In an initiative entirely by students of PGDM2 a series of guest lectures were conducted from 9-14th September 2009. The lectures were broadly on the theme of Service Quality and HR initiatives in service sector organizations.
Mr. Sukhjeet Singh Bhatti, Sr. Partner, Max New York Life Insurance Company Ltd spoke on "Service Quality & H.R. Processes in Insurance Industry". In an informative session, Mr. Bhatti elaborated on Service Quality issues in the insurance sector and the importance of customer facing employees in ensuring customer satisfaction. He spoke about the steps taken by the company to ensure proper recruitment based on right skills and attitudes, training, proper assessment and initiatives towards motivation and compensation. Stressing on the importance of the interaction between the customer and customer facing employee he mentioned that the only way to ensure this is proper training. He said that in their company on an average an employee spends 40% time in training and the rest on field. In free wheeling question and answer session at the end of the session Mr. Bhatti spoke about the stupendous opportunities for growth and employment in the insurance sector.
Ms. Maithili Iyer, Assistant Manager, Global Alliances, Tech Mahindra spoke on ‘Service Quality in IT Sector'. In a lively interaction with the audience Ms. Iyer emphasized that service quality is realized through key deliverables at every stage in the software development process. Since software expertise is something that is difficult for the client to assess a lot of effort goes in building credibility by arranging customer visits to the facility and other measures. She also spoke about the customer facing employees as embodying the company brand and hence the importance of internal branding. Ms Iyer also outlined the software marketing process and brought out differences in this and the traditional marketing mix elements. She said the marketing of software services is done largely through presence and networking at industry events, generating referrals through these, pursuing referrals to generate Requests for Information (RFIs) and Requests for Proposals (RFPs). It is then the job of the marketing department to ensure delivery standards as per terms mentioned in the proposal. At the end of the project efforts are made to ensure post purchase satisfaction in order to generate a positive customer referral. This is converted into a case study and press release to further the marketing effort.
Ms. Sonali Bagla, Account Manager, Radio Mirchi, Pune spoke on ‘The Future of Communication – the new Radio Revolution’. She spoke about the various entities that make up this service and also the sources of revenue generation. Ms Bagla emphasized that in the context of radio ‘content’ is king and drives perceptions of service quality. Revenue generation for various slots through advertisements is also driven by the content and popularity of the programme accompanying that slot. In the question and answer session that followed the lecture she enthusiastically answered several queries on radio as medium and career opportunities therein.
Mr. Abhishant Pant , Commercial Marketing Manager , HSBC, Pune spoke on ‘Service Quality in the Banking Sector’. In a completely unstructured yet extremely engaging lecture Mr. Pant traced the evolution of the Banking sector as we know it today and how quality parameters changed at every phase of evolution. He also emphasized that notions of service quality in banking are driven by the evolution of that sector in the country’s economy. He brought out differences in banking activities in the developed world and emerging economies such as ours. He spoke about the importance of building relationships and how service quality initiatives are segment specific and driven by costs to service a customer. Mr. Pant regaled the audience with several examples and also anecdotes from his personal experience to substantiate this.
Ms. Anagha Chaphalkar, HR Manager, Bioanalytical Techologies.spoke on ‘Recruitment and training activities in the Health Care Solutions industry.’ An alumnus of IMDR, batch of 1997, Ms. Chaphalkar said that the main resource of a service based organization is the skills and competencies its human resources. This is more so for a software organization. She emphasized that that the role of HR in such a context is to identify gaps in skills and competencies for the present and also to meet future objectives of the organization. She also stressed the importance of a ‘HR data matrix’ and the importance of ‘unlearning’ in a dynamic business environment. In a lively interaction at the end of the lecture she answered several queries from students on different themes. Ms Chaphalkar commented that the session was for her a welcome change from the usual queries regarding compensation and pay package that she routinely responds to! All the speakers commended the lively participation from students through intelligent and well articulated questions. |
