Since I assume that most participants in the course speek Swedish, I will write in Swedish instead. If I am all wrong - tell me, and I will switch to English again. 😊

Videon "Physical Evidence and the Servicescape" av Brian Wilson, ger mig onekligen tankar om hur vår servicescape ser ut för våra spontanbesökande krögare. När de väl tagit sig upp för en lång trappa kommer de (flämtande) till en slags hall där två pelarbord står tillsammans med höga pallar. Intill finns våra postfack, en trött TV-skärm där nyheter löper på en textremsa och ett tomt tidningsställ. Allt finns direkt utanför en av chefernas stora kontor, dit dörren oftast är öppen.
Jag har varit rätt nöjd med den där lösningen, eftersom tanken är att den ska signalera "kort och koncist möte" till spontanbesökande krögare och även min personal. De krögare som bokat tid får däremot komma in bakom kulisserna, där bekvämare möbler och miljö finns och mer tid erbjuds.

Frågan som väcks hos mig, efter att ha tittat på videon, är vad denna lilla mottagningsyta faktiskt säger om oss. Att det ska gå fort är nog tydligt, men vilken upplevelse ger den i övrigt?

Brian Wilson beskriver värdet av att aktivt arbeta med sin servicescape för att den ska bidra till en positiv kund- och personalupplevelse, där den fysiska miljön fungerar som ett stöd i den riktningen. Han avslutar med en vägledning för arbetet. (se bild)

Jag inser att vår trista hall inte förmedlar det jag vill, annat än att den anspelar på snabba möten. Men jag lär behöva se över vilka signaler vi faktiskt ger och fundera på vad vi kanske behöver ändra för att ge ett tydligare budskap om vad vi vill förmedla.

Improving service for new costumers?

As I wrote in my second blog post, I work as a head of a municipal unit that investigates and supervise restaurants that sell or would like to sell alcohol. The restaurateurs are our "visible" client, but, as Professor Friman said during her first webinar, we have many other kinds of costumers:  a vertical line from the restaurant-owner to the politicians, the industry and commerce and finally the public, whose health we are ment to protect with the alcohol-law. The system has a built-in conflict with many different aims depending on what focus you have .

Anyhow: we measure our restaurant-owners satisfaction with our service.  The others  -  the politicians, our supervisors and sometimes the public - tell us what they think about our work.
The restaurateurs are asked about their experience of our treatment, our legal security, our fees and our efficiency. We rate high on almost everything apart from efficiency. Here, our new costumers find us more inefficient. We don´t know their expectations about our service, as we never measure that.
Our returning costumers are more satisfied, they rate our efficiency higher.

It has been hard work changing the restaurateurs opinion about our work and we still have a way to go.
According to Professor Friman, Professor Pedersen and the article by Richard L. Oliver (A cognitive model of the antecedents and consequences of satisfaction decisions), there must be a major disconfirmation to change the costumer experience if it is different compared to his expectations.

Probably, our returning costumers, have different expectation from when they first contacted us.
We need to change our new costumers experience of our service. I do agree that we have to improve our efficiency, but how do we work with their expectations of our service?

I hope that this course will give me tools to understand this better.

Alcohol, speedbumps and expectations

I am Gunilla, who has been longing to understand more about my costumers experiences, in this case, the restaurateurs, in my town. I work as a head of a municipal unit that investigates and supervise restaurants that sell or would like to sell alcohol.
Our work is not always popular among our clients and we do have to work hard to offer service that our clients appreciate. The value of our service is not always experienced within our work, it is beyond it. You need "our" licence to run your pub and you have to pass through the laws needle´s eye to get it, a k a lots of administration, a thing that many clients really dislike. Our unit is a bit like a speedbump on the road for the restaurateurs. Though, I like this speedbump, as it has its roots in a protective law that will make our town nightlife safer and the public health better. And for the restaurateurs, it offers a fair competition, which of course is very important.
With our work comes great power, and like superman, we have to show great responsibility. The contact with our unit is imperative for our clients, so it is even more important to make the contact as good as possible.

For many years we have improved our service by intuition or by, which I find most important, listening to our clients. Though this is not enough. I need more knowledge and theories to understand our clients experiences so that I can improve and develop our service and our work. I hope the course will help me with this.

I have a background and a degree as a social worker since many years, especially working with preventive interventions against abuse of drugs and alcohol.  My experience of social media is not very big, just using Facebook, Instagram and Pintrest.

Now I look forward to the first module, though I am a bit worried about my English. No doubt, I will not only improve my knowledge about psychological aspects behind costumers experiences, I will also improve my English. Killing two birds with one stone, great value! :)