Download Service Marketing - Marketing Mix in Services Marketing - 5 - Notes - Business Management and more Study notes Business Administration in PDF only on Docsity!
6.4 Integrated services marketing communication
To match service delivery with service promises, the following strategies are recommended: manage service promises, manage customer expectations, improve customer education and manage internal marketing communications. 6.4.1 Manage service promises
In manufacturing physical goods, the departments that make promises and those that deliver them can operate independently. In services, however, the
sales and marketing departments make promises about what other employees in the organizations will fulfill. Because what employees do cannot be standardized like physical goods produced mechanically, greater coordination and management of promises are required. Successful services advertising and personal selling becomes the responsibility of both marketing and operations. Intangibility makes services advertising different from product advertising and difficult for marketers. The intangible nature of services creates problems for consumers both before and after purchase. Mittal (1999) has suggested services advertising strategies to overcome the challenges posed by the intangible nature of services. Refer to Table 6. Service marketers have developed the following guidelines for service advertising effectiveness: F 0A 7 Use narratives to demonstrate the service experience F 0A 7 Present vivid information F 0A 7 Use interactive imagery F 0A 7 Focus on the tangibles F 0A 7 Feature service employees in communication F 0A 7 Promise what is possible
F 0A 7 Encourage word-of-mouth (WOM) communication F 0A 7 Feature service customers F 0A 7 Use transformational advertising
6.4.2 Manage customer expectations
Many service firms find themselves in the position of having to tell customers that services previously provided will be discontinued or available only at a higher price. Here are four strategies for a service firm to gracefully give the customer news about what to expect.
F 0A 7 One way to reset expectations is to give the customer options for any aspects of service that are meaningful, such as time and cost. With the choice, clients can select that aspect of the trade-off (time or money) that is most meaningful to them. Making the choice solidifies the client‘s expectations of service. F 0A 7 Product companies are accustomed to offering different versions of their products with prices commensurate with the value customers perceive. This type of formal bundling and pricing can be accomplished in services, with the extra benefit of managing expectations. F 0A 7 A service provider can educate the customer the criteria by which to evaluate the service. The provider who does this in a credible manner will have an advantage in shaping the evaluation process. F 0A 7 Service providers must learn to present their offerings in terms of value and not on price alone. Such a value-centred negotiation can lead to more realistic expectation in the customer. 6.4.3 Improve customer education
The nature of services demand that customers perform their roles properly for many services to be effective. If the customer forgets to perform this role, or performs it improperly, disappointment may result. For this reason, communication to customers can take the form of customer education. The following customer education approaches can help match promises with delivery: F 0A 7 Prepare customers for the service process F 0A 7 Confirm performance to standards and expectations F 0A 7 Clarify expectations after the sale
F 0A 7 Teach customers to avoid peak demand periods and seek slow demand periods
6.4.4 Manage internal marketing communication
satisfaction. In many situations, employees, customers and even others in the service environment interact to produce the ultimate service outcome. 7.1 Critical importance of service employees
Front-line employees and those supporting them from behind the scenes are critical to the success of any service organization because they are the service, they are the organization in the customer‘s eyes, they are the brand and they are marketers. Customers‘ perceptions of service quality will be impacted by the customer-centric behaviours of employees. In fact, all of the five dimensions of service quality (reliability, responsiveness, assurance, empathy and tangibles) can be influenced directly by service employees. Satisfied employees make for satisfied customers. The front-line service employees are referred to as boundary spanners because they operate at the organization‘s boundary. They serve a critical function in understanding, filtering and interpreting information and resources to and from the organization and its external constituencies. They also exert emotional labour that goes beyond the physical or mental skills needed to deliver quality service. Friendliness, courtesy, empathy and responsiveness directed toward customers require huge amounts of emotional labour from the front-line employees who should this responsibility for the organization. To build a customer- oriented, service-minded workforce, a service firm must F 0A 7 Hire the right people
- Compete for the best people in the talent market
- Hire for service competencies and service inclination
- Be the preferred employer
F 0A 7 Provide the needed support systems and
- Develop service-oriented internal processes
- Provide supportive technology and equipment
- Measure internal service quality F 0A 7 Retain the best people
- Include employees in the firm‘s vision
- Treat employees as customers
- Measure and reward strong service performers
7.2 The importance of customers in service delivery
Recognition of the role of customers in service delivery is reflected in the definition of the people element of the services marketing mix. The ‗service audience‘ (comprising of the customer receiving the service and other customers in the service environment) contribute to the service outcome through appropriate or inappropriate, effective or ineffective, productive or unproductive behaviours. Table 7 summarizes the levels of customer participation across different services. In many service contexts, customers receive the service simultaneously with other customers or must wait for their turn while others are being
‗serviced‘. Either way, the presence of ‗other customers‘ in the service environment can affect the service delivery process or its outcome. When ‗other customers‘ exhibit disruptive behaviours, cause delays, overuse, crowd and complain on incompatible needs, it negatively affects the service experience.
Advances in technology have allowed the proliferation of a wide range of self- service technologies (SSTs) that manage the customer participation in service delivery. They bring in a great degree of standardization and consistency to the service experience, at the same time saving others resources (including emplo yees) for the service firm. Popular examples of SSTs include ATMs, Internet banking, Package tracking, e-learning, airline e-ticket, online shopping and auctions. The level and nature of customer participation in the service process are strategic decisions that can impact a firm‘s productivity, its competitive positioning, service quality and customer satisfaction. The goal of a customer participation strategy are to increase productivity and customer satisfaction while simultaneously decreasing uncertainty due to unpredictable customer actions. A customer participation strategy may be outlined as follows: F 0A 7 Define customers‘ jobs
- Helping oneself
- Helping others
- Promoting the brand/firm F 0A 7 Recruit, educate and reward customers
- Recruit the right customers
- Educate and train customers to perform effectively
- Reward customers for their contributions
- Avoid negative outcomes of inappropriate customer participation
F 0A 7 Manage the customer mix
- Appropriate market segmentation
- Compatibility management
