Approaches in Creating a Service Culture, Essay Example

There are several approaches to implement customer service culture in organizations. The below paper will analyze and contrast three of the management methods: industrial approach, management approach, and the market-focused management approach.

Hoffman & Bateson (2010) state that the industrial management model focuses on marketing activity and keeping cost of production low. The downside of this model is that it does not focus on motivating employees, and as the management is doing everything to keep cost of operation low, those who provide service for customers are under-paid and under-motivated. Customer and employee retention, as a result, can be extremely low, and the company needs to engage in aggressive marketing and promotional campaigns to get new customers. Every marketing professional knows that gaining a new customer costs companies much more than keeping existing ones. Further, the managers who embrace the industrial approach rely on technology more than people’s skills. The authors (Hoffmann & Bateson, 2010, p. 414) state that this model does not work in today’s business environment and is guaranteed to fail, “due to its lack of support for frontline personnel”.

The management approach focuses on organizational goals and strategies, which are, or are not in line with customer expectations. One of the main problems of this model is that there might be a gap between the priorities of the management, customers, and the employees serving clients. This approach focuses on processes, and not customer outcomes. Further, according to Hoffmann & Bateson (2010), there can be a gap between the perceptions of the management and the specifications of final service quality. While the strategy needs to be developed by the leaders of the firm, it is important that monitoring processes are put in place in order to ensure that the initial goals for customer outcomes are met. In order to manage service quality, consistent monitoring needs to be implemented in the system. Hoffman & Bateson (2010, p. 420) recommends conducting a service quality audit on a regular basis in order to ensure that the goals of the organization, employees, and customers are aligned.

The market-focused approach, however, focuses on serving the customer. The main purpose of the organization, according to the managers is to serve customers to the best ability of the company. Therefore, this model provides motivation, training, and support for employees. As Hoffmann & Bateson (2010, p. 416) state: “, the firm should be organized internally in a manner that supports the people who serve the customer”. The market-focused approach uses tools to develop the six main relationships between the company and the business environment. These relationships are described as “critical incidents” and impact the company’s reputation, customer retention, as well as employee satisfaction. Albrecht & Zemke (1985) developed a graphical interpretation of the relationship, called The Service Triangle. The main actors depicted in the triangle that can interact with each other are: the customer, employees, systems, and the service strategy. This management model is built on strategies that support every person in the organization to serve the customer.

Overall, in order to implement an advanced and customer-focused service culture, focusing on employees who have personal contact with customers seems to be the best solution. Therefore, the market-focused approach, along with monitoring of the service culture, training on organizational goals, values, and missions can be the most effective way of communicating externally and internally. It is also important to equally focus on the eight components of integrated service management (Lovelock, Vandermerwe, Lewis & Fernie, 2011, p. 1.18): product elements, place and time, process, productivity and quality, people, promotion and education, physical evidence, and costs of service, price.

References

Albrecht. K.,  & Zemke, R. (1985) Service America Homewood, IL: Dow Jones-Irwin, pp. 31–47

Hoffman, K., Bateson, J. (2010) Services Marketing: Concepts, Strategies, & Cases. Cengage Learning.

Lovelock, C., Vandermerwe, S., Lewis, B. & Fernie, S. (2011) Services marketing. Edinburgh Business School. pp. 1.16-1.17