Article
Services Marketing: Four Factors
that Affect Your Customers
|
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
It’s been called “selling the invisible” — delivering intangible services as a core “product” offering. Law firms, management consultants, IT services and telecom providers, architectural groups, healthcare and educational organizations, financial and insurance institutions, and a multitude of business-to-consumer operations profit from performing and delivering people-based services.
But invisibility, or intangibility, is just one factor that distinguishes services marketing from product marketing. Along with inseparability, variability, and perishability, these four characteristics impact the way clients behave during the buying process and the way organizations must interact with them. Additionally, these characteristics influence the development of marketing strategies and the more tactical marketing mix -- from the “packaging” and pricing of services bundles, to defining distribution plans and promotions options.
To ensure business success, the services marketing professional must clearly understand these characteristics, how they affect client behavior, and how their organization can respond to diminish engagement risk, improve customer perceptions, and enhance market opportunities.
Intangibility
Services are not physical and cannot be "possessed." Because they can't be seen, touched, or made tangible in some way, assessing quality and value is difficult. A services client will never know how good the service is until after he receives it. In some cases, it actually may be months or years before a trigger event occurs to activate the service, at which time the client hopes to experience the promised service quality (e.g., an IT crisis triggers service, or an accident initiates an insurance claim). This can be unsettling for the client, and his response is to look for tangible signals about the service process and quality prior to purchase to reduce his uncertainty and reservation.
Marketing Response
Services marketing
professionals must determine how to effectively communicate the services
process, deliverables, and benefits in order to build client confidence.
Tangible signals that indicate services quality and value come from personal
interaction, trusted recommendations, clear communications, equipment used
or processes followed, pricing, and/or the physical environment in which
the business operates.
With promotions, a logo symbol can offer a sense of tangibility — the “good hands” of Allstate, the Merrill Lynch bull, the Prudential Insurance rock. Testimonials and case studies can be used to build client confidence and rapport. The communications material itself (paper, design, and content) can convey quality, too.
Pricing also can be an indicator of quality: Premium pricing often suggests higher quality, while prices that are too low may hint at the inexperience, limited depth, or vague processes of the services producer.
But tangibility must extend beyond promotions and price. Because positive personal interaction and “chemistry” is a gauge of quality to the client, marketing as a discipline must be influential in the training of sales and service associates. These individuals literally are the embodiment of marketing for the organization. Their ability to deliver on the brand promise affects business success. Therefore, creating client relationships, setting appropriate expectations, and learning to represent the company in an acceptable way (e.g., through appearance, attitude, and communications) should augment standard knowledge and process training. Because of its criticality to services delivery, the success of client interactions should be quantified, measured, and improved with regularity.
Inseparability
The production of the services can't be separated from its consumption. For example, the production and consumption of a medical exam happen together, as do many consulting services and IT maintenance contracts. This leads to two important factors: First, the client is, essentially, "in the factory," watching production all along the way. It is very important for a service provider or consultant to carefully manage the "production process" as the client is able to observe it in action and make judgments about quality and value. Second, the client often expects the service to be provided in a specific way or by a specific individual — and that can pose challenges in assigning staff, managing the process, and ensuring the front-line people display the appropriate knowledge, attitude, and appearance when delivering the service.
Marketing Response
Services marketing professionals
can encourage client participation during the delivery process. As the
client is engaged through interviews, strategy sessions, regular communications,
testing, and face-to-face updates at major milestones, he gains confidence
and builds commitment to the engagement and relationship.
To manage distribution and pricing considerations in the face of inseparability, the marketing professional can identify the level of personalization the client requires, and that the company can support. For example, interactions can be managed through conference calls versus on-site visits, or exchanges can be shifted from high-contact to low-contact operations (e.g., personalized banking to ATM or online banking). These changes should be carefully evaluated to ensure client acceptance and positive brand impact.
Variability
Sometimes
called "heterogeneity," services
quality and consistency are subject to great variability because they
are delivered by people, and human behavior is difficult to control. Personal
performance and quality can vary by time of day (people get tired), time
of month or year (during tax time for CPAs), workload, experience, attitude,
knowledge, and other factors. Maintaining client trust during lapses (which
will happen) is critical. Additionally, variability is why it can be
risky
to have one person make the sale and establish the relationship, and another
deliver the service. The original contact person is the one who
reduced risk for the client;
when someone else delivers
the service, the client may
become agitated or wary.
Marketing Response
Services marketing
professionals particularly can overcome variability by developing special
service packages. For example, the level of quality to be received can
be deliberately limited. IT maintenance contracts frequently offer a range
of service packages (e.g., from “basic” with
response in 4-6 hours, to “premium” with immediate, on-call
support). Standardizing some service offerings enables the organization
to be very specific in noting service and quality deliverables, thus decreasing
variability and meeting client expectations simultaneously. When this method
is used, variability can become a point of differentiation as it enables
flexibility and services customization.
When promoting services, marketers can overcome client concern about service consistency in two ways— through team introductions and through positive referrals. The sales leader should make it clear that a qualified team will work with the client, and schedule face-to-face introduction and discovery sessions to smooth the next-phase transition process. Additionally, positive word-of-mouth referrals, written testimonials and case studies, or referenceable accounts can dispel client concerns about variability.
Because things can and do go wrong, the services producer should know how to deliver a professional client response. How quickly the response is delivered is critical. The objective is to maintain client trust so shifting blame, explaining it away, or ignoring it can further damage the relationship. The services producer should provide an apology, fix the problem or situation quickly, make up for the inconvenience with additional free services or a token of appreciation, and determine the reason for the error and fix it at the root – even if it means people or process changes.
Finally, research shows that employee satisfaction is the most important factor in providing high quality service. Potential client interaction problems can be minimized through adequate training, empowering employees to make more customer-focused decisions, and rewarding them for positive customer-oriented behavior. Also, establishing employee feedback mechanisms so that management can hear and take action on issues of concern will strengthen employee perceptions of the company, increase satisfaction, and result in better client interactions.
Perishability
You can't store services for future use. When a client misses an appointment with his attorney, that time can never be recaptured. When hotel rooms are empty and theater tickets go unsold, the inherent value vanishes. Perishability also affects performance as balancing supply and demand can be difficult. Demand may be seasonal, time sensitive, or crisis driven. When demand fluctuates, it can be a challenge to maintain high performance levels. For example, a CPA at tax time may have difficulty giving the same personalized attention as at other times of the year. In IT services, performance could be tested during peak times of disaster recovery, massive server outages, or when juggling new installation projects in four states. While product marketers handle supply-demand issues through production scheduling and inventory management, services marketers don’t have that advantage.
Marketing Response
Unlike the other three
characteristics, perishability primarily is a concern of the service producer – the
client is aware of this factor only when there is an insufficient supply
and he has to wait for the service. For the services marketing professional,
perishability affects pricing and distribution most distinctly. If the
services are particularly time sensitive, demand-based pricing can be
instituted as with airline tickets, seasonal vacations, or even a partner’s
hourly fee structure. For many services, managing demand is handled by
scheduling delivery through appointments, while increasing supply is addressed
through multiple locations or additional site personnel.
Another way to balance supply-demand issues is through
the use of retainer agreements. For those services that are long-term, maintenance,
or consultative in nature, this pricing and delivery method ensures the
client of ongoing services delivery with a greater consistency in quality,
and allows the services producer to establish a more predictable cash flow
and forecasting scenario.
The Final Factor
What’s right for your services organization?
How can your company strengthen client relationships and improve its competitive
position? Understanding the characteristics of services can provide a
unique opportunity for services producers to improve business success
by rethinking their pricing models and packaging options, improving production
processes and client participation, enhancing customer focus, and building
employee relationship skills. 
ReThink Marketing can help you assess and improve your services focus and realign your marketing strategy. Contact us to schedule a discovery session.
