#serv325 fall2014

On Wednesday, the 29th of October, Brian Gillespie came to visit us in class and give a talk later that day. It was incredible to hear his perspective of what working in the industry looks like. We learn all of these tools in the Service Department and always have to use them. The biggest thing I gained from Brian was how many various ways you can use the same processes but map them in whichever way we see fit. He showed us some incredible examples of how they tailored service mapping skills to fit the project or particular company. Furthermore, it was great to get his feedback and present our work to him in class. 

Jeannie Fung lucked out and got the Director of Business Development and Content to respond to us and schedule a skype interview. We had many many questions for him and he was incredibly enthusiastic and helpful. We were able to clarify the details of how the service functions so we can better understand what kind of key performance indicators this company would have. Furthermore, he was very excited to see our work as it progresses! Our initial impressions of Zicasso being an awesome company were surely correct! We are very excited to speak to Steve Yu again towards the end of our process.

During the first week of 325 we were given a list of different "technologies" to research and present to the class- Pecha Kucha style. I chose to research the Internet of Things since it is something that has always seemed really vague to me. It turns out that the Internet of Things (IOT), though complex as a whole, is actually very simple when broken down to its basic components. The IOT is the interconnectivity and communication between "things" (Products, microchipped organisms, etc) and devices, both automated and manually controlled. This "connection" can be achieved through several platforms but I focused on RFID chips. These are microscopic to dime sized chips that can be placed in/on almost any product or thing. They send little radio frequency "pings" back to their main computer and can be programed to collect a wide variety of data. A common use for this is tracking devices. For example, if you lose your phone its location is pinged back to your tracking software from the RFID chip embedded inside it. A more bizarre example is how modern day ranchers track the health of their cattle. Cows can have a RFID chip injected under their skin. Once implanted the chip can detect body temperature and several other factors that help the rancher determine if the cow is sick, pregnant, etc. To summarized, the Internet of Things is the communication and interconnectivity of devices- "things"- through several facets, such as RFID chips. 

  Pulizzi, Joe. Epic Content Marketing. McGraw-Hill, 2014. 280. Print.

For a business to not only succeed but survive, they must establish goals, set strategic directions, make decision happen, and monitor behavior & state as moving forward. This monitoring while moving along the process is when the different measurement types come along. Within the sales service industry; businesses need to outsmart competition, sell more products & close more deals. Within the social media service industry; businesses need to drive customer engagement, build their brand in the correct direction & measure impact of each interaction. There are different kinds of measures for firms, which are split into hard and soft. The soft measures are more difficult because they are the most intangible and deal with more customer interaction and retrieving feedback. Hard measures are more on the side of numbers and 'tangibles' in a way, which are a lot easier to track. Measuring techniques need to target every area of stakeholders within a business, although different ones are used for each. Overall success comes from overall growth and moving forward.

It is a collaborative environment, we would love to hear about what you are up to. 

After reading through a case study dealing with remote support, I analyzed the case and was able to connect technologies to the process of the company that would benefit them immensely. Remote support software is a major necessity for a lot of businesses. Breakthrough technology that is developing more as the future approaches. Types of data collecting would benefit this company because they would be able to track customer profiles more efficiently and maybe even know the type of IT issue the customer is calling about and conclude a solution by the time the phone call comes in.

For the research assignment, Aniela and I dealt with the topic of corporate design and building brands for services through marketing. What is all too ironic, is that my principles of marketing class was even more helpful on this topic, than our services marketing handbook. The marketing book spells it out in more digestible wording than Lovelock's version, and photos help a lot. I found it very interesting to learn about all the branding and packaging techniques that service providers use to set expectations in order to attract customers. An awesome example of this is all the package deals sold on groupon, and the getaway specials. Of course we are all familiar with vacation or spa packages and what that means, but I had never put thought or research into why or how those packages come into existence.