Strategic Service Management

It’s that time of year again. MillwardBrownOptimor have published their Top 100 Brandz ranking, and corporate marketers are either celebrating or justifying in boardroom around the globe.

But should marketers alone take in these findings? Or does customer perception break down any barrier between Service and Marketing that may exist on Org Charts?

If you are in either Marketing or Service, I recommend you take in the “Trends” on page 10 of the report. What are its key SSM implications?

As people stay in during the recession, home shopping / home services are on the rise. Not only does that mean more deliveries, but also a greater need for repairs as users invest, for example, in coffee machines to cut down on trips to coffee houses. Do you deliver? Have you optimised your routing and scheduling? Is your parts planning reliable? Do you have the required visibility to exceed your customers’ expectations in your management of vans and technicians?

People buying equipment for home use, or putting off major new investments (which goes a long way to explaining the 22% hit suffered by the car segment), opens up an opportunity for service parts pricing. How are you positioned to take advantage of it?

Apple grew 14%; BlackBerry 100%. Where once we had phones, now we have… handheld life organisers. This trend is supported by growth in network brands: Vodafone is up by 46%, AT&T by 67%, O2 by 36%. We are increasingly connected, which (when managed…) benefits our efficiency (in and out of the office). But it also means our expectations rise. Why can’t a delivery be scheduled more accurately? Why can’t a tech turn up with the right part? We are all more aware of technology’s potential – and accept no excuses for failure to leverage it.

Such increased technical sophistication also means we are often happy to fix minor problems ourselves – a scenario that expedites repair time and dramatically reduces costs for all involved. Do you have the technology to remotely support your customers?

At Servigistics, we have long underlined product commoditisation. Branding is a critical path to differentiation. Is it achieved through good marketing? Is it achieved through good service?

Let’s look at it this way: I would challenge anybody to achieve differentiation in 2009 without good marketing or good service. Which is why SSM goes beyond managing your Service operation, and encompasses your entire business. And, in your quest to win and retain customers, you create fictitious barriers between Service and Marketing at your peril.

best,

g.o.s.

By Shannon Rentner, Director, PR, Servigistics

Interactive Marketing is cool, innovative, slick, forward-thinking, and creative.  B2C companies that employ interactive marketing on their websites, in their ad campaigns, marketing collateral, etc. make companies with static websites and non-interactive collateral [what is the opposite of interactive?] look like Sunday school teachers from the 1970’s using flannel boards to illustrate Bible stories.

Consider some of these inventive examples of interactive marketing:

• Real women’s stories about financial planning for Wachovia Securities. What a refreshing way to present the client case study: http://www.planforwhatsnext.com/
• Remember Harold and the Purple Crayon? UPS tapped this magical marker idea for their whiteboard campaign where the long-haired guy illustrates what “brown can do for you”: http://whiteboard.ups.com/
• What if you live to be 100? How will you take care of yourself? Genworth Financial created the Genworth100, a website that featured the oral history of several centenarians as a way to pitch their financial planning services.

It’s entertaining, eye-catching, fun and informative.

But for B2B transactions, turn off the talking head.

When I’m sitting at my computer at the office doing research or evaluating potential vendors, I want the flannel board approach - let’s be old school: get me right to the point - something I can quickly read and process. Clear, Concise, and Direct.

Don’t make me sit there and listen to some dumb talking head spewing fluff. When I want a client case study, I’ll click on it and then it better be a good story illustrating what the potential vendor can do.  Otherwise, I’ve lost patience and will move on to the next vendor.

How does this relate to service?

The other day I was driving home from work and saw a car with ricohteknoforce emblazoned across the side and rear. So, when I returned to work, I decided to visit the website to see if this was another Geek Squad post-sale service play.  The answer: yes and no - more of a B2B IT outsourcing play.  Nevertheless, I was completely rattled by the talking man. I just wanted to navigate the page to see what Ricohteknoforce offers. http://www.ricohteknoforce.com/

Seriously, no one listens to it. So just save him for later. If I want to hear someone speak to me, allow me to click on it - don’t throw him at me while I’m sitting in an open office and pressed for time.  Consumers, on the other hand, have the time and privacy away from work to enjoy such leisure viewing and listening activities. I don’t.

But I also rip off the wrapping paper from my presents rather than slowly untying a bow, unpeeling tape, and neatly unfolding the pretty paper. Those people drive me nuts.

What do you think?

by Giacomo Squintani, Marketing Manager, EMEA

From the moment you first sent an e-mail, you knew that things were never going to be the same again, at home or at work. With the Holiday Season truly upon us, are you escaping those checkout queues and putting on a Christmas CD as you surf for gifts? If, like me, you are (well, minus the CD), you are a challenge – to the retail marketers for whom seasonal in-store promotions and glitzy shop windows are of no use.

Of course, many of those skills have been successfully transferred to e-mail – and enhanced in the process. But what about our less frivolous investments – those that are set to last a few years (the Web 2.0 age equivalent of what our parents would call a “lifetime”)? What are the implications for us – both as marketers and customers?

Research in Motion experienced one such implication quite clearly in the UK recently. As they launched their BlackBerry Storm model with a marketing campaign worthy of its name, they could not foresee the online backlash. In particular, popular comedian and TV personality Stephen Fry caught the imagination with a Twitter comment – and, while he made a point of stating that “Yes, I blame n’works more than RIM”, his paragraph “Problems are terrible lag: inaccurate t’screen, awful, slow and fiddly text input. I SO wanted to like it” was still sufficient for the BBC to ask: “Can Stephen Fry kill a gadget?”

Yet, for every negative side of a coin, there’s an upside. Web 2.0 allows the smarter players to turn junk mail into viral marketing. We accept comments from people we like and trust far more than corporate communications. The problem for marketers is that this can mean losing control.

The key reason Service is both a threat and an opportunity today is the “2:11 Principle”. This states that customers receiving good service will share their experience with two people, whereas those receiving poor service will tell eleven. Now take a second to consider how everyday Web surfers have taken over the Net from the critics, and how they influence opinion through social networking, blogs and even review sections on e-commerce sites. Your Service team was late resolving a call? The product was delivered late? What before was a private matter between customer and the Customer Services Department is now as public as the Internet itself. And, while commercial buyers may be more reluctant to air grievances online, don’t think you’re immune if you’re operating in B2B.

But easy on the Prozac. Your Service team exceeded expectations? They always deliver on time? Hey, it works both ways. Positive enthusiasm may not match angry venom, but it still has a role to play. When, in 2007, TechRepublic asked “What bothers you when you are a customer?”, it received 132 responses; when it asked “What do you remember about good service you received?”, just 12 comments followed. But that just makes the praise (such as this heaped on Dell for the speedy replacement of a faulty hard drive) all the more valuable.

Will great post-sale service ever help turn a terrible product into a success? Unlikely, but not impossible. Will bad service ever turn a great product into a failure? You bet. So make sure you take care of your customers for the long-term – long after the excitement of opening the box is gone. And leverage the Web to make sure tomorrow’s customers know how happy today’s customers are.

With the real-time applications and connectivity it enables, Web 2.0 has taken away many excuses. And for Service to be a threat to your business is one of them.