Must have heard this term often right? But do you really know what is service marketing all about? Keep reading to understand properly.
The term can be easily understood separately as the service refers to an act of performing something for someone in exchange for adequate consideration on the other hand marketing is a broader term but in simple word it means promotion. Collectively we can say that when a person or entity promotes services it offers to the various clients it can be known as service marketing which aims at providing the solutionsto the problems faced by the clients. Both the B2B (business-to-business) and B2C ( business-to-consumer) marketing is included in it.
Service Marketing have occupied a significant role in the market because service is something which can’t be seen or touched it can only be availed and experienced. The decision of the buyers in case of products is highly influenced by its quality but it is something different in case of services because the quality of service can be determined after it is availed by the customers. So it is required by the marketers to adopt those strategies that are highly attractive for the customers to induce them for availing a particular service.
Also these services can’t be resold or returned that means they are one time action and the manner it is availed at that time affects its future sale because if the goodwill of a particular service is not maintained then it will not be able to attract another more customers.
Examples: marketing of medical services, beauty parlours and spa, coaching centres , telecommunication etc
Service marketing is often confused with the term product marketing but it is important to know that both of them are different product marketing is the marketing of a tangible item that can be seen and touched whereas services are intangible.
If the proper service marketing strategies are adopted then it can leads to huge profit potential for a business and promote it to get more customers also.
Services marketing are dominated by the 7 Ps of marketing namely Product, Price, Place, Promotion, People, Process and Physical evidence. All these are the factors or elements that are mixed by the marketer in order to deal with the customers much better.
“Excellent customer service is the number one job in any company. It is the personality of the company and the reason customers come back. Without customers there is no company.”
Connie Elder
An exciting endeavor is to have your own business and company. At first, you start with its services all alone. When you grow gradually, you employ staff to help you out. A company receives its prestige with the amount of staff in it because people usually estimate a company to be ‘big’ because of the amount of people working in it and also because of its quality services that attract a plethora of customers! The amount of people working in it signifies the economic condition of the company which acts as a step towards effective branding! However, this doesn’t imply employing all types of unskilled labor just for showing off your prosperity! Of course, you require skilled individuals to inflate the balloon of prosperity because they would be representing your company. You don’t want a bad impression of your company and its services because of certain amateur employees who would make you lose even your ‘family customers’. When I refer to family customers, I pinpoint towards the regular ones who never fail to pay us a visit and always prefer our brand over the other!
Creating such regular customers requires a great deal of time and patience because you are expected to reach the core of their hearts and win their trust. How will this happen? Surely, by establishing friendly relations with them, solving their queries patiently, providing them the best quality services, interacting with them, being available at all times, and offering to solve their difficulties while using your product or service.
What if I tell you that these qualities could be assigned in a single person who could take this position and help you set things straight? Yes, you guessed it right. The Customer Service is a great initiative to establish and maintain all of the above qualities of your company. The goal of any company is to create convenience for customers. Customer Service is the greatest convenience you could ever offer because the genuineness of your company isn’t under threat and people feel free to interact in a friendly manner conditioned to the personality and skill of your customer service!
If your company isn’t prospering despite having this service then ask yourself and provide a Yes or No answer to the below questions to arrive upon a conclusion!
Is your customer service timely?
Is your customer service friendly?
Is your customer service patient when dealing with consumer problems?
Is your customer service an extrovert with bold orating skills?
Is your customer service having a high pitched and audible conversational tone?
Is your customer service fluent in formal talk and good in vocabulary?
If the answer to all of these is a big Yes, then you are currently on the safe side but if, even one of the questions has No as an answer then expectation of heavy gains from the company must be deflated! A customer service needs to have all of the above qualities to ensure success, reputation, brand, and image of your company in the market!
Let’s consider our own experience. Vodafone would be a good example to go on with.
Imagine that company without a customer service. Would you ever go for their services? Whenever we have network issues or balance issues, we instantly phone the customer service for help and they update us regarding their recent development due to which perhaps the issue has occurred. Now, what if there was no customer service? We lose our internet connectivity suddenly for hours together and have nobody to confront to regarding the same! We feel helpless and impatient without internet because the world can’t survive without it today. We have nobody to ask regarding this and after encountering such issues several times and with no possible interaction, we decide to leave the company and its service once and for all!
So, that’s the beauty of Customer Service. They help maintain good interaction with the consumers which is so very essential when handling a company! Customer Service acts as a mediator or a link between the head (CEO) and consumers. They have the authority to speak on behalf of the head or CEO and transfer calls to the CEO for the consumers, if needed!
That eases some of your burden as a boss, doesn’t it? After all, a boss has several other affairs to look after, like trimming and shaping the services of the company in accordance to the desires of consumers through online surveys for which mailing lists are vital. That too comes with its own hefty steps. Creating a website and providing a follow button while allowing people to jot in their addresses or creating surveys with mailing facility at the end while enquiring regarding the problems of consumers. Since, digital marketing is so great in demand today, one can’t possibly ignore these pivotal steps in the process and compromise with the reputation and smooth functioning of one’s company!
That should explain the Importance of Customer Service as a whole. So, if you are the CEO, work on the services that you offer while your Customer Service responsibly blurts those services out to your consumers while maintaining effective interaction! Unity is strength, isn’t it?
However though some of the answers to what customer service means to you are subtly a part of that long paragraph above, let me provide a brief list of answer samples that could help nail your interview!
Amazing Customer Service is like receiving an additional dollar from your parents as a gift or that extra icing on your favourite cake! Good customer service makes the customer enthralled with your honey dipped marketing as they start feeling sweetness being overloaded!
With Impeccable Customer Service, you are one step away from evangelism marketing.
Customer Service is the art of effectively persuading the customer into always preferring you over the others. That’s exactly why, the first impression of your customer service would decide the return of your customers in the future!
Customer Service is like holding a magic wand and pulling the customers in a state of trance so that they are completely convinced of being your regular or family customers!
Great Customer Service is associated with the feelings of gigantic loyalty and ethics inclined towards your job and clients! Thus, customer service is an ethical mannerism of mesmerizing your customers!
Customer Service is considering your clients as guests and paying them hospitality in the most respectful manner as possible.
Customer Service is actually like coining customer rights and accepting fundamental customer service duties oneself wherein customers’ rights and your duties can’t be violated!
Customer Service is like laying out your resume during an interview wherein constant frustration and nervousness prevails pondering over whether or not our work will be approved.
Customer Service is like giving a competitive examination wherein your answers would determine your marks.
Customer Service needs to be relevant and interesting. Thus, it is the medium of customer satisfaction wherein you don’t fail to reveal the additional perks your customers are exposed to!
Ever seen the advertisement of Oreo cookies being dipped in milk? The ancillary concept of a glass of milk is that efficient customer service which compels and tempts the mob to definitely try the cookie out!
It isn’t necessary to appoint extra staff for customer service because the owner is enough to introduce his services or products in a creative manner so as to indirectly highlight the benefits and the reason for customers to always grace his arena of the ‘best available products’.
Customer Service is like getting your customers ride the giant wheel of words so as to help them enjoy the amusement park of your business to their fullest!
Customer Service is gently abutting the customer’s heart through cupid arrows of words thereby making them fall for your services.
A service that shows a complete disclaimer of the quality of your brand or business. It’s the major factor in helping customers decide whether or not, you are worth their expenses!
Customer Service is like that short trailer which effectively covers the interesting parts of your business in order to bond and attract customers towards checking your business out entirely. Of course, if the trailer is amazing one can naturally assume the movie to ace the theatres!
Customer Service is like dropping before the customer, a transparent veil that only allows partial vision with regards to mellow and patient wordings!
Customer Service is making people blindly trust your commodities so that no finger be pointed at the quality or making of your products and services! Humans have a myopic vision with respect to shopping which makes them easily trust the value of a commodity if a dozen sweet words are shot at them which is why, customer service comes in handy, making it simpler to generate a surplus.
Customer Service can be compared to the clouds wherein fluffy and picturesque words float about the vast sky of your business to make it look genuine and impressive.
Customer Service is a term coined for genuine, honest, patient, committed, devoted, and determined approach towards your business and clients. In short, the collection of perfect ethical behavior is a simple way to win your customers’ heart because the quality of your services is solely based on the characteristics and attributes you exhibit.
Every one of us loves a wee bit of flattering and advice. Customer service does this job. However, along with a few flattering remarks customers also require help with selecting the most suitable product or service according to their personality and budget. During times as such, customer service comes to the rescue wherein we, as businessmen patiently advise customers to opt for the right commodity on the basis of their need.
Customer Service is like accepting a little amount of your favourite creamy cake and offering a whole lot to the customer to create a grand impression in their hearts!
Customers are satisfied when you are with your duties. Thus, customer service is understanding that your job is to impress a hell lot of customers through your sweet words no matter how many attempts of profits fail initially!
Customers come out of the blue. Customer Service is like military training wherein one has to constantly remain alerted of the next approaching client as well as prepare oneself for the most satisfactory interaction every single time.
Considering the word Customer Service closely, one can figure that it actually is a service which means treating every customer equally without any bias or enmity and composing truthful and honest words from which you vow to never back off!
Thus, I would conclude stating that customer service is a highly dignified job wherein each and every customer is given careful attention thereby not disappointing them. The better your service, the more customer satisfaction can be guaranteed, and the better surplus can that particular company experience. Customer service thus, is that quintessential morality that you exhibit in order to win the hearts of your clients who would in turn fetch you potential customers with their precious feedback. Of course, one shouldn’t request customers to recommend their business to others. Why not leave a lasting impression with the quality of your services instead so that good feedbacks automatically drop from their mouths? In short, customer service focusses on the quality aspect, the way you interact and not the amount of words you chose to interact. The perfect marketing skills that you used in an ethical manner and not the incessant blabbering simply praising the product. Why not from now on, focus more on the quality aspect of our services rather than trying to thrust our commodities at a rapid pace without even trying to fine tune our services to emanate customer satisfaction? So, let us work with love and show the same to our customers so that they definitely feel the need to revert.
With Service business gaining popularity every day and changing the way business is done, more and more entrepreneurs are starting service-oriented businesses. Be it cloud storage, entertainment channels like Netflix, Prime, Hotstar etc, multi-service platforms like UrbanClap, now known as Urban Company which offers almost all services you could possibly need or even food and grocery delivery apps (Zomato, Big Basket), Service Business has made its way into every industry.
A decade ago, Service Business was limited to services like consultations, tuitions, banking services, financial services (agent, brokers and consultants), after-sale services, real estate, event management, etc. But with the advancement in technology and skills of new entrepreneurs over time, it has expanded tremendously.
However, the nature of service business and its operations, compared to manufacturing or other kinds of businesses is very different. For example, in a manufacturing business, the manufacturer or any employee of the company, does not have any relationship or direct contact with its customer (except customer care and salespeople). However, in most service businesses, communication and maintaining a direct relationship with the customer is very important.
Dimensions of Service
In order to successfully establish and grow a service-oriented business, it is necessary to understand its dimensions and analyse where your business lies in terms of the three dimensions- Service Package, Service Customisation and Customer contact.
a) Service Package (Nature)
Service Package refers to the nature of the service and the value it adds. This tells us which part of the operation/service requires more attention. For example, if a service is dependent on tangible activities like in the case of food/grocery delivery apps, more attention is paid to spend money on tangible assets. However, if the service is dependent on intangible activities like salon beauty services, training and retention of skilled employees and development of firm’s knowledge assets is more important.
b)Service Customization
Service Customization refers to the level of customization or standardization of the service. This gives us an insight into the kind of human resources required and the nature of operations to be followed. For example, if the service is more or less standardised like in the case of plumbing, employees/workers with more narrow skills can be hired and a standardised step by step approach can be followed.
However, if the service is customised according to the needs and demands of every customer like in case of a bakery that makes customised cakes, the operation becomes less predictable and more variable so the company needs highly skilled employees/workers. Such organisations compete on the degree of customisation offered instead of cost.
c) Customer Contact
Customer contact refers to the degree of contact the employees have with the customer which depends on the nature of the service. The degree of customer contact is divided into- Front-room and Back-room operations.
Front-room operations refer to the part of the service where the customer interfaces directly with the service organisation. Back-room operations refer to the part of the service where there’s no contact with the customer.
For example, getting a Netflix/Prime subscription is a back-room oriented service. So, the company does not need employees with people skills since there is no direct contact or communication involved in the service. On the other hand, any service available on Urban Company requires direct contact (front-room) with the customer and hence, the employees hired should know how to be pleasant and cater to the needs of the customer.
With the help of these dimensions of service business, one must analyse the position of their service business and make its human resources and operations related decisions accordingly.
A Funnel in business terms is the customer’s travel from a normal visitor to becoming a loyal customer of a particular product or a company. Buyer-centric means organizing the different business approaches from the customer’s perspective rather than building it from the seller’s perspective. A buyer-centric funnel is a marketing model built in a consumer-focused way that transforms normal visitors into constant customers.
Why do we need this?
In a normal world, the sales process is vendor-centric where buyer’s questions are not answered properly. So, to address the consumer’s problems, we bring in the buyer-centric approach which breaks the sales process into different stages such that it sustains existing customers.
The consumer funnel model build for the buyer’s journey should include the 3 stages:
Awareness – This is the phase where consumers explore and understand the problems they have. About 80% of the customers will be in this stage. So, the model should be built with more insights about the problems and with the possible solutions. The benefits of the proposed solutions should also be mentioned. No marketing of the product should be done.
Consideration – In this phase, the product’s information should be provided followed by a free trial or demo. Try to approach in an appealing way such as giving customer stories. This triggers the customers to buy the product which is the ultimate destination. An average of 15% of the customers reaches this stage.
Purchase – The customers would be ready to buy the product in this phase. Only 5% of the customers will reach this stage and be ready to purchase the product. The main aim of this phase lies not only in selling the product but also in retaining the customers.
Getting to know your Buyer Personae
This is one of the important parts where we identify the key characteristics and the target audience. Try to understand the customer’s business goals and thrive to provide those to the customers. Analyze their problems and pain points more deeply and find out what they are exactly looking for. Then try to give the needed solutions or the features that are the customer’s highest priority. Understand what they like and do not like about the company and address the questions and concerns they have. Next is to know what influences consumers to buy the product. Before buying a product, a customer looks for the pros and cons of the product. Good services make the chances of buying the product higher. Design and re-design the funnel until the customers reach the ‘Wow Moment’.
Wow Moment
The moment which drives the customer to explore more when he/she comes across something interesting and cool is the ‘Mini Wow Moment’. The moment which urges the customer to buy the product as soon as he/she is satisfied enough is the ‘Full Wow Moment’.
Factors to be considered to reach the Wow Moment:
How many steps are involved before achieving a Wow Moment?
How much time is taken to reach a Wow Moment?
How much friction is involved before reaching a Wow Moment?
Keeping these factors to the minimum is important to design an effective Buyer-centric funnel.
To change the traditional market paradigm, the Flip the Funnel approach is used which means investing fewer resources on the new customers and giving huge importance to retain the loyal customers. As a result, the existing customers share their experiences with their peers and act as a new client acquisition channel.
Flipping the funnel is done keeping the following factors into count:
Look at the data – Frequently analyze the current marketing data. Three key metrics cited for this analysis are
Average acquisition cost
Average retention cost
The average cost of acquiring a new customer through a referral
Adapt new customer service rules – If a customer is not addressed when he reaches the service department, then the company would lose the customer. In order to avoid this, companies should have 24/7 customer support and reach out to every customer in need.
Identify influencers – Identify the influencers who make or break the business and treat them well.
Reward customers – Recognize and reward customers on a timely basis and always have track of customer’s purchases.
Convince management – The key considerations of this hardest part are
Metrics and benchmarks
Outside validation
Small steps, quick wins
Manage expectations
Don’t oversell, make the customers believe that the strategy is easy.
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