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Executive summary The key intent of undertaking this assignment was to explore the quality of service dispensed at ‘Les Enfants D’abord’ kindergarten in the Mauritian pre-primary schooling context. Our main motive was to investigate about drivers affecting customer and consumer satisfaction and dissatisfaction. Moreover, in relation with our findings we had to chart out a scheme for the kindergarten to create and sustain customer loyalty. Subsequently, we have used data gathering techniques such as on-site observation, personal interviews and questionnaires.

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Literature review Background The word ‘kindergarten’ is German word which literally means ‘Children’s Garden’. It is a form of education for young children which serves as a transition from home to the commencement of more formal schooling. Children are taught to develop basic skills through creative play and social interaction. Friedrich Fröbel, German pedagogue, opened the first kindergarten on 28th June 1840. In Mauritius, pre-primary schools operate under the banner of Pre-School Act of 1997. Company profile Les Enfants D’abord (LED) kindergarten first opened its door in Rose-Belle on the 13th August 2007. The director, Mrs. Bibi Shaheranah Oozeerally is the sole qualified personnel at LED with 23 years of experience in other pre-primary schools. It is actually operating at maximum capacity with 25 children.

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Research and methodology Objectives of research Pre-purchase study:

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What are the factors considered by parents when choosing a pre-primary school?

Post-purchase study:

 To know the drivers of satisfaction and dissatisfaction in the context of LED Research design For the sake of the study, the most appropriate strategy was exploratory and descriptive. The exploratory phase of the research took the form of face-to-face interviews with different stakeholders, related in a way or not to our research, namely:  Les Enfants D’abord  Step Ahead Infant school  Le Nid Nursery & Pre-Primary school

 Ministry of Education & Human Resources Development – Mrs. Kistama: Head of Early Childhood Development  Primary Teachers Provident Fund - Mr. Deenoo, officer in charge  Ministry of Health and Quality of Life – Anonymous officer  Sebastien Coiffure In addition to this, an observation technique was used at LED and Step Ahead to analyze the service delivery process and to gain an insight on the quality of service.1 Furthermore, a descriptive study in the form of a survey was carried out in 2 phases among firstly parents whose child has already left LED and secondly potential customers of a kindergarten. Fieldwork and data collection

 Questionnaire design A questionnaire was used both for the pre-purchase and post-purchase analysis as it is the most cost effective and because of its high degree of precision. Both questionnaires were designed in a semistructured way, with a mix of open-ended questions and multiple choice questions. A SERVQUAL scale was included in the post-purchase research in order for the customers to evaluate LED’s service quality. 1

Refer to appendix for details

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The reason behind the insertion of open-ended questions is that it leaves the respondent free to provide any reply that seems appropriate in the light of the question and at the same time it reduces the element of bias.

 Mode of administration The pre-purchase questionnaire was administered through personal interview. This decision was taken because it would give the interviewer a certain form of control on the respondent and the latter could also ask foe clarification if necessary. Concerning the post-purchase research, candidates were reached through telephone and a series of questions were addressed to them.

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Introduction Service definition A contemporary definition provided by Kotler, Armstrong, Saunders and Wong (1999):“A service is any activity or benefit that one party can offer to another which is essentially intangible and does not result in the ownership of anything. Its production may or may not be tied to a physical product.” By nature, services are variable from children to children, intangible in terms of knowledge and creativity, perishable for example regarding the excitement about picnics, inseparable in the case of the children, who once having learnt the alphabets, will not separate themselves from the knowledge and nonownership in the sense that the children cannot own the teaching of the teacher. Kindergarten

Intangibles Dominant

Tangibles Dominant

Figure 1: The goods & services continuum Adapted from:- Adrian Palmer…

Drivers of satisfaction

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1.0 ‘Factors that influence customer expectation of services’ The ‘Factors that influence customer expectation of services’ (Figure 2) if known by the service provider, may give a clearer pathway to achieve the objective of delighting the customers. Hence the diagram below illustrates this application at LED. Diagram - Factors that influence customer expectation of services (Refer Page 99 – Principles of Services Marketing – Fig. 4.6) 2.0 Service Encounter In the kindergarten environment, the service encounters occur when the customer interacts with the services employees, other customers, the physical surroundings and technology equipment. These take place at LED at different steps: firstly when the child enters the yard of the school, then on getting inside the building, interacting with other pupils and teachers, playing around and observing all physical attributes of the building. As such, the nursery is a high-contact service industry. 3.0 Flow charting Given that it serves as a ‘clarifier’ of how customer is involved in service encounters, is a proactive approach which gives the latter a clear image of how he/she is to be drawn in the service; thereby preventing any scope of dissatisfaction through confusion.

4.0 Role In service encounter, employees and customers each have roles to play. Satisfaction, dissatisfaction or delight will all depend on role congruence.

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In our context, the actors are the director, the employees, the parents and children. LED’s director says that she performs all the roles of the world; that is, that of a friend, parent or even enemy. For example, when she states that “quand l’enfant quitte la maison le amtin, c’est toujours un déchirement et le role d’une maman quand l’enfant rentre est de le cajoler et lui inspirer la confiance.” As for the children, they are the ultimate consumers of this service and according to the director, these children are simply ‘blank papers’ upon which she has to imprint knowledge and creativity. The role of parents is to support them all through the process by participating in the activities organised by the school. 5.0 Script The use of scripts for role performance has been pedagogically researched and proven by experts and are therefore presumed to be beneficial both for children and staff. At LED, scripts as such are most informal by nature. But in this profession, the actors often encounter moments whereby they have to improvise. An example of script is the morning welcome of the children by Mrs. Oozeerally who greets the child at the door saying “Bonjour. Ça va mon bébé?”, “Allez, accroche tu viens” to ask the child to keep his/her bag at a particular place. A case of improvisation is when a child refuses to drink milk during the ‘milk-time’ and the governess has to think of ideas to persuade him/her to drink it. 6.0 Word of Mouth According to Mrs. Oozeerally, most of the children who are enrolled at her school come mainly via recommendation. She also cites the example of a boy whose cousin was at the kindergarten and now all other children in the family are following the trend. This is solely due to recommendation she declares. Core, supplementary & augmented

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Dimensions of the service environment Servicescape The service environment is composed of three dimensions namely ambient, special layout and functionality and sign, symbols and artifacts. In terms of ambient condition music and color are majorly used at LED. For instance low decibel music lullabies and vivacious, lively colors are used. Concerning special layout child friendly furniture are compulsory according to the Ministry of Health and Safety. Furniture should not have sharp edges and toxic components. Children, being “blank papers” as Mrs. Oozeerally said, will use sign, symbol and artifacts in terms of Mauritian flag, National Anthem and photos of distinguishing events to facilitate their learning experience. Empowerment Out of the three keys of Blanchard et al. (1996) model, only one of them is considered at LED, that of sharing information with everyone, i.e. LED’s director shares information concerning what revolves around his service to her two trainees, for example showing how to cuddle a child or how to make the child memorize something. Service quality and customer satisfaction

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In terms of functional quality, LED has been able to differentiate itself out of the crowd and according to Mrs. Oozeerally, the success of her kindergarten lies in the way she delivers her service and also a major fraction of all the children come on word-of-mouth. She holds the following qualifications:

 MIE2 & MCA3 - certificate in proficiency in early childhood education  Preschool Trust Fund course  St. John Ambulance course (First-Aid)  Leadership Certificate (SOS Poverty) Hence she follows the Scandinavians school of thought which ‘requires an integrated approach based on building customer relationships’ (Gronroos, 1989) Service recovery When a particular parent is aggrieved and management is to be blamed, Mrs. Oozeerally personally deals with the problem with immediate individual attention. However if management is not to be blamed, Mrs. Oozeerally still takes actions by providing counseling to parents and reassuring them as their children are their most precious asset. Price After analysis, it is noted that the price at LED of Rs 400 per month is reasonable for the service provided. Further when a particular child is one year to pass to primary school, a subsidy of Rs 200 is granted by the Government

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MIE: Mauritius Institute of Education

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MCA: Mauritius college of the Air

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Drivers of dissatisfaction 1. Failure points in service delivery

F1: This is a failure point because it has been remarked through observation that children are reluctant to leave their parents and enter the kindergarten’s compound. This can cause problem by consuming the precious time of both the parents and the personnel. In addition, a crying child can spoil the atmosphere and incite other classmates to cry also. F2: The second failure occurs within the gap when the child goes to leave his/her bag and comes to play in the main room. A child may stay in the lunch room itself to avoid playing if the latter has had a fight with someone at home or school. F3: The third failure point refers to as and when the director fails to prepare watercolour when the child wants to paint and the two trainees are late. This extract occurs in the morning and normally when the director is busy welcoming all children; so she may fail to attend the child who wants to paint.

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2. Flowcharting Sometime when the flowcharting changes it causes dissatisfaction to customers who are mostly resistant to change. Example Mrs. Oozeerallyhahrana Ozeerally, director of LED mentioned, some parent expected the admission day way formalities like paper work and that’s it. However this system evolved with formalities added to a parent-teacher one hour meeting. This acted as a turn off for the parents.

3. Role If one party does not follow its particular role, the satisfaction will not be achieved. For instance the director made it clear that even parents have roles in the education of the children with a proper follow up at home. She further said if parents do not fulfill their role, the expected level of satisfaction will not be met.

4. Script Scripts are not always appropriate because each child has a particular personality and must be dealt with accordingly. Further, as time goes by, the children’s behaviours and ways of thinking changes and the old script simply becomes ineffective. One quoted example is the case of Somayyah, a mischievous girl, who refuses to clean up after using water color was given wax crayons instead.

5. Service product Any incoherence between marketing asset and operating asset will be having definite adverse outcomes on the service delivery process.

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It is seen that there is incoherence between the marketing and operating assets of LED. For instance the school promises development of the child while the very vector of child development is open space. LED has six rooms without any playground and all is done within the confines of the building with hardly any outdoor games. The director has a wide international network of contacts from where she draws updates regarding pedagogical ways of teaching. For example, her contacts at Duke University (America) advised LED to use bright and appealing flash cards to enhance learning. Conversely, LED does not have the resources required to acquire these cards. Hence, this association is not optimized upon. Another facet is that Mrs. Oozeerally is the only experienced qualified person and the trainees are still on learning process at the MIE. Thus, all these affect service delivery and consequently satisfaction.

6. Flower model The problem with the facilitating and enhancing elements is that they erode with time. The particular enhancing element is adopted by competitors and every customer expects this element. So it loses its differentiating potential. Dental check up was an enhancing element three years ago when LED opened its doors while today many kindergartens has these check-ups; hence, it eroded from enhancing to facilitating and may well become a core in the future.

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7. Servicescape It is found that there is a kitchen at LED, however firstly there is no particular scent that allows the child to determine it is a kitchen since there is no cooking in it. Concerning signs and symbols, LED is equipped with the basics that an average pre-primary school would provide like a national pole-flag, human anatomy charts amongst others.

8. Service quality It has been noted through observation and research that even though LED is good at functional qualities, it is poor in technical elements. For example the decoration could have been better; an open playing field must be built amongst others.

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The Gaps Model of SQ E x p e c t a t io n s

P e r c e p t io n s

Gap 4

E x t e r n a l C o m m u n ic a t i o n

3 p a G

1 p a G

S e r v ic e D e l iv e r y

Customer

2 p a G

S e r v ic e S t a n d a r d s

M a n a g e m e n t P e r c e p t io n s

Company

9. Service guarantee There is no proper service guarantee at LED except trust that parents can have in LED as the director said. However, trust is very subjective and fragile. This cannot be a base for service guarantee.

10. Price The price LED charges is relatively low as compared to others. This can be a problem in the sense that people associate high-price to high-quality and consequently LED can be perceived as a low-quality service provider.

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How to get loyal customers? 1. People LED does not have any qualified full-time employees except Mrs. Oozeerally. She should as such hire the right people, empower and motivate them. As she said, the right person is someone who practices good emotion management, is non-violent, caring and above all patient. On-the-job training will be required both for the director to assess the potential employee and for the trainee to get into the skin of Mrs. Oozeerally. Once the trainee acquires the appropriate skills; this will enhance customer satisfaction, consolidating word of mouth thus generating customer loyalty. 2. Interactive marketing A closer relationship exists when there is face-to-face interaction between customers and service providers according to C. Lovelock. Although the service itself remains important, value is added by people and social processes. The actual process for obtaining feedback is on an individual basis when parents come to fetch or drop their children. This process should be formalized by carrying out parentteachers meeting once in a month where there will be more interactions between parents and parents and parents and teachers as well. Parents discussing amongst themselves can provide better suggestions and constructive criticisms. 3. Database marketing The children’s health and medical peculiarities can be monitored through check-ups and recorded in a database starting with the ‘carnet de santé’ provided by the parents on admission day. Hence to ensure customer loyalty, the service provider should ascertain that the customer climbs up this ladder:

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Other recommendations

1. As per the Ministry of Health and Quality of Life, the ‘norms for the pre schools in receipt of the per capita grant’ report, the ratio between teachers and children should be 1 adult per 20 pupils of 3-4 years. LED is clearly violating this statement because Mrs. Oozeerally alone is managing 25 pupils of both below and above 3 years. Hence, we would advise that either she takes only children of above 4 years or appoint additional staff. To support this recommendation 56.25% customer themselves, in the post-purchase survey, said that the staff is too limited.

2. According to the report ‘there should be prior preparation of materials and space for daily activities’. However, Mrs. Oozeerally prepares the materials simultaneously when children are entering the class. The solution is to empower the trainees, outsource or extend hours of work so that when the children leave, she can prepare for the next day.

3. Law recommends that 25 pupils should be having 10 puzzles assorted, 5 sets of constructions blocks and 10 sets of educational teaching aids. At LED, it is observed that these equipments do exist but not in the required amount. In fact 31.25% customers suggested that there should be more equipment. The director can lobby the sponsor ‘Red Cow’ for more equipment or increase the price as past customers (75%) view the price they pay relatively low compared to the service received.

4. Given that if among the main actors, i.e. the parents, teachers and children, one does not perform his/her role, objectives of - at least making the child ready to meet society - may not be achieved. So proper lines of communication must be established by the director to sensitize parents regarding the significance of their cooperation.

5. 31.25% of customers believe that the compound of LED is very limited. But it was observed that a wide area of unoccupied and is just next to the kindergarten. Mrs. Oozeerally is already renting the kindergarten building and can make a better deal to rent that plot of land to provide for more space. 6. LED is very poor on the marketing base. For instance the brochure is rather dull and not appealing. A better one with flashy colors and enhanced photos can be put on the brochures. 7. LED can approach ‘Le Clinique Lorette” situated at Curepipe to request for medical coverage of its students in case of emergencies. On one hand, LED will be effective in handling seriously injured/sick children and on the other hand it will enhance the corporate image of the clinic since it will be doing CSR.

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8. As children are very energetic in nature, physical education can be implemented in the curriculum, taking ‘Step Ahead’ as a model.

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Conclusion Our analysis of pre- purchasing and post-purchasing stimuli pertaining to the current situation of ‘Les Enfants D’abord’ has brought us to the fact that it is performing well as an average economical kindergarten. However, to ensure a brighter future and make the most of growth opportunities available, the school must consider to giving a face-lift to its service system and if possible implement the abovementioned recommendations. LED would then be in a better position of serving its niche of middle-class customers in an enhanced way.

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