From a semantic point of view, the term "Service" is part of the list of terms, not easy to define, it takes its meaning depending on the context in which it is being used, for example: in your country is military service compulsory?; María, the neighbor, has just opened a service office; I invite you to eat at the club, the service is excellent; phone service is improving; The product is of high quality but what a terrible service this store provides; please inform us what time the religious service is; by increasing basic services, the condominium increases; the road service is excellent.
Interestingly, the term is used correctly in a military, religious, public or commercial sense. In all these disparate meanings, however, underlies the idea of something useful, of something necessary or simply, that interests for one reason or another.
Well according to the dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy, this term comes from the Latin “servitĭum” and defines it as: “1. Action and effect of serving. 2. Set of servants or servants ”. According to the Espasa Dictionary, serving is defined as: “2. Work for a person or entity. Also intr. 3. Serve the public in a restaurant, shop, etc. ", also service is understood, according to the cited text, as:" 1. Action and effect of serving. 4. Organization and personnel destined to satisfy the needs of the public ”.
On the other hand, Estrada and Borrero assure that etymologically the word to serve is derived from the Latin "servus": servant and it has its roots in the group of survivors who were taken by the Roman conquerors, as slaves and forced to work in the service of the high leaders, nobles and military chiefs.
In accordance with ISO 9000 version 2000 “Quality management systems. Fundamentals and Vocabulary: "A service is also the result of a process."
Rapahmell tells us: “A merchandise that can be traded in isolation; in other words, an intangible product that is not touched, not taken, not felt, is generally not experienced before purchase but allows satisfactions that compensate for the money invested in fulfilling the wishes and needs of customers "
According to Leonard L. Berry, David R. Bennett, and Carter W. Brown, “Service is first of all a process. While articles are objects, services are realizations ”.
According to Fisher and Navarro “A type of economic good, constitutes what the tertiary sector calls, everyone who works and does not produce goods is supposed to produce services. It is the set of activities, benefits or satisfiers that are offered for sale or that are supply in relation to sales "
According to Colunga "It is the work done for other people"
Kotler tells us “It is any activity or benefit that one party offers to another; they are essentially intangible and do not give rise to the ownership of anything. Its production may or may not be linked to a physical product "
Obviously, the titanic task of defining and conceptualizing services is not at all simple since under this term a heterogeneous range of intangible products and activities are grouped that are really difficult to include in a simple definition, in fact, due to their close connection, many times, services and products form a really difficult amalgam to separate.
Perhaps for this reason, many authors and authorities on the subject have eluded its definition and have limited themselves to exposing its nature, effectively, despite the fact that the service sector (understood in a broad sense) is, without a doubt, the element key of developed economies, there is hardly a timid formalization of the principles, techniques, tools and skills of the professionals who work in it.
Perhaps, one of the most important reasons comes from 1776 when the one who is considered the father of Capitalism, the Scottish economist and philosopher Adam Smith (1723 - 1790), in his work "The Wealth of Nations", alien to social reality and in a derogatory way he points out: “The work of a domestic employee (…) does not add any value to anything (…) The value of some of the most respected classes of our society is the same as that of domestic employees, unproductive of any value, and does not determine or give rise to any permanent object or salable merchandise that lasts after the work is executed (…) In the same class, we must include members of the clergy, lawyers, artists, clowns, musicians, singers of opera, etc. "
The prominent economics scholar and staunch defender of Capital accumulation, Adam Smith, considered service activities unproductive, basing his ideas on four arguments:
- Services do not produce real and visible results that represent wealth; Services derive from or are ancillary to goods, highlighting the fact that, by not producing goods, there is almost no need for the provision of services; Services, in general, They are provided internally by the producers or by the vendors linked to the company, and do not represent a branch of activity that generates wealth; Being the invisible and temporary services, they are insignificant compared to the goods.
Fortunately, thanks to evolution, Smith's approach remained in the past and with the evolution of advances in Administration, the value of the client, the role of the user, the importance of the consumer has been gaining consistency and strength and thus, today We know that success from the business point of view is circumscribed by the benefits that produce satisfaction for a consumer and with him, the family and therefore the community, if I am talking about customer service.
In this regard, Gaither tells us: "Customer service is a range of activities that together create a relationship."
Lovelock: “Customer service involves task-oriented activities, other than proactive selling, that include interactions with customers in person, via telecommunications or by mail. This function must be designed, performed and communicated with two objectives in mind: customer satisfaction and operational efficiency ”.
Peel: "That activity that relates the company to the customer, so that the customer is satisfied with said activity."
Horovitz: "It is the set of benefits that the client expects, in addition to the basic product or service, as a consequence of its price, image and reputation."
Recently, Vargo and Lusch define service as the application of competences (knowledge) by one entity for the benefit of another, where value is created collaboratively in an interactive configuration of mutual exchange. Vargo and Lusch call this configuration of value creation, service system, on the other hand, Sopohrer et al call it “The science of services ” and of the co-creation of value within complex constellations of integrated resources.
From the semantic point of view, the accumulation of meanings is really impressive, but I think that we are reaching the end of the road, in fact it can be seen in the VIII Conference of Science and Engineering of Services (JCIS 2012) from 17 to 19 September 2012, in Almería, where it was emphatically pointed out that in the coming years, services will be a key factor in the growth of any economy. This fact has motivated in recent times the interest of the different economic actors to develop what has been called the "Science of Services", also known from a broader perspective as " Science, Management and Engineering of Services”(Services Sciences, Management and Engineering, or SSME). It is a call to action aimed mainly at the University, the IT Industry and the Public Administration, with the ultimate purpose of creating principles, knowledge, methods and techniques to articulate their respective responsibilities and activities around the concept of service "http: //sistedes2012.ual.es/sistedes/jcis ”.
Footnotes:
- Mauro Rodríguez Estrada and Ricardo Escobar Borrero (1996). Creativity in the Service. Mc Publishing. Graw Hill. Mexico Rapahmell John M. (1974). Marketing in the service sector. Winthrop Publishers Inc., Cambridge Massachusetts, Leonard L. Berry, David R. Bennett, Carter W. Brown (1989). Quality of service: A strategic advantage for financial institutions. Díaz de Santos editions. Madrid Spain Fisher L. and Navarro V. (1994). Introduction to Market Research (3rd ed.). McGraw-Hill Interamericana SA Mexico Colunga, C. (1995). Quality in service. Editorial Panorama. Mexico Kotler, P. (1997). Marketing. Prentice-Hall. Mexico. Gaither Tucker Frances (1983) "Creative Customer Service Management", International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management, Vol. 13 Iss: 3, pp. 34-50. Lovelock, CH (1983).Classifying Services to Gain Strategic Marketing Insights. Journal of Marketing, 47, 9-20. Peel, M. (1993). Customer service. Deusto editions. Spain Horovitz, J. (1990). The quality of service. McGraw-Hill Interamericana. Madrid.Vargo SL and Lusch RF (2004): “Evolving to a new dominant logia for marketing”. Journal of Marketing, no. 68, pp.1-17. Vargo SL and Lusch RF (2006): “Service-Dominant Logic: What it is, What it is not, What it might be”. In The Service-Dominant Logic of Marketing: Dialog, debate and Directions, Lusch, RF and Vargo, SL (eds.), Armonk, ME Sharpe, pp.43-56. Vargo SL and Lusch RF (2008): “From goods to service (s): Divergences and convergences of logic ”. Industrial Marketing Management, vol. 37, pp. 254-259. Sopohrer J., MAGLIO P., BAILEY J. and GRUHL D. (2007): “Steps toward a science of service systems”.IEEE Computer Magazine, January, pp. 71-77.
