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Ok… So you must be thinking where can I find a free admission amusement in the Central PA area (unless you have connections at Hershey or DW)?  There is only one Knoebel’s Amusement Park.  I worked there for 7 summers of which the last two I had the opportunity to help out with inventory for a section of the food service stands.  Although,  there were a significant amount of products that we had to order, ice cream was by far the hardest for two main reasons.  The first was because we had fairly limited freezer storage space.  The second was because of the high variability of sales based on the weather and population (Older people seemed to like Butter Pecan and kid’s seemed to like the Cotton Candy flavor).  So, we always had to customize our weekly order based on the weather and the types of picnic’s that were coming up that week.  As the first year went by we began keeping track of where/when we ran short or had overage and put it in a spreadsheet to reference the following year.  The second year, although weather still played a large factor, we were able to get a better handle on ordering (since most of the big picnic’s on are the same weekend each summer).  This process of using the prior year’s under/overage to help forecast the current year allowed us to better maintain a supply of each of the flavors (and keep your great Aunt Betty happy by always having Butter Pecan ice cream).

Have you ever been assigned a project and waivered on the question of “Is this project big enough to formally plan out?”  In my current role I have been given the on-going project of developing/maintaining all IT policy/procedure.  When I was first handed this project I did not think too much about setting up the framework for the policy or the order that the policies should be developed.  Then as I began writing policy it became very evident that I should have laid out the structure/hiearchy at the beginning since there were policies that built onto and drew content from each other.  The other issue that I ran into by not developing an overall plan was that as I began comparing each new policy that I was developing it was easy to notice the inconsistency between each.  The inconsistencies were most noticeable in the structure, context and layout.  With that said after drafting up and then reviewing my fourth or fifth policy it was evident that I needed to develop a policy framework that I would use going forward.  After developing this framework I went back through the old policies and retro-fitted them to align with the new layout, which was a fairly time consuming process as I had to rewrite some of the content and then pass it through the college’s approval process.  All this is mentioned to allude to the idea that if I would have used a better project management paradigm for developing these policies, such as a gantt chart in regards to the hiearchy and and a work break down structure in regards structure I would have ended up spending a lot less time developing these policies.

After I graduated from undergrad I had the opportunity to work part time for a relatively new IT company in Mechanicsburg called Fast-Teks.  When I was first hired by Fast-Teks I had no idea that it was a franchise (http://www.fastteks.com/franchise-opportunities.php), after all neither I, or any one else that I had talked to had heard of the them before.  So, I headed to my first call (think Geek Squad here) as an official “Fast Teks Service Rep” armed with a jump drive with a ton of software to solve “virtually any issue”.  I show up at the person’s house dressed in normal clothes not branded with any type of Fast-Teks appearal and fixed their PC in 2 hours.  So, as I am writing up my first invoice it dawned on me that I was charging this person $80 an hour (fairly steep if you ask me) for my services for a company that they had probably never even heard of before they looked in the Yellow Pages.  So, it made me question why didn’t this person have their PC serviced by a company with a more reputable (or at least familiar) name, such as The Geek Squad, Firedog, etc?  After all Fast-Teks does not have strong brand recognition or any type of mainstream advertising, but still they were able to find customers even though they were still charging around the same price as their Best Buy/Circuit City counterparts.  Here’s how…

The goal for Fast-Teks (at least at the local Mechanicsburg branch) was to provide their customer’s with quick and convenient service.  Quick because they almost always made “same day” guarantee’s on the repair and convenient because the person never had to leave their home since we came to them.  Fast-Teks had found the niche that allowed them to obtain business from customers that didn’t want to leave their house, but required an instant response.  So, the benefit this operating paradigm provided to the franchisee was a proven method of business that worked and allowed Fast-Teks to perpetuate their franchises to profitability.

What are some other key niche’s that you’ve seen in some of the lesser known franchises?

Ok I know that some of you may not know where/what Knoebel’s is so check out this link quick before you read on, for those that know what Knoebel’s is continuing reading on…

I spent most of my summer days from the age of 14-21 working at Knoebel’s (the only other option where I grew up was to bail hay…).  After my 5th year of working at there I had the opportunity to become a “Food Service Supervisor” (apply that famous quote from Anchorman here…).  During my stint as a supervisor I had the opportunity to make schedules for a few of the stands (Old Mill Ice Cream, Round Stand by the Haunted House, The Potatoe Barn, and a few others) and it was always tough to do because there were certain “kids” that you couldn’t put together no matter what as it just would not have ended up with a good outcome. Then there were a small number of employees that you could put anywhere and know that they would be able to work just fine.  So, if you are like me as you are thinking about this situation, you are probably saying why not just hire more of the good employees and get rid of the bad ones.  Great question!  The area surrounding Knoebel’s is for the most part sparsely populated, as there is not much else around other than Knoebel’s. So with this lack of a substantial employee pool (and not to mention that it was seasonal work so we couldn’t really attract “dedicated employees”) to choose from we typically had to settle for what we could get.

>>>Fast Forward 5 years to 2007>>>

My grandfather is now an employee at Knoebel’s since he retired and we started chatting last summer about how frustrated he was getting with the people he was working with in the stands.  I assured him that, that was nothing new and that it was hard to find people that would consistently show up for work, let alone actually do good work when they came.

>>>Fast Forward 1 year to 2008>>>

I remember talking to my grandfather not to long after Knoebel’s opened last year and asked him how things are going at the park and he mentioned that Knoebel’s started hiring students from outside the U.S. and “sponsoring” them to work there the summer.  He also mentioned about how polite and motivated these new employees were.  Needless to say he also mentioned that the manager that does the hiring in his area did not invite as a number of the “poor employees” from the year prior to come back.   So, even though they are a number of years behind in this type of outsourcing (Hershey, Dorney and others have been doing this for a long time) it is good to see Knoebel’s take steps to become more competitive and efficient with the way it hires their staff.

Are there other places where you have seen outsourcing that you wouldn’t have expected it?

This past November I had the opportunity to go to a conference in Orlando, which naturally means that the conference sponsored “planned fun activities” were at Disney/Universal Studios!  One of the nights we went to a place in Universal Studios where they brought us into what seemed to be a big movie theater but instead of having seats there was a big long queuing line that feed us through a set of double doors upfront.  We were headed there to eat and we had showed up right on time to get in to eat dinner.  I remember thinking that it was strange that we all had to wait in a long line (The conference booked the attraction so there was no one from the public that was allowed in), but hey I was not about to have a negative or complain, I was at Universal Studios!

So after about 5 or so minutes went by of standing in line waiting to get in, two “crew members” dressed in 1950’s style clothing came walking through the line and began entertaining eveyone in the line (about 400-500 people).  This programmed entertainment that was set up to take our minds off the wait did exactly what it was supposed to do (make everyone forget that they were “just waiting to get in”).  Probably about 15 - 20 minutes passed by (although it didn’t feel that way until I looked down at my watch) until they started letting people into the attraction.

As I look back on this experience through the view of ch.12’s topic “Managing Waiting Lines”, the approach of using animated waits surface.   The idea of keeping customers “occupied” while they wait to see the attraction is a great way to keep them happy, especially when the animated wait comes unexpectedly (I must admit I was slightly naive as I had never been to Disney/Universal before, so I wasn’t exactly any type of “show” before the meal).

How else have you seen “programmed waits”?  Were you able to detect (either during or after the fact) that it was a programmed wait?

I recently found out that my request to attend an IT Security conference in Atlanta had been approved.  So, I registered for the conference, booked the hotel and then “played the game” with orbitz, expedia, and the usair website to find the best ticket (basically the cheapest one that got me there earlier than 11PM.  After comparing the above sites for a plane ticket the cheapest I could find was $448 (this was around 9 am).  I was ready to book the ticket but found out that the “keeper of the credit card” was at training until 10:30 that morning so I had to wait to book the flight.  10:30 came around and I still had the $448 quote up from earlier that morning, but instead of booking the flight I decided to repeat the flight search again on orbitz.  I think you can guess what’s coming next… That search resulted in much cheaper tickets(all of which stated that there was “Only 1 ticket still available at the price”), these flights were not only cheaper but also had much more convenient departure and arrival times.  So, needless I booked a flight leaving mid morning for about half the price as the quote from earlier that same morning.

So, here’s my thoughts…

1. It makes sense that people would try to solidify travel plans earlier in the morning (8-10ish), because most people want to have all the details figured out.  So, once that period is over they would drop the prices with the mindset that people have logged on and purchased their tickets already.

2. Orbitz, expedia, usair and others might calculate the amount of traffic on the website  and adjust prices as such (i.e. if there are more than the average on the site it would make sense that they would raise the prices as logical it makes sense that there are more potential buyers viewing the product and vice versa if there are less on the site then the lower the prices would likely be).

Any other ideas?

Have you ever been in the mood to pig out at an all you can eat Chinese Buffet?  Well Lindsay and I definitely had that feeling this past Friday.  We were excited to go to a place called Chef Wong’s (right by the navy base in Mechanicsburg).  I hadn’t been there for a while and knew they had great food.  So, we pulled into the (nearly empty) parking lot around 6ish and went in only to find out that they didn’t have a dinner buffet. Now I don’t eat Chinese to often but I thought that the “buffet style” service was what they did best.  So, slightly taken back with the concept of no buffet, back to the car we went.  We both pulled out our phones and started up “Urbanspoon” and sorted through most of the Chinese places on the West Shore and finally found one that offered a dinner buffet.

New Forest Chinese was the new destination.  So with our stomach’s growling and thoughts of General Tso’s running through our heads we drove over to New Forest (In the Mechanicsburg Hampden Plaza).  We pulled in right in front of the store and headed in.  We were greeted at the door (and seated) by a little boy (probably not older than 12).  I am pretty sure it was a family run restuarant, so baring any child labor laws it didn’t throw us off too much. On our first trip up to the buffet area the quantities of almost all the food were very limited as it looked like they were just making enough to serve as people came in (which makes sense if there are only a few customers)  so we filled up and headed back to start eating.  The General Tso’s chicken was only slightly warm and tasted more like seasame chicken then Tso’s (It was really sweet).  But I was hungry and didn’t think to much about the quality.  But, the next trip presented some fairly fresh food from the kitchen and rice (slightly redeeming). Lastly, we moved onto a scant selection of desserts containing frost biten Rakestraws, creme puffs and what I think were “Almond” cookies. So, on that note we paid and then headed out (back to eat some Girl Scout cookies!!!).

The trip to New Forest Chinese for the buffet ranks as one of the worst selections for restaurants that I have chosen in a while.  The poor quality of the food made me wonder would it have really been that bad if it wasn’t buffet style?  I mean if you think about the service aspect of a buffet it’s to try to get as much food out the door as needed to keep the customers plates full, while sometimes skimping on quality.  But the service aspect of normal (a.k.a. non-buffet) restaurant where you order a single entree is to deliver a single item that will leave the customers with no other alternatives to their order (i.e. they can’t go back up to the buffet line if their Sweet and Sour Chicken is cold).

So what are your thoughts, have you ever went to a restaurant and ordered an item from the buffet and then went back at a later time and ordered that same item from the menu?  Did it taste the same?  Could you tell if it was better quality when ordered from the menu as an entree?

Every year where I work we have a new batch of around 750-800 students arrive on campus.  Almost all of these students have PC’s that need to be configured appropriately to ensure computability with our network (wired, wireless).  So, for the first few days as Freshmen begin arriving on campus a number of the employees in the IT department pitch in and help out our Student Computer Services team.

We setup two large rooms (one for check in/check out and one for configuring the PC’s)  as well as an area for the students to queue up to check in their PC’s.  The process works as follows:

1. Student enters main center entrance (only “main” way into the building) and enter queue
2. Greeter walks alongside queue and asks if there are any questions and is there to interact with new students/families of new students
3. Student gets to a check in station, fills in paper work (asks if any passwords to login, etc). Signs liability form
4. PC’s are then transported to the second (somewhat out of the way) room  in batches as they come in and put on shelves in order they were received.
5. This second room is setup in a way that typically, maximizes seating of employees in order to maximize output.
6. PC’s are taken off shelf in order.  They are configured and updated as applicable.
7. When a PC is completed, employee calls student and advises PC is ready
8. PC then goes back out to check in/check out room to be picked up.
9.  Student then comes to pick up and PC is scanned out of our possession.

This layout is setup in a way that allows for easy organization as well as being fairly efficient as PC’s are transferred to the different areas.   Although, this process has taken a few years to figure and it seems to change slightly each year this level of organization and layout seems to really help the process flow effectively.

Things to ponder…
-How often should a servicescape be redeveloped?
-What is the worst servicescape you have seen lately?

Quizno’s Free Sub
http://www.millionsubs.com/Reg.php

Ruby Tuesday’s Buy One Entree Get One Free
http://a2.slickdeals.net/attachment.php?attachmentid=175155&d=1234978495

The book mentions that one of the challenges in an environment that focuses on Customer-Dominated Encounters is finding a way to give customers complete control over the limited resource provided.  This customer control allows them to customize their experience to fit whatever options work best for them.  I am sure that we can all think of customer-dominated encounters but I want to hone in on one specifically, iTunes.

So,  how does iTunes relate to a customer dominated encounter you ask?  Well I’m glad you asked.  Think of the old way to buy music (pre-napster, pre-iTunes).  We all flocked in droves to Sam Goody, The Wall, etc.  then had to look around the store to find the album (and if they didn’t have it we had to go to another store) then finally stand in line and wait to pay for our new ‘NSync album to take it home and play on our CD player.  Where is the instant gratification with that?

>>Enter iTunes<<

iTunes has allowed us the option to have access to virtually an song whenever we want.  No longer do we have to go the store to buy music.  No longer do we have to buy the whole CD just for that one good song.  No longer do we have to wait.  iTunes has allowed us to customize (and expedite) the whole way in which we buy music.  It allows the customers to control the buying experience however they want by giving a very high degree of flexibility.  Have you used iTunes lately? If so what parts of the customer-dominated encounter do you think will keep you coming back?