L55: Industry Guest Session Template

Good morning, class. Welcome back to MGA-301. Today, Lecture 55, is our Industry Guest Session. I have the privilege of welcoming a senior professional from Goa's service sector to share their perspective on services marketing in practice. [0–10 minutes: Introduction] One of the most valuable learning experiences in any management programme is hearing from practitioners — people who have spent their careers applying the concepts we have been studying to real business challenges. Today's guest brings that practitioner perspective to our classroom. Before I introduce our guest, let me frame the conversation with a question I want all of you to keep in mind throughout the session: what aspects of the services marketing frameworks we have studied do you see most clearly in our guest's experience, and what aspects seem to work differently in practice compared to how they appear in the textbook? I also want you to be active participants. This is not a passive lecture. I expect thoughtful questions from every one of you. Our guest has given up time from a busy professional schedule to be here, and the best way to honour that is to engage deeply and ask excellent questions. Today's guest is from [a senior leadership position in Goa's hospitality or service sector — the lecturer inserts the appropriate details based on the actual invited guest]. Please join me in welcoming them. [10–40 minutes: Guest Presentation and Conversation] [The guest speaks for approximately fifteen to twenty minutes covering their career, their organisation, and their perspective on services marketing challenges. The lecturer then facilitates a structured conversation.] Key themes the lecturer should draw out in the facilitated conversation. Theme 1: How does your organisation think about service quality? What metrics do you use? How do you know when quality is slipping and what do you do about it? [This connects to SERVQUAL, the Gaps Model, and the customer feedback systems discussions from the course.] Theme 2: How do you manage the challenge of seasonality — demand fluctuations between peak and off-peak periods? What is your yield management approach? [This connects to demand and capacity management, yield management, and pricing from Unit IV.] Theme 3: How do you manage service staff? What is your approach to recruiting, training, and retaining good people? Have you experienced the Service-Profit Chain dynamics we discussed in class? [This connects to the people management and Service-Profit Chain discussions.] Theme 4: What does CRM mean in your organisation? How do you know your customers and build loyalty? [This connects to the entire Unit III content.] Theme 5: What is the biggest services marketing challenge your organisation is facing right now that you wish you had a better framework for addressing? [This connects everything and may produce the most interesting practitioner insights.] [Student questions — encourage students to ask about specific aspects of the course content that they have found challenging or that they are curious to see in practice.] [40–55 minutes: Student Q&A] [Open the floor to student questions. Ensure that at least eight to ten different students ask questions. The lecturer should ensure that student questions are substantive and that they connect to course content. If a student asks a vague question, prompt them to connect it to a specific framework: "Can you frame that question in terms of what we have discussed in the course?"] [After the Q&A, the lecturer thanks the guest and offers a brief summary of the key insights.] Three insights from today's conversation that I want to highlight. [The lecturer identifies three specific insights from the guest's presentation that connect most directly to course content — these will vary depending on the actual guest. Below are example themes the lecturer can develop.] Insight 1: [Connect the guest's discussion of service quality management to the Gaps Model. For example: "Our guest described how they track guest complaints by category and route them to the relevant department manager. This is exactly the Service Recovery Information System we discussed in Lecture 31. And the way they use complaint data to identify systemic problems is the closed-loop feedback system from Lecture 29."] Insight 2: [Connect the guest's discussion of staff management to the Service-Profit Chain. For example: "The way our guest described the difference between high-turnover and low-turnover periods in their hotel — and how turnover directly affects guest satisfaction — is a real-world illustration of the Service-Profit Chain dynamics we studied in Lecture 21."] Insight 3: [Connect the guest's discussion of seasonality to demand-capacity management. For example: "The creative approaches our guest has tried to smooth the monsoon demand trough — including the wellness retreat programme and the corporate event packages — are excellent examples of repositioning to shift the target customer segment during off-peak periods."] [55–60 minutes: Summary and Assignment] A huge thank you to our guest for their generosity with time and insights. Today's session has demonstrated something important: the frameworks from this course are not academic abstractions. They are the analytical vocabulary that serious service professionals use to think about and solve real business problems. When our guest described their approach to service quality, to customer loyalty, to yield management, and to people management, they were essentially describing — in practitioner language — the very frameworks we have studied. Assignment: Write a one-page reflection on today's guest session. Identify: two specific insights from the guest that connect to a framework we have studied (name the specific framework and explain the connection); one question you wish you had asked and what answer you hypothesise the guest would have given; and one aspect of services marketing practice that surprised you — that was different from what you expected based on the course content. Next lecture — Lecture 56 — is our first Service Blueprint Group Project presentation session. Groups will present their in-progress field project blueprints for class feedback. See you then. Thank you.