Rocking Services
Service is NOT only customer service! Navigating in service-based economies, all businesses deliver a certain level of service.
The Ritz-Carlton Budapest
Before starting to solve customer satisfaction, revenue generation, and/or service quality issues, begin with a question:
Within what category of service are we navigating?
From the service category perspective, companies can be divided into four distinct categories:
JW Marriott Hotel Berlin Lobby
- 1 -
Service industries and companies - pure service industries and companies whose core product is a service.
My favorite examples of pure service companies represent the hospitality, transport, and finance industries. Iconic JW Mariott hotels blend extraordinary hospitality with a modern commitment to mindfulness and well-being. In the transportation industry, Swiss International Air Lines aims to provide exceptional service on a person-to-person basis, making each flight via Swiss an authentic air travel experience. Meanwhile, in banking, N26’s philosophy revolves around a mobile and flexible banking experience, transparent yet secure, managing money easily on the go.
Swiss International Air Lines Ltd
If your business is in hospitality, tourism, finance, fitness, beauty and wellness, mechanical, media and entertainment, design, marketing and sales, education, health care, and public service industries, do not rush to think that category 1 is where you are in.
N26 online bank
- 2 -
Services as products - intangible product offerings that customers value and pay for it, sold by both service and non-service companies like manufacturers or technology companies.
IBM offers information technology consulting services to the marketplace, competing with firms such as Accenture, which are traditional pure services firms. Similarly, in retail, the dm-drogerie market, a chain of retail stores in Germany that offers cosmetics, healthcare items, household products, and health food and drinks, sells services such as photo/print processing.
Service as a product offering provides the most accessible opportunities to gain a competitive advantage, grow, and profit.
Keep in mind customers are expecting high levels of customer service and service solutions with every product in every industry.
The dm-drogerie markt and its copy centre
- 3 -
Services as experiences - a combination of services and goods that results in the experience for the customers. The experience is the product for what the customer is paying. This experience is much more valuable than the sum of the goods + services, and therefore it is priced up.
The hospitality, entertainment, and transportation sectors have focused on experiences for years. But see and get inspired by great examples from retail. In New York, Shanghai, and Paris, Nike’s customers at the Innovation House are paying for the combination of experience-driven service and the evidence of the service experience embodied in the pair of sneakers.
Nike’s House of Innovation 000
- 4 -
Customer service - a service that supports a business's core products. There is no charge for such services, and do not get confused with the services provided as a separate product for sale. Customer service can occur onsite, over the phone, or via the Internet. Like in retail, helping customers is part of a sales personnel's job.
Olivia von Halle silk and cashmere heaven
Is it possible to look forward to a dental appointment as if going to meet a friend at a nice coffee place? Oh, yes! I even take a trip to Berlin. The dental clinic Leipziger14 elevates the customer experience by greeting their customers by name when entering a hotel lobby reminding hall. Friendly help to take off coats or jackets, fruit-water & coffee offerings, and the curated library by a known book store are the parts of their customer service supporting the business core.
Quality customer service is essential to building customer relationships.
Leipziger 14 dental clinic
- OR -
Service dominant logic - all products and physical goods are valued for the services they provide. The value derives from the service solution provided by the good and service as a package, not the good itself.
It is a broader, customer focus intense lens to think about your business and value creation for your customers
The Orient Express is an example that gets everyone to dream away. Some might argue that it should be addressed in the category of Service as Experience. I disagree, for here, it is embedded much more than a product + an experience. Value co-creation is another key element here and is successfully delivered only if the service dominant logic is embedded throughout the entire organization and its processes.
The Orient Express
Different example - successful business people choose to spend time reading and writing after long working hours instead of enjoying time with their families. The international EMBA studies at BMI Executive Institute provide not only quality content delivered by international professors and institute partners. High-level executives find value in the network nourished by the school, the partners, the alumni, and many other elements contributing to value creation that are often invisible to outsiders and even not consciously acknowledged by the customers yet essential to the organization’s success.
BMI Executive Institute international EMBA