Service Operations

Zipcar

1. What service attributes does Zipcar offer its customers? What is it asking its customers to give up?

* Convenience - customers can make reservations online without having to purchase a car but rent one and pick up in a nearby area/neighborhood. Customers just needed to pay monthly fees and put in a deposit to be able to have access.

* Flexibility - customers can make reservations online and for certain time frames (does not have to be for the full day). Customers can also choose the type of car to drive (BMW, Honda, etc). Reservations could also be made minutes before or a year before online or via phone. There were different plans that members could purhase depending on usage.

* Easy to Use - The members used a car to open the Zipcar for usage and made it easier to coordinate operations.

* Cost saving - customers did not have to pay for gas, insurance, parking spots, etc. It can also be a low-cost alternative to renting a car or ownership.

* Feel good about yourself - Not wasteful approach - car sharing and help reach environmental goals.

Zip car asks its customers to give up:

* Security/Dependability (Car Ownership) of having a car and being on time. The timeliness of your rental can often be dependent on the individual before you returning the car. The individual beforehand typically can affect your overall experience.

* Additionally, Zipcar asks its customers to give up having face-to-face customer service. All reservations and issues needed to be resolved on the phone or online which could cause delays depending on the volume.

* Limited availability - This could potentially be an issue in the event the cars in your area are sold out. Although Zipcar is in different cities around the US, they are still pretty limited and may be in smaller markets that could benefit from this service.

3. What is the funding mechanism for Zipcar?

It seems that the funding mechanism is to charge the application through membership and usage fees. Additionally, the parking was considered a benefit since many parking garages felt it was an added benefit they could offer their customers.

4. What mechanism does Zipcar have in place to manage customer behavior? What, specifically, are those mechanisms intended to accomplish? What adjustments, if any, would you recommend that the company make to these mechanisms?

Currently, Zipcar customers agree not to smoke, leg their dogs lose or leave food in the car and violators are subject to fines and repeat offenders could get expulsion. These mechanisms are used to provide an incentive for the customer to keep the car clean for the next customer whom he or she will be sharing a car with. In my opinion, I would probably make the consequences more severe to ensure that more customers are in compliance with keep the vehicles clean. I would also see if something could be implemented where the customer is notified that another customer will be using the car following their usage and charge higher costs if an individual did not return the car on time. This is an important aspect because the seamless service could be interrupted if customers deviate from the timeframes he or she has rented for the car.

TSA

1. What are traveler's expectations from the TSA service?

The traveler's expectations are that TSA provide security screen process quickly, consistently efficiently to ensure that passengers' safety is not jeopardized.

2. What do you dislike about the TSA service?

Personally, I dislike the attitude and customer service you receive from the TSA agents. Many of the individuals are not very helpful and often are inconsistent about the screening procedures, which confuse customers. Additionally, the randomly selected passenger for more thorough screening slows down the process for everyone especially individuals who are first time travelers or traveling with families.

3. Should Vicky have gone around Karen? What are the underlying causes of the conflict?

I think there are both two sides to the argument. When taking egalitarianism into consideration, Vicky should not have gone around Karen as Karen and her family, were in line first. However, by going around Karen she would have made the process move quicker since Karen had to manage the security procedures for both her kids and herself which slowed down the process. I believe the underlying cause is that they could segment different lines to help streamline the overall process so break it down by the following - individual travelers, family travelers and customize to help decrease the pain points that cause decreases in efficiency. Additionally, if the TSA really wanted to see how improvements to the process could be made they could segment their population even further such as travelers with electronics, travelers without electronics, travels with liquids or without liquids. Although they may have to open more lines or create more staff, it would make the overall process smoother and would decrease the amount of frustration for all travelers.

4. Consider the 5 types of customer induced variability describted in "breaking the trade off..."article. In what