I have often found that it is a real chore to get managers and people to engage with the public to change their views and sell the product as the customer sees it. Years of conditioning and familiarity with a service operation tend to distort our perceptions. The technique I find most helpful in helping people change their views is asking them to think about your product in terms of service cycles. A service cycle is the continuous union of moments that a client must go through when experiencing our service. So the client thinks in terms of experiences, satisfaction and promptness.
You generally think only from the perspective of having a need and having to take steps to meet it. The client thinks in terms of one goal: I want a place to put my money; I want to eat something good in a nice place; I want my teeth cleaned; I want to see better; I want to be on time for the meeting; I want my food to come hot; I want my order to arrive on time.
It is common for companies to make false promises because of the way the business is organized. If the customer has a complicated or unusual problem or a non-routine need for which the business does not have a "system", it seems especially difficult for the organization to react to the customer from the point of view of their need and not from the perspective of its internal structure. Many repeat businesses have been frustrated probably because people were unable to access someone who cared about their problem or calmed their concerns, more than for any other reason.
The service cycle concept helps people collaborate with the customer, making them reorganize their images of what is happening.
Like the moment of truth concept, the service cycle is a powerful idea to help service people change their point of view and see things as customers see them. Analyzing and improving service cycles is a fundamental part of the service management "engineering" process.
But as a SERVICE CYCLE is constituted.; The life cycle is characterized according to the consensus of the service gurus by 4 stages:
Introduction:
In this stage there is a slow growth of the organization because:
- The company may have difficulty recruiting all the staff it needs to hire the new service. The company needs to develop the details of the service. Find ways to improve the distribution of the service. Get customers who accept the service.
At this stage the costs are high due to the high promotional expenses, the fundamental efforts are directed to the buyers who are more likely to buy.
Increase:
The organization grows, new competitors appear taking advantage of the market opportunity, the organization must manage to grow as quickly as possible.
To try to prolong this phase, you can:
- Improve the quality of the service. Defend the service of the competition. Search for new market segments to enter. Differentiate the service. Direct the communication based on the conviction to the purchase.
Maturity:
Growth rate slows, sales stabilize, prices drop, research and development efforts are made to find better deals, it is about improving the marketing mix, and CRM is strengthened.
Slope:
Sales go down considerably, prices go down, services become irreplaceable or with low profitability quotas, the organization will have to eliminate or redesign them to re-launch them.
In future articles, we will analyze the stages of the SERVICE CYCLE one by one and how to turn it into a fundamental tool for the growth of our companies and achieving customer loyalty.
