Page 169 - DMGT522_SERVICES MANAGEMENT

Services Management

Notes part of a much larger digital ecosystem. An airliner’s kiosk system needs to interact
seamlessly with its mobile app, and an in-store digital retail experience should work
seamlessly with the iPod shopping app. They are all touch points in an overall customer
experience of the brand.
3. Well designed services are marketing differentiators, a reason people will buy your product:
Nike+ is a reason to buy Nike running shoes. Wiithings is a reason to buy their bathroom
scale. Twelpforce may or may not be a reason to frequent Best Buy. Digital services are
increasingly being added onto the products we used, not as an afterthought or nice to
have, but as a core part of the product proposition. They are a reason you’d buy product X
over product Y, and for that reason their design becomes business critical.
4. Poorly designed services can destroy customer satisfaction and recommendation: When a
service is core to your product experience, and you get it wrong, the results are ugly. Ford
plunged from 5th to 23rd in the 2011 JD Power & Associates satisfaction survey, with the
primary culprit being identified the My Ford Touch in-car telematics system. Ford aren’t
just selling a car, they are selling a driving experience. And the service that lived at the
heart of that experience wasn’t good enough, resulting in a vocally disgruntled customer
base. The service layer has become as important as the product itself.
Summary = Products companies are becoming service companies, and ultimately experience
companies
All of which brings us to the last point. There tended to be a quite clear division for many
companies between product companies (like Fiat or Samsung) and service companies (like say
Geek Squad). Except now your Fiat comes with EcoDrive, and your Samsung TV comes with an
appstore. These companies that are traditionally products companies are now becoming service
companies, which require a different mindset and approach, and different skill sets for success.
If you get it right, it can be a major market differentiator. And as you can see in the case of Ford,
if you get it wrong, it has very big consequences. The ubiquitous computing era is here, it’s up
to us to design services and experiences to make the most of it.

Task Draw out a list of service companies and identify their marketing functions. Make
a descriptive study of their attempts at technology adoption across different stages of time
matching the study with the trends in that sector. Try and find the effectiveness of such
adoption. Detail your mapping process and the measuring tools, and their effectiveness.
Use such data collection techniques as survey, interviews, focus group discussions, etc.

Self Assessment

Fill in the blanks:

11. When a service is core to your ........................ experience, and you get it wrong, the results
are ugly.
12. ........................ services are increasingly being added onto the products we used, not as an
afterthought or nice to have, but as a core part of the product proposition.
13. ........................ can help generate business leads, which can then be followed up by the
bank’s personnel.
14. The cost of the activity increases as more ........................ are processed.
15. Indian ........................ can emulate the technology drive of amazon.com to be unique, big
with the first-mover’s advantage.

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