As a result, the problem occurs in the middle between the “information” and “consultation” segments of the Flower of Service Model (Lovelock 109) and the “post-encounter stage” of the Three-Stage Model of Service (Lovelock 39) correspondingly.
Much to their credit, the leader of the TekSavvy Company did incorporate the Service Branding Model into the framework of the company’s operations by increasing brand awareness and working on brand meaning. As it has been stressed above, the key problem concerning the promotion of the brand in question was the lack of cohesion between the strategies aimed at staff satisfaction and product development. As a result, customer satisfaction rates have dropped significantly.
The same can be observed from the Service-Dominant Logic Model, which offers, probably, the vastest and the most adequate explanation for the phenomenon that could be observed in TekSavvy. Suggesting that “all products are valued for the services they provide” (Lovelock 9), the model under analysis shows that “value is created only by value-in-use” (Lovelock 9) and, therefore, that it is the lack of services efficacy that makes the TekSavvy organization so inefficient. Despite the fact that what the company has been doing in the marketing domain was correct from the perspective of an average organization, the company failed due to the lack of correlation between the stated services and the provided ones. The marketing campaign, therefore, raised the customers’ expectations far too high, and the improper leadership approach prevented from establishing a proper dialogue with the clientele, therefore, aggravating the situation to the point of no return.
Conclusion: The Lessons Learned
The issue of TekSavvy, therefore, is a clear-cut case of misrepresenting the company through a poorly developed marketing strategy. Instead of showcasing the firm’s benefits, TekSavvy resorted to lying about the quality of the assistance provided to users. Consequently, the number of complaints is becoming increasingly huge. As a range of models used in the course of the company assessment have shown, the lack of understanding of what defines the responses in the staff and the customers, i.e., the mechanism of the cognitive, affective and behavioral responses emergence, has literally doomed the organization to promoting itself in the wrong way and allowing the users to detect the company’s major flaws within several weeks of their services use. Hence, it is strongly recommended that the TekSavvy should alter its current approach towards shaping the environment and the service quality, as well as designing advertisements. Being honest with its clients and enhancing the efficacy of the staff’s performance is what TekSavvy must commit itself to in order to restore its reputation.
Academic Integrity Statement
Academic integrity is a crucial part of the scholarly community. It is expected in the given institution that the students should comply with its basic premises and respect the academic integrity rules. For students, the concept of academic integrity presupposes completing their assignment individually without resorting to any kind of unauthorized assistance.
Works Cited
Coletta, Alan R. The Lean 3P Advantage: A Practitioner’s Guide to the Production Preparation Process. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2012. Print.
Lovelock, Christopher, Paul G. Patterson and Jochen Wirtz. Services Marketing. Melbourne, AU: Pearson Education Australia, 2014. Print.