2SERVICE MARKETING REPORT MKT431: Service Marketing Submitted to: Dr. Md. Tareque Aziz Assistant Professor BRAC Business School BRAC University Submitted by: GROUP: 05 Habib Ghazi, ID: 10304117 Fariha Ahmed, ID: 11204035 Saurov Dhar, ID: 11204033 Nabila Islam, ID: 11104051 Ferdous Lamisa Moinuddin, ID: 11104115 Hasnine Nadvi, ID: 13304105 A. Md. Fahad Bin Hasan, ID: 10204134 MKT431: Service Marketing Section: 01 BRAC Business School Date of Submission: 31 March, 2014 TABLE OF CONTENTS 3 1. INTRODUCTION 4 2. THE GAPS MODEL OF SERVICE QUALITY 5 3. CONSUMER BEHAVIOR IN SERVICES 7 4. CONSUMER EXPECTATIONS OF SERVICES 9 5. CONSUMER PERCEPTIONS OF SERVICES 11 6. LISTENING TO CUSTOMERS THROUGH RESEARCH 13 7. BUILDING CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS 8. SERVICE RECOVERY 16 19 9. SERVICE DEVELOPMENT AND DESIGN20 10. INTEGRATED SERVICE MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS 23 11. WAY FORWARD FOR THE COMPANY IN DELIVERING BEST QUALITY OF SERVICES 27 12. CONCLUSION 29 13. APPENDIX – A: Service Design: How customers order online 14. APPENDIX – B: How the company processes the orders 15. APPENDIX – C: Bar diagrams and pie charts 33 16. APPENDIX – D: Questionnaire for customers 37 1. INTRODUCTION 32 31 4 People tend to dine out at restaurants during occasions or sometimes for no reason. A touch of the favorite restaurant can spice up the whole atmosphere. However, a new business has recently started to gain name in Dhaka that delivers restaurant food right at the doorstep. HungryNaki.com is a 100% online based company which promises to deliver restaurant food at home or office. They have been operating for 6 months and have gained reputation and success in the recent months. HungryNaki has developed the whole concept of online delivery by focusing on customers who are busy going. Their main target market is the corporate, because they have less time to prepare food at home. However, youth is also targeted because most online users fall into that group of age. So, only a telephone call or a 15 minutes visit to their website can save 1 hour of hard work needed to cook. HungryNaki currently delivers food within Dhaka city in 20 locations. They are in contract with over 100 restaurants all around the city. 80% of all online orders for food delivery are received by HungryNaki because there are few competitors in the market, naming one would be FoodPanda.com. One unique feature of HungryNaki is that their operational processes and development are in-house. This report focuses on why HungryNaki is unique in its own way and what makes HungryNaki what it is today. The following report is on the service of HungryNaki.com. It contains gaps of the services and how the company closes the gaps. The report also talks about the consumer behavior and how HungryNaki builds and maintains relationship with customers. There is insight about their service development. Analysis of their communication media is also done. The report focuses on what improvements should HungryNaki make in order to have a stronger stand relative to competitors. Information to aid this report has been found from a survey with 30 respondents. Also, an interview was done with the COO of HungryNaki. However, certain difficulties were faced while completing this report: Limited number of respondents was available for the survey. Confidentiality was maintained regarding in-depth information. 5 2. THE GAPS MODEL OF SERVICE QUALITY Expectations of customers are the main drivers of the service market. There is no boundary of expectations and service providers’ duty is to give the best of their service to reach the expected service level of the customers. The services that service providers provide to the customers are known as the perceived services. The difference between the expected service and the perceived service is known as “Service Gap”. GAP is always measured with numbers. For example, a customer is expecting that the service he is willing to buy will provide him 100% satisfaction but instead the actual service gave him a satisfaction level of 70%. Hence, the service gap will be (100%-70%=30%) 30%. Customer expectations and perceptions and the actual service gaps for HungryNaki are analyzed in the following table: Expectations Perceptions Actual Gap (Expectation – 1 The food delivery service will be free of Include delivery cost. charges of TK. 100 2 To place the order it will take 5 minutes. It takes 10 minutes. 3 The customers think they will get the They get the confirmation right after the order confirmation after 5 (immediately, ie, waiting time = 0 minutes. minutes). Food will be delivered within 45 It takes 60 minutes minutes. to deliver the food. Customer expected food quality is Actual food quality excellent. (Likert scale 5) is good (Likert scale 4 5 3) Perception) 0 – 100 = -100 5 – 10 = -5 0 – 5 = -5 minutes 45 – 60 = -15 minutes 5–3=2 6 6 Customers expect a 24 hour food Their service is for delivery service. 11 hours (11am- 24 – 11 = 13 hours 10pm) Reasons for gap: Gap 1: In different online food service the delivery charge is very low or zero. For example Food Panda does not have any delivery charge. Gap 2: Because of speed of the internet and complex procedure the time to place the order is more than the expected time. Gap 3: Because of the long procedure and manual operation of the system, the confirmation call is late sometimes. Gap 4: Because of traffic jam and lack of human resources, the food is delivered in 60 minutes. Also, restaurants delay in preparing and packing the food. Gap 5: Food quality depends on the restaurants. As a result, sometimes the food quality becomes low. Sometimes the food gets cold due to the time taken for delivery. Gap 6: Due to lack of human resource and most of the restaurants close by 10pm. So they do not give provide service for 24 hours. 7 3. CONSUMER BEHAVIOR IN SERVICES Customer is the most important part of the organization. In order to satisfy the customer, we must know what customers think about the service and how they behave. 1. Customer segmentation: we can divide HungryNaki customers into different groups. They are shown in the following table: Stage Marital status Children at home Single Married None <6 years Single I (Younger<35) X X Full nest I (Younger<35) X X Single Parent I (Younger<35) X X Table: Customer Segmentation of HungryNaki >6 years 2. Why HungryNaki choose them as their target customer: If we see their age most of them belong to the young group. They include students, working parents with little child, single parents, service holder who does not live with family, etc. They have fewer tendencies to cook food. For example, students or the single parent who work outside would not like to take hassles for cooking. To save time, they would purchase food online because they do not have time. For example, students who live in shared quarter may order online to save time during exams. In Bangladesh, online purchases are mostly done by the youth. 3. Reasons these customers purchase the service of HungryNaki: (important) Reference group: Co-workers, friends, class mate, and friends from apartment influence them to purchase the food through HungryNaki. Traffic jam: Due to traffic jam, sometimes the customers do not want go outside for having food. Time: People of Dhaka city live a very busy life. Sometimes they do not get time to cook or have food outside. In that case, they purchase the service of HungryNaki. Emergency: For instance, if there are unforeseen guests at home, people order food through HungryNaki because generally they deliver in time. Occasion: People order food on occasions like birthdays, anniversaries, etc. 8 Promotional activity: The promotional activities of HungryNaki also influence people to purchase their service. For example, recently HungryNaki sponsored BRAC University Club Fair, as a result of which, lot of students came to know about their service and many of them have purchased the service. Variety of choice: HungryNaki is providing food from different restaurants. Customers can see the menu of different restaurants and can order easily. Less risky: HungryNaki maintains privacy of customer information, so customers feel safe while inputing information to order online. 4. Decision making process: Need Recognition (Physiological need: Food & Hunger) Information Search (Friends, Internet, Bill board) Purchase: Order online Figure: Decision making process of the customers of HungryNaki How Customers experience the service: 1. Service as process: Customer has to go through a process if they want to purchase the service. For example, they have to go to the webpage, select food, order it etc. So 9 customers enjoy every part of it. For instance, they enjoy ordering food from variety of options. 2. Service as drama: Some customers can see it as a drama. For example, when they get the confirmation call, they can enjoy the conversation as a part of drama. 5. CONSUMER EXPECTATIONS OF SERVICES Customer expectations are crucial and need to be met. A company’s main aim is to offer service as close as possible to expected level so that the customer gap is kept at a minimum. From the survey conducted, it is seen that 37% customers have rated the overall service as good and 13% have rated average. This is because there were few customers who did not receive what was expected. For example, some customers got delayed delivery while some did not find the customer service prompt. It is HungryNaki’s responsibility to ensure that these values are as low as possible so that there is little dissatisfaction and customers rate them as excellent. The level of expectations of HungryNaki’s customers is strong in the area of experience-based norms. This is because HungryNaki is a 100% online based company and is targeted towards online users. Also, they are just growing in the market because it has been only 6 months since inception. So the expectation from such service company cannot be predetermined. This means that HungryNaki’s service do not have search qualities as customers do not find information beforehand. The customers have to experience the service in order to keep an expectation and then evaluate the level of satisfaction based on the quality of service perceived. For example, customers expect HungryNaki to deliver the food in 60 minutes time as promised, but sometimes customers find that the delivery is delayed due to unavoidable reasons. Customers still find this satisfactory and acceptable as it is seen that 73% customers rated 5 out of 5 that food was received in expected time. Moreover, HungryNaki overcomes the slight dissatisfaction caused by delayed delivery by compensating and apologizing to customers. However, certain factors influence the customer expectations of service: Sources of desired service expectations: Customers’ expectations can result from a number of sources. For example, any personal need will drive the customer to expect a 10 service. Also, there can be peer influence. For instance, a friend who has already availed the service can suggest the customer to use the service too. As a result, customers expect that the food delivered will be kept warm and delivery will be free of charge. Customers also expect that delivery will be made in any desired location. Nevertheless, sources of desired expectations should be time worthy and cost effective. Sources of adequate service expectations: To expect the best of a service, customers must have adequate information about the service. For example, customers have to know about the process of ordering online, the available payment methods and the promised time of delivery. According to the survey, 43% customers rated 1 and strongly agreed that it was easy to place order. This is because they had enough information about the whole process which helped the overall process seem easy. This implies that 43% customers expected 5 based on adequate information learned. Service encounter expectations Vs overall service expectations: while encountering the service, customers expect that the process of ordering online would take 5 minutes and the delivery will be made in 30 minutes. However, it is seen that the delivery time is 60 minutes and a number of confirmation calls are made before the delivery is made which makes the overall time go past 5 minutes. Although the service encounter expectations are not met, customers are seen to be satisfied by the overall service because of features like the courtesy upheld by the delivery men and the packaging of the food. Hence HungryNaki needs to focus on the overall service expectations and try to provide service as close as possible to the expectations so that the actual customer gap is low. According to the survey, 73% customers rated 1 and said the perceived delivery time met the expected delivery time. HungryNaki needs to focus on the rest 27% and ensure this number is as minor as possible. Sources of both desired and predicted service expectations: desired expectations are predetermined, whereas predicted expectations result from information search and peer influence. For example, customers desire that breakfast delivery will be made at 9:00am in the morning, but from prediction it is found that breakfast delivery service is not offered by HungryNaki. Customers also desire that food will be delivered free of charge but after customers’ prediction, it is seen that 33% customers rated service charge 2 out of 5. So, HungryNaki needs to focus on the predicted expectations so that customers get 11 favourable information about their service which will result in positive word-of-mouth communication. Moreover, it is found from the survey that 30% customers desire the food to be kept warm and 30% customers want HungryNaki to enhance their delivery range. These numbers need to be focused on so that HungryNaki make improvements in their operations. 6. CONSUMER PERCEPTIONS OF SERVICES Analysis of the customer perception is important as it helps to assess whether the desired positioning has been achieved. HungryNaki analyzes customer satisfaction through customer feedbacks from follow-up calls. However, customer satisfaction is determined from the service features itself. For example, the courtesy of the delivery men, the apology letters that customers receive when the service fails all determine how satisfied the customers are. According to the survey, 50% customers rated 5 out of 5 to the way the delivery men behaved. The survey also states that 83% customers are willing to recommend HungryNaki to friends and family. This means that HungryNaki is being able to position themselves as a favorable brand in the minds of customers. However, customers judge the service quality based on several factors: Reliability: The survey states that 100% customers rated 1 and strongly agreed that the ordered food was delivered. This means that HungryNaki succeeded to deliver the promised service. Responsiveness: 40% customers rated 4 out of 5 as they received prompt queries to their problems when they contacted HungryNaki. There was no dissatisfaction. Assurance: HungryNaki promises to deliver in 60 minutes. 73% customers rated 1 and strongly agreed that they received the food in the expected time. Empathy: HungryNaki handles each complaint very seriously. In case of a service failure, they send bouquets of roses or a card as a symbol of apology. Also, they make follow-up calls to each customer to ensure that the food is received. This concludes that they give individualized attention to each customer. Tangibles: In case of a service failure, HungryNaki sends personalized letters with proper explanation of why the failure took place. Also, the courtesy of the delivery men and the 12 container used to deliver food are found to be satisfactory. This shows that HungryNaki manages the tangibles effectively. However, customer satisfaction also depends on the e-service quality. As HungryNaki is a 100% online based company, it has to ensure that the e-service provided is of quality. Efficiency: the website of HungryNaki is simple and easy to use. 7% customers were attracted to their website. Fulfillment: the website promises to deliver food within 60 minutes. This promise is fulfilled as 73% customers rated 1 and strongly agreed that the food was delivered in time. Privacy: HungryNaki strictly maintains privacy to customer information as learnt from the interview with the COO. Responsiveness: HungryNaki lacks in responding through their website as they manage customer queries mostly through telephone and facebook. Contact: HungryNaki website contains contact numbers and email address. 47% customers rated 5 out of 5 that the overall customer service was excellent when contacted. However, customers’ perceive that service encounter will be pleasant and that employees will respond to their problems. It has been found that 33% customers rated 5 out of 5 that employees were responsive. It has also been learnt that during service failures, any employee in the office, whether it be the computer operator or the COO, handles customers’ complains on the telephone. This concludes that all the employees are very responsive. Customers also perceive employees to be adaptive, but HungryNaki lacks behind because they do not try to meet customer’s personal needs and wants. For example, if a customer calls to order an ice-cream, HungryNaki does not offer the service because they do not deliver ice-creams due to container issues. However, the evidence of service for HungryNaki is seen from the physical aspects. For example, the servicescape of HungryNaki is satisfactory because from the survey, 50% customers rated the overall service as excellent. Their guarantee is to deliver in 60 minutes, which is kept as 73% customers rated 1 and highly agreed that they received the food in time. 13 The technology and the website is also user friendly as the whole ordering process is completed in 5 steps as stated in their website. To state the overall perception of customers, 50% customers rated 5 out of 5 and 13% rated 3 because of slight dissatisfaction regarding delivery time and charge. HungryNaki needs to ensure these 13% customers jump up to rate their service a 5. 7. LISTENING TO CONSUMERS THROUGH RESEARCH To gather information for this report, a survey was carried out with 30 respondents. Each of them was asked to fill-up the questionnaire attached in Appendix – D. Based on the survey, analyses was done on several factors. Results have been summarized in diagrams at the end in Appendices. However, findings of the analysis are as follows: 33% of the customer visited HungryNaki once. Basically online food service is a new service in Bangladesh and people are less aware of it. 33% of the customer visited HungryNaki service between 5-8 times which shows they are able to provide the service according to customer expectations which delights customers and hence purchasing increases. 7% of the customer took the service more than 8 times which shows that successful promotional activities and communication have been done to reach customers. 73% of the customers took this type of food service for the first time which shows HungryNaki’s extensive promotion, for example in billboards, have helped people to know about their service. 27% of the customers experienced such food service before so at this position it would be challenging for HungryNaki to give these group of customers a better service than their competitors. 87% of the customers found the availability of HungryNaki in their areas, as more locations are covered; more customers are able to experience their service. 13% of the customer cannot access the HungryNaki service as they are not available in locations like Old Dhaka. 20% customers were attracted to HungryNaki for its name and reputation. This is because HungryNaki makes commitment with customers that they will deliver in 60 minutes, 14 which they fulfill. So customers are satisfied which means that there are positive wordof-mouth communications. This strengthens the company’s reputation and name. 90% customers said that the food quality was not different than that of in restaurants. This means that HungryNaki succeeds to maintain hygiene with the help of its packaging and food containers. Moreover, they use foiled containers in attempt to try to keep the food warm. The remaining 10% customers have said that the food was a bit different because the food was not warm when delivered. Also, as it takes 60 minute to deliver, the taste of the food reduces to some extent. One customer has said that an order was made during raining season so the food was found to be wet which ultimately changed the taste of the food. 93% customers have said that there was nothing wrong with the service. This is because HungryNaki maintains punctuality and fulfils the delivered promise. The rest 7% said HungryNaki provided disappointing service at minor. One reason was delay in the delivery time. The other reason was that the exact ordered food was not delivered, although it was later found out that it was the restaurant’s fault, not HungryNaki’s. 43% people are satisfied due to HungryNaki’s customer care responsiveness because they always confirm the order by calling their consumers. Also, they make follow up calls. However, 7% people are dissatisfied because people do not like to talk so many times about their food over the phone to their food providers. 47% people are highly satisfied by their customer care solutions because they are more likely to change the whole delivery of foods for any complains over the phone. They provide new food and compensation for their mistakes. 10% customers rated solutions provided as average. This is because although the customer received the missed out order at a later time, it was still not in the expected time. Overall customer care service provided by the HungryNaki has got 47% highly satisfied consumers because they are always giving extra care to customers by communicating properly with customers. At least 2 calls are made after the food is delivered to take feedbacks. However, 17% still think they are providing average service because these services are not so much extra ordinary compared to competitor, like FoodPanda.com. 50% consumers are highly satisfied with the delivery men behavior; because they call customers before reaching their home and make sure that they are going to the right address. They do not open the packages they are delivering before reaching and handle 15 the package with care. 10% customers rated this feature as average because sometimes the delivery men failed to communicate properly with humble attitude. 30% are highly dissatisfied with service charge. They are only providing services in certain areas and regardless of the distance from their office, they charge the same fee to all orders. 17% are satisfied because they provide quality service at the end of the day. 50% customers are satisfied with the payment method because consumers get different opportunities for their payments where others are only using cash on. 17% rated as average because they take more than 5 minutes to confirm that the consumer’s payment is successful and customers do not like to wait. 73% customers strongly agreed with the delivery time of the food. It means HungryNaki is able to keep their promise. 40% of the people are satisfied as the food was warm. The number of highly satisfied and average number is same (30%) because they use special containers in attempt to keep the food warm. 43% people strongly agreed that ordering food online is easy as it is flexible for them to choose their food. 20% rated average because of technical issues faced while placing order. 100% customers strongly agreed that the ordered food was delivered. This means that HungryNaki maintains commitment. 40% consumers stated HungryNaki needs to improve their service charge because consumers do not want to pay 100 taka per delivery. Customers want variations in payment policy because they want to pay fewer amounts when the quantity is less or when the restaurant is near to residence. For example, a person who lives near KFC does not like to pay 100 taka for delivering food from KFC. 30% consumers expect that they will get to order from other places rather than only from their own area because people are ordering food online to get more choices and more services by giving 100 taka per delivery. 83% customers agreed to recommend HungryNaki to friends and family because they believe that HungryNaki provides quality service. 16.67% people do not agree because they think like Facebook, it will also stop people socializing as foods are ordered home. 50% people are still keeping their faith on HungryNaki because they are highly satisfied with their online services as well as they are creating new opportunity for the Bangladeshi people to get food from their residence. They are making life easier. 13 % 16 people have given average feedback because of service charges and delayed deliveries. However, still nobody has given any negative feedback about HungryNaki’s services. 8. BUILDING CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS Customers’ satisfaction is the key to success in any business; it gradually increases customer retention rate. In today’s business, it is not enough to just satisfy the customer, but it is also important to build relationship with customer by delighting them through the services. HungryNaki is an online food delivery service which not only focuses on delivering of the food but also on building relationship with their customers by providing them with extra facilities. Goals of Hungrynaki to build customer relationship: Acquiring customer: to acquire customers, HungryNaki follows the following: New Year SMS: they send New Year SMS to their existing customers and also potential customers so that customers feel good about their service. Sponsorship: they sponsor different events which are related with their target consumers. In this process, they not only provide money to the organizer of that particular event but also involve with the process of that event, so that they can identify their potential customers and also promote their brand. For example: in BRAC University, they sponsored Club Fair Spring 2014 and promoted their brand through burger competition and distributed free delivery coupon to everyone so that people get idea about their brand and subscribe to their service. Others: they also promote their brand and create more customers for their brand through billboards, social media and also feature in daily newspapers so that consumers get idea about them and get interested to purchase their product. Because they believe in visibility, they want to promote their brand in a way that will keep them in a higher stand than their competitors. Satisfying customer: it is very important to satisfy the customers if any company wants to do business. For customer satisfaction, HungryNaki pursues the following: 17 Loyalty Card: they are planning to bring up a Loyalty Card. This card can be redeemed. The card will be known as HUNGRY CARD. People who order more will be able to earn points and even if the customers do not have money, they can order via this card. It is almost like a pre-paid card. This card will be effective from April 2014. Through this they are offering membership to their customers. This will make customers feel special and a part of the organization which will ultimately result in higher satisfaction. Maintaining Customer Privacy: they maintain customer privacy which provides confidence to the customers that it is a well maintained organization and that their information will not be leaked. Not all employees in their office have access to customer information. Only the people who handle orders can see customer information in their system. So, it is creating satisfaction among the customers. Retaining Customer: It is very difficult for a business to retain customers. To reduce the switching effect of customers, HungryNaki provides customers with some special facilities: Reward facilities: they give special off for their special customers, discounts on a high amount of buy etc. For example they provide Eid gifts, birthday gifts and sorry flowers to their relatives and near friends on behalf of their customers. Providing replacement services: Replacement of foods on complains, re-delivering the food, compensations are made. For example, if they fail to provide the exact order on delivery, they provide customers with extra products as part of their compensation planning. For example, if they fail to deliver burger on time, they provide extra French fries to amend their mistakes and also to make consumers happy about their service. Enhancing customers: The end result shows how strong the relationship is with customers. To build a strong relationship, they upgrade the website in different ways. For instance, on weekly basis, HungryNaki upgrades their web page where they come up with the restaurants who are giving discounts on purchasing their food. 18 Figure: Website upgrade with weekly discount offers Customer preferences: On a weekly basis, a customer who has placed the highest amount of orders receives a bouquet and a “Thank You” card. This helps HungryNaki to enhance customer loyalty and close the gaps. Special offer: HungryNaki offers free delivery service to all orders on days when Bangladesh Cricket Team has a scheduled match in the T20 World Cup. This makes customers happy. Customer’s benefits: 19 Social benefit: using website helps consumers to build a better social class in front of the other non-users because they are pretty much close to technology and can order food from anywhere just by clicking. Confidence benefit: they are also likely to build some confidence among the other nonusers as they get special care from the restaurants and certain amount of price off while others do not. Moreover, they have the confidence of getting the food anywhere they want because they know that they will not make any mistakes and will provide the food on time. Special treatment: Getting special treatments, like getting a cup cake or certain amount of price offs after ordering a large number of foods in a month can really make customers feel very special in front of others. 9. SERVICE RECOVERY HungryNaki follows several service recovery strategies for satisfying the dissatisfied customers. They believe increasing responsiveness in service recovery will enhance customer loyalty. To satisfy dissatisfied customers, they send different food for free and do follow-up phone calls after 1 hour of delivery when food is received after 60 minutes as promised. [The reason behind this perspective is to make sure that service does not fail second time. Customers also feel that company is giving importance to them in terms of tailoring.] Whenever customers are dissatisfied with the food itself, the food that is delivered is exchanged with some new food. [If the customer finds out that the delivered food got stale or due to inappropriate packaging the food got misplaced, then HungryNaki is the one to take liability and they exchange the ordered food with new food.] They send gifts to dis-satisfied customers. [In cases like delayed delivery, the customer gets too angry as they wait for an hour for the food. The COO shared an incidence with us that once two girls did not get the order in 60 minutes. The delivery man reached their door after one hour twenty minutes. The customers were initially dissatisfied, but HungryNaki recovered the failure by delivering a bouquet of roses to the same customers for free as a symbol of apology. 20 They give compensation or refund to customers. [HungryNaki believes that they are the one to take the responsibility for any failure. A situation was such that a customer ordered burger and coleslaw from a restaurant. The employee in the restaurant forgot to put the coleslaw in the box and so HungryNaki delivered only the burger to the customer. When the customer discovered there was no coleslaw, he complained to HungryNaki and they contacted the owner of the restaurant. It was later found that it was the employee’s fault who forgot to box the coleslaw. So that very night, Hungry Naki sent that customer a box containing coleslaw and did not take any delivery charge. Also, the price for the coleslaw was not taken. For customers who are dissatisfied, they send personalized letters with explanation of why the service failure took place and also sends cards. [HungryNaki believes that it is their duty to provide adequate explanations to their customers. They provide with enough reasons for a particular situation in which the service went wrong.] 10. SERVICE DEVELOPMENT AND DESIGN Business Strategy Development: HungryNaki is a new company and have entered into new market segment where this sort of business was not so popular among the Bangladeshi consumers. The vision statement of Hungrynaki is to “deliver food to the Bangladeshi citizen in Dhaka city”. Besides, the strategy taken by HungryNaki is to take the advantage of technology and to help the consumers eat food or entertain guest by ordering food from their residence, office or other place through HungryNaki website. New service strategy development: The following are the ideas in sequence by which HungryNaki has developed its business: They will provide the service through website by which the consumers can connect with them for ordering food from desired restaurants in Dhaka city. The pricing of delivering the food will be very low. Moreover, the delivery charge will be fixed and the quantity of the foods will not affect the service cost that they are providing. For example, if customers order worth Tk. 5000 and Tk. 500, delivery charges for both deliveries will be Tk. 100. 21 They will target the niche market segments for their services. Basically they are targeting online customers like Facebook users who are more likely to use the website for ordering the food rather than going outside by themselves. Following the lead climbing approach, HungryNaki started their business from a small part of Gulshan to reduce the risk and also to minimize the cost and time of delivery and to be safe in this new business. By using lead climbing approach, they would then expand their business by providing services to different places if the demand gets higher in a short time. They will have two type of payment, one is cash on delivery and another is card/online payment. Online payment will not be taken directly; it has to be either a bank or a third party gateway. SSL Commerce serves as a gateway to online payment. HungryNaki is not a financial organization, so customers will not pay them directly when paying online. Online banks for international payments will be DBBL and BRAC Bank. Idea development: They provide 2 types of services: REGULAR HOME DELIVERY and CATERING SERVICE. Regular delivery is prompt service (order and get delivery). Catering involves pre-ordering for many people; for example, during small events and occasions. They will provide service online and for their delivery they will use motorcycle or minivan depending on the quantity of the orders. They will manage to keep the price low by restricting the consumer to order food from their zonal restaurants. For example, if the consumer is from Gulshan 1, then he or she can only order food from the Gulshan 1 restaurants; they cannot order from restaurants located in Dhanmondi. They will deliver the food on time because they are only taking the order from a particular zone so they can reach their client within their time limit of 60 minutes. Their service is not 24/7 because restaurants are not open 24/7. Currently they do not offer any service for breakfast delivery. Concept development: The reasons behind their concept development are as follows: 22 Try to make it convenient for people to get from home rather than waiting in the long queue of restaurants. Moreover, due to traffic jams, it has become quite hazardous for the people to move physically in Dhaka city. Therefore they are trying to save people from wasting their times in the traffic jams after their long day at office or universities. According to them, HungryNaki is unique because there are not much e-commerce companies and food delivery service is even smaller. KhanaHero was a company that started at the same time as HungryNaki but had to shut down after 3 months. However, a new company named FoodPanda has started to operate along with HungryNaki at this moment. KhanaHero which had international touch had to collapse after operating for 3 months in Bangladesh because they did not have the knowledge and the experience that is required for operating in the Bangladeshi culture. Moreover, they only tried to provide service in the conference centers and they failed to maintain the services they thought they could provide to the Bangladeshi consumers. So HungryNaki adapted to the needs and wants of customers within Dhaka city. HungryNaki is a 100% Bangladeshi company. Everything in their company has been done in-house, when other companies have always looked to take help from outside professionals for developing their services. Besides, they work 7 days a week, the only holiday they have is on Eid because people never stop eating. Above all, the prices are affordable because they have foods of all price ranges and they are providing both online and offline services to get the payments. However, other companies like FooodPanda only use offline services as a mean of payment. HungryNaki has been operating for last 6 months in this sector and they are also the first movers in this sector, so they could not provide us with any financial information as well as we could not find any other good competitors where we can predict their financial data to produce the cost benefit analysis. Implementation, Test Marketing and Commercialization: 23 At first they develop the website and test it by providing services in a small are like Banani and Gulshan. After getting success, they expand their service by providing services in a small scale like Bashundhara, Baridhara, Gulshan and Banani. After getting positive feed backs and results, now they are operating commercially in 20 different areas in Dhaka city. Post introduction evaluation has not been done yet because they are only operating for last 6 months. However, after providing services for 1 year they will also follow the same procedures like others. 11. INTEGRATED SERVICE MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS Integrating marketing communications always poses a great challenge for marketers of tangible goods, so the challenge is multiplied when it is approached for service marketing. Service marketers must ensure that their services - the offerings of which can be lost in words at times – and the accompanying message is integrated in all forms of communications that is picked up by the customers of the business be it advertising, personal selling, online interactions or promises made by service providers. Since its inception 6 months ago, HungryNaki.com has been making numerous efforts to enhance its outreach to customers in Dhaka and initiate communications with them for marketing its services. The company has been using various approaches to that end such as advertising in newspapers, promoting its services online in social networking sites and also using personal selling to a certain extent to expand its customer base. Since HungryNaki has only recently begun operations and is relatively small serving only the Dhaka city customer base. As such, the firm is able to easily integrate its messages into uniformity and communicate effectively its services to customers. The messages of the business are communicated using the following channels: Facebook – HungryNaki considers the social media site key to its communications with customers as it is the most relevant to the service it is offering – HungryNaki is in itself an online food delivery service. Facebook has been at the forefront of the company’s efforts to generate an expanding customer base and is evidenced by the 100,000 likes on 24 the company’s page at the time of writing of this report. It is the primary and only channel alongside the company website that updates customers on the dynamic service and creates relationships with them. Advertisements: The company has taken to mass advertising by putting up billboards in prime locations of Dhaka city such as a large one at the Kakoli intersection of the Banani area. It also has regular ads in top dailies such as The Daily Star and Prothom Alo, usually getting space in the first 2 pages. Figure: Current billboard ad at the Kakoli intersection of the Banani area. Awareness: HungryNaki has been trying to create awareness of its services by running articles of its operations in youth themed magazines and food related sections of newspapers. It also performs promotional activities such as participating in occasions and sponsoring events. Personal selling: Employees of HungryNaki try to sell their company’s service offerings to people they know, people they come across and influential people in different social circles. They are aware of the fact that convincing a single customer can have a chain effect leading to more customers adopting the company’s services. 25 HungryNaki has a great task of integrating all of the above approaches of communicating with customers so that the service messages reaching customers from the varied sources are all uniform and does not lead to any miscommunication. HungryNaki’s service offerings are more dynamic than many other service companies due to the fact that food is something for which tastes change regularly and the company has to continually offer new food variations as well as price variations to match customers’ needs and occasions. For example, the company Facebook page may announce that during the final game of the T20 tournament, HungryNaki will offer 50% discount on all its deliveries. This update has to be integrated with the website in the form of a visible announcement or at least the payment option must reflect the update, or else customers will experience a large gap in service quality. Until now, the company has been able to maintain the online integration smoothly. All of HungryNaki’s communications have one thing in common: they invoke the claim that customers will be able to get food at their convenience ensuring food and service quality to the best of their capability at the same time. They make promises but avoid overpromising customers. Their services are not covering all of Dhaka as of yet and they admit to that fact on their Facebook page ensuring customers that physical expansion is coming soon but also mention that customers may have to wait a while. They are also cautious in all their communication channels such as phone calls and employee interactions to mention that their responsibility is delivery and food quality variations result from the side of the restaurants and not the company itself. As mentioned earlier, HungryNaki is a very dynamic service offering and as such its offerings are modified on a regular basis. Every employee of the company has to be aware of every change as soon as it takes place so that the company message communicated is consistent across the board and customers are touched with an integrated marketing approach. The customer care officer has to know of the 15% discount that will be offered this coming Friday so that when customers call inquiring about it, the officer can give a prompt response. If the message was not integrated and the employee was unaware of the offer, he/she would have to ask the customer to wait while consulting the supervisor, creating an impression of an underdeveloped service or even business. On the other hand, the IT officer has to be informed at the same time so that the website and Facebook page can be updated simultaneously. According to COO Mr. Tausif 26 Ahmad, the level of effective integrated service marketing communications has been achieved at HungryNaki due to them having a flat organization and an informal work setting so that everyone is talking to everyone else openly regarding work. Due to the compact size of the organization, it is also possible for them to have group announcements of changes in service and it is actually ensured that such a short session takes place every time there is a change in service provision, which usually occurs every once or twice a week. Communication within the company is made easy because all departments work simultaneously. The customer service team takes orders. The IT team develops the website and the whole system. On the other hand, the marketing team works in close contact with the customer service team so that customer expectations can be well learned. The business development team (also called the sales team) brings in contract with restaurants. It has also been learnt that the accounts team works in contact with the customer service team and the business development team so that all transactions are recorded properly and appropriate financial analyses are made. 12. WAY FORWARD FOR THE COMPANY IN DELIVERING BEST QUALITY OF SERVICES 27 The following table shows comparisons between HungryNaki and its immediate competitor, FoodPanda. There are aspects in which HungryNaki lacks behind and they should focus on improving in those aspects: 1) 2) 3) 4) 5) FoodPanda Delivers in 65 HungryNaki Hungrynaki minutes. delivers in 60 Comparison Hungry Naki minutes. Foodpanda Both iOS and Only android app Foodpanda android app available. available. Payment method is Hungry Naki Payment is through only cash on MasterCard, visa, delivery American Express, Hungry Naki bKash & cash on Foodpanda Delivery charge is delivery. Delivery charge is Foodpanda FREE. 100 taka per delivery. Hungry Naki Operates from Operates from Foodpanda 11am to 11 pm 11am to 10 pm HungryNaki One of the first recommendations we can make for HungryNaki.com is that they need to widen the area of service provision within Dhaka City such as Motijheel and the rest of the city. This was agreed upon by our interviewee as well. It is important because there are numerous looking to avail this service for some time now and if they cannot receive it, they will certainly turn to competitors, leading to a loss of a large chunk of potential customers. The service as of yet only operates up until 10 PM. This service duration needs to be increased up to midnight due to the fact that Bangladeshis these days are of the habit of having their dinner late into the night, especially on weekends and this service modification will delight existing customers and draw in more new ones. 28 We would also like to recommend them to increase advertisements on TV and radio since this is where they will receive a lot of exposure to customers from various walks of life. Advertisements at partner restaurants must also be initiated so that customers can recall later when ordering that their favorite restaurant is enlisted with the service. This could be in the form of stand banners or door stickers saying “HungryNaki Food Partner”. HungryNaki has a disclaimer mentioning that food quality is the responsibility of the restaurant that prepared it and the service is not liable for problems in food preparation even though they do attempt service recovery in these cases. The company should announce this message more visibly so that customers are aware of this fact and are less likely to express disappointment in the service delivery due to understanding of the situation. A tracking system of the service’s current status, if implemented, would make life easier for both the customer and the service provider, since both are equally aware of the current service states. Such a system in place would create a lot of efficiency for employees since they will have to answer fewer calls answering basic inquiries. The employees need to be trained to be able to make decisions on their own since the current employees still consult their supervisor regarding basic matters. This leads to a lot of time lost and the employees never become self-dependent or adaptable. Unified weekly meetings are also critical in keeping every employee in touch with the performance of the company and the upcoming changes. HungryNaki can come up with an iOS app because their competitor, FoodPanda has both iOS and Android apps. Also, they could reduce or omit the delivery charge because from the survey, customer dissatisfaction was the most with the delivery charge. As Bangladesh is a country of culture and religion, they should start offering delivery services on times like Ramadan. This will help them boost up because Muslim customers might want some good food delivery during Sehri and Iftar. Also, they should focus on other religions. For example, during a puja, they could give offers like “Order thrice and get a free box of special sweets”. 13. CONCLUSION 29 HungryNaki.com may not be the first service of its kind in the Bangladeshi service market scenario, but it certainly looks like it is doing things right, succeeding where others have failed or are struggling. The magic behind its success story is one simple ingredient – customer defined customer service. Throughout our conversations with the company’s COO as well as hearing of customer experiences right from the customers themselves, we got to discover that the company understands that customer is king. Since it is a relatively new service in Bangladesh with very few competitors, it has been crafting a realistic approach to developing customer expectations and then focusing all its efforts on delivering close to those expectations, so that at a minimum customer satisfaction is achieved and by means of up close and personal customer interactions, has had good rates of customer delight outcomes. The HungryNaki business model can be a potential example of best practices for other services, especially in terms of its customer relationship and recovery practices. From our research into the company policies regarding approaching customer needs as well as responding to service failures, we’ve discovered that the company takes each one of its customer’s needs seriously down to the personal level, catering to them individually at times if there is a risk that the customer may go unsatisfied by means of rewarding them for their dissatisfaction. If this practice continues even as the company grows, it can thrive and prosper in this expanding market. HungryNaki has shown promise in its endeavors thus far but it is still in its early days, having been in the arena for only 6 months and it has to go long way and at the same time ensure sustainability of operations in varying times of economic and political spheres. The recommendations we’ve provided in this report were in response to the business shortcomings cited by the company COO as well as our experiences with the service and also customer revelations. If the company can bank on its best practices and at the same time work out the bugs that may manifest into bigger troubles over time, then the business will prevail and prove to be a mainstay and even the biggest player in the industry alongside other service giants within Bangladesh. 30 14. APPENDIX – A: Service Design: How consumers order online Open the web page (Avg. time: 5 seconds) Logging in and placing order (Avg. time: 4 mins) 31 Payment in card (Avg. Time: 2 mins) No Choose Cash on delivery (Avg. 30 sec.) Yes Call from manager & Email to confirm the order (Avg. 10 min) Deliver (Avg. 42 min) (Get the order) Calling the consumers for reconfirmation (Avg. 2 min) Food is satisfactory (Avg 1 min) No Yes Collecting feedback (Avg. 1min) End 15. APPENDIX – B: How the company processes the order Getting the order (Avg 1 min) Manually check the list (Avg. 3 min) Give call to customer to confirm (Avg 1 min) 32 Customer manager Place order in restaurant (Avg. 3 min) Ready to give food (Avg 20 min) No Yes Appoint deliveryman to deliver (Avg. 1 min) Customer relationship team Confirm the food is ready (Avg 1 min) Delivery man Deliveryman delivers the food (Avg. 30 min) System Update the order has been delivered (Avg. 2 min) Feedback from customers (Avg 1min) 16. APPENDIX – C: Bar Diagrams and Pie Charts End Customer manager 33 Features of HungryNaki that attracted customers 17% 20% Customer Fast Name Reputation Overall Website Time Service Service Response 17% 20% 10% 7% 10% Is the delivery service available in your area? 100% 80% 87% 60% 40% 20% 13% 0% Yes No Was the food quality different than that of in the restaurants? 100% 90% 80% 60% 40% 20% 0% 10% Yes No 34 Was there anything wrong with the service? 100% 90% 93% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% 7% Yes No Will you recommend HungryNaki to friends and family? 17% Yes No 83% 35 Overall service satisfaction Excellent Good 13% Average Poor 50% Very Poor 37% Level of satisfaction for customer care 1 2 3 (Scale: 1 = highly dissatisfied, 5 = highly satisfied) 4 36 Level of satisfaction regarding delivery 1 2 3 (Scale: 1 = highly dissatisfied, 5 = highly satisfied) 37 Response % to the following statement 1 2 (Scale: 1 = Strongly Agree, 5 = Strongly Disagree) 38 17. APPENDIX – D: Questionnaire for customers This questionnaire has been prepared by a group of students from BRAC University to survey on the service of HungryNaki.com, a food delivery company. Please complete the survey. It will not take more than 5 minutes. Thank you for the time and assistance. 1. Are you a food enthusiast? Yes / No 2. Do you prefer dining at a restaurant or having the same food at home? ____________________________________ 3. How many times have you used the service of HungryNaki? a) Once b) 2-4 times c) 5-8 times d) More than 8 times 4. Have you used any other food delivery service? If yes, please mention which one. _____________________________________ 5. Is the delivery service available in your area? Yes / No 6. What feature of HungryNaki attracted you to use it? _____________________________________ 7. Was the food quality different than that of in the restaurants? Yes / No 8. Was there anything wrong with the service? If yes, please mention what went wrong. _____________________________________ 9. Did you report it to their customer care service? Yes / No 10. Please rate the following which are related to customer care in terms of satisfaction: Highly Highly Dissatisfied Satisfied 1 2 3 4 5 1. Customer care responsiveness 2. Solution provided by the customer care 3. Overall service provided by the customer care 11. Please rate the following in terms of satisfaction which is related to delivery of the food. Highly Highly Dissatisfie Satisfie d 2 3 4 d 39 1 5 1. Behavior of the delivery man 2. Rate of service charge 3. Payment method 12. Please state your level of agreement with the following statements: Strngly Strongly Agree Disagre 1 2 3 4 e 5 1. The food was delivered within the expected time 2. The food was still warm 3. It was easy to place order 4. The food that was ordered was actually delivered 13. Please tick which factor(s) of the service provided by HungryNaki needs improvement? a) Time management b) Lesser service charge c) Keeping the food warm d) Delivery location range e) Payment method 14. Will you recommend your friends or family to avail the service of HungryNaki? Yes / No 15. Please tick on the following attributes to rate the overall service provided by HungryNaki starting from placing the order till delivery: Excellent Good Average Poor Very poor