ABSTRACT
As a core of this book considers the provision and management of service, we believe it helpful at this early stage to provide one or more definitions of service and to discuss these. Service use is often immediate and (with few exceptions) is directly experienced by the user. Conventional examples of services include personal services such as a manicure, a haircut, and dental care, all of which are provided to the customer in that customer’s presence. By way of contrast, personal items such as nail extensions, hairpieces, wigs and toupees, and dentures can have specialist work done to them in the absence of the user. Hair extensions, wigs, and toupees can be styled overnight; natural hair comes and goes with the client. Similarly, a pair of shoes left today with the cobbler can be collected at a later date. A service is often perishable, given and received in real time and in situ. Invariably, service involves a face-to-face encounter between a provider and the user. For example, the service provided in a restaurant by waiting staff is at the customer’s table. The chef tends to remain in the kitchen, although few would dispute the importance of the chef’s participation in the dining out experience. Indeed, the chef’s contribution is a vital component of this experience, encompassing as it does menu design, selection and purchase of ingredients, food preparation and cooking, and (immediately before serving) arrangement of the food on the plate. Thus, while absent from the immediate vicinity of the customer, the chef is distanced by time (in earlier parts of the process) and space (when the customer is à table). An exception occurs, for example, in a Cordon Bleu restaurant where the chef works in the restaurant rather than the kitchen and cooks dishes at the diner’s table. Somewhat predictably, the closer proximity of the chef to the diner (and the absence of waiting staff) reduces the time and space between the person responsible for preparation and the customer. In so doing, the restaurant raises the intimacy levels of personal service. Invariably, a higher price reflects the increased level of culinary expertise, the atmosphere of exclusivity, and the perceived higher quality of the service experience.
