New Format: Week 3, Experience 1 by Kevin: “Super Sunday at Super CC!”
Date: July 19, 2009
Time: 9:30 am to 10:00 am
Location: XLRI Computer Center (CC)
Background
A perfect, sunny Sunday yesterday, rounded off a gloomy week full of deluges. I had attended early morning Sunday mass at the XLRI chapel and had a quick masala dosa at the mess. It was 9:30 am and I had a full 90 minutes to go before my first lecture of the day at 11 am – “Indian Philosophy for Leadership Excellence”. I thought to myself: “90 minutes is too little time to sleep because I will have to get up in no time. Yet, it’s too early in the morning for me to really do anything serious like study!” I soon remembered it had been a while since I had taken my college-provided Dell Vostro 1400 laptop for servicing. And so it came to be that I spent the next half hour at the XLRI Computer Center (CC), 1st Floor, Learning Center. As fate would have it, I also managed nearly an hour of sleep after that as well, before my first lecture!
Prior Expectation
I had never been to the XLRI CC before. However, I did have some expectations based on my interactions and conversations with friends, some of whom had required some major servicing of their laptops. I expected it to be a quick half hour of system checks and the installation of a couple of missing or updated plug-ins or add-ons.
Basis for Expectation
Thus, my friends formed the basis of my expectations. According to them, the XLRI CC was very efficient, equipped with the latest software and would get the job done quickly – provided the laptop given to them was not malfunctioning due to a major mechanical or other breakdown. In that case, the concerned students were referred to the nearest Dell Service Center and the CC engineer even spoke to the Dell spokesperson immediately, in front of the student. Such was the great level of responsiveness of the XLRI Computer Center. Hence, on the overall, I expected a good service experience at the CC.
Actual Experience
The service engineer greeted me with a smile and asked me in refined English how I might be served. I asked him to merely put my laptop through a system test, since it had almost been a year and I had never given it to the CC for servicing. He started the laptop and asked me if I had faced any specific problem. I replied saying that my laptop used to slow down at times and other times, it would heat up. He conducted a few system tests using anti-viral, anti-malware and anti-trojan software. He then tried to run a system check using the Kaspersky Lab anti-virus software, that had been installed on my laptop nearly a year ago, and which was the default anti-virus for most XLers. Suddenly his expression changed. He exclaimed, “Sir, the Kaspersky databases have NOT been updated since the end of March, 2009! Yet, your system seems fine. Please do not ever take such a risk again!” I was shocked. To the best of my knowledge, the software registered automatic updates to itself. The engineer explained that due to a large duration of disconnectivity from the Internet, the Kaspersky Lab would sometimes stop automatic updates, due to an inbuilt bug which had ironically been patched up in early April, 2009! Of course, I had not accessed the Internet - in fact I had hardly even opened my laptop - during my summer internship (which began in April 1st week), since my company Coca-Cola India Inc. had provided me with its custom laptop. I heaved a sigh of relief on learning all would be fine, waited for the engineer to install the latest version of Kaspersky and left the CC, resolving to always run anti-viral checks regularly – so I would at least know, if and when automatic updates or similar events stopped occurring.
Service Trinity Model
| Core Service |
| o Hardware maintenance of laptops o Provision of software for protection of computer from Internet-originated and other threats |
| Funding Mechanism |
| o Consumer pays – since we, the students pay these charges indirectly, when we buy the laptop from the college, which comes along with a 2-year warranty |
| Customer Management System |
| o The XLRI CC service engineer was extremely polite, asked the right questions to capture the required information and acted promptly |
| Employee Management System |
| o There must be a variable incentive along with the fixed compensation given to the engineer and his support staff – decided on the basis of customer feedback, for example. o This will ensure that they always give a highly consistent and high quality service. |
Tangibility vs People/Possessions
The laptop maintenance comes under possession processing, since the laptop is my possession and repair is a tangible act.
| | People | Possessions |
| Tangible Acts | | XLRI CC Laptop repair (Possession Processing) |
| Intangible Acts | | |
Separability vs Core Service/Delivery
Laptop maintenance and repair is the core service of the CC. Now with respect to separability, I would say that the customer is separable from the service. This is because the customer need not be present during the actual servicing. Indeed, I could have sent a friend of mine with the laptop to the CC and it would still have got serviced!
| | Core | Delivery |
| Separable | XLRI CC Laptop repair | |
| Inseparable | | |
The Service Process Matrix
Laptop repair involves a high degree of customization (though not necessarily interaction!) at the level of each individual laptop, since different laptops might require different fixes. But, at the same time, a low degree of labor intensity is required.
| | Degree of Interaction and Customization | ||
| Degree of labor Intensity | | LOW | HIGH |
| LOW | Service Factory | Service Shop XLRI CC Laptop repair | |
| HIGH | Mass Service | Professional Service | |
Outcome, Interaction and Physical Evidence Quality
· Outcome was terrific, since with any luck, I might not require servicing for 1 whole more year!
· Interaction was also really good, since the service engineer went out of his way to make me feel at home in the CC lab, during my maintenance visit.
· Physical evidence was also good, as the CC was well-kept and the cooling system the room good. Also, all the machines seemed to be in perfect working condition.
SERVQUAL Ratings
| Dimension | Rating | Remarks |
| Tangibles | 4 | Good tangibles such as the cleanliness of the room and silent environment |
| Reliability | 5 | I knew the engineer’s opinion was reliable and implicitly trusted him |
| Responsiveness | 5 | The engineer was extremely responsive to my needs, and also responded with a solution – by reinstalling Kaspersky |
| Assurance | 5 | He assured me that my laptop was now protected – and it has been faster ever since |
| Empathy | 4 | He also empathised decently well, saying that my misfortune with the stopping of updates happens to people quite often |
[Rating is given on a scale of 1-5; 1=Very Bad, 2=Bad, 3=Neutral, 4=Good and 5=Very Good]
Critical Analysis & Suggestions
· All in all, the entire service experience from the start to the end was fantastic. It was a very productive half hour and also significant, since my laptop is now safe for a reasonable period of time.
· It seems difficult to find anything to criticize, but then again, I know I was lucky in many ways. For e.g. I went for the maintenance visit early on a Sunday morning, when there was no question of a waiting line for repairs. “How does the CC handle multiple repairs at nearly the same time?” would be a valid question.
· Secondly, by all accounts, my issue was a standard one. How the CC engineer reacts in case of a major system failure or mechanical breakdown needs to be gauged.
· Having said that, I can only really comment on what I have experienced, so I have to say the engineer did a great job! And for suggestions, I can only say, the CC could send all students a monthly email with important checklists for software with bugs, so that we can at least have a hint of when our computer may be at risk! J
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