Strategic Services Management

1. Strategic Services Management Service Positioning Tahir Rashid Tahir Rashid

2. Learning Outcomes For This Section • On completion of this section, students will be able to: • Define the meaning of customer centricity • Reflect upon how this may apply to certain organisations • Investigate the role and process of service positioning Tahir Rashid

3. Customer Centric Organisations Tahir Rashid

4. Customer Centric Organisations • What do we mean by customer centricity? • ‘A business must set itself apart from its competition. To be successful it must identify and promote itself as the best provider of attributes that are important to target customers’ • Lovelock, C. and Wirtz, J. (2007) Tahir Rashid

5. Customer Centric Organisations • Last decade, business focus on • Customer Relationship Management (CRM) • Customer Satisfaction Measurement • Customer Value Management (CVM) Tahir Rashid

6. Reflective question • Do CRM activities actually ‘manage’ the ‘relationship’? • or is it a way to discover and exploit buying behaviour …. Tahir Rashid

7. Moving towards a customer centric business process • The approach • Traditional • Manufacturing industries – strategies focus on production and logistics • Service industries – strategies focus on delivering quality services • Customer centric approach • Recognises the above, but is this sufficient to keep pace with change and survive in the competitive market place? Tahir Rashid

8. Customer centric approach • Premise • All processes impact upon the customer • Aim • Know and understand customers (internal and external) • Treat them as they expect to be treated • Anticipate needs and respond positively • Requirement • Clear business strategies • Clear business values • Match in business culture Tahir Rashid

9. Outcomes • Consistent high quality experiences • Over all customer access points • Across all service, sales and marketing programmes • Throughout the whole organisation Tahir Rashid

10. Activity - Seven Habits of the Customer Centric Organisation • Allow 20 minutes • Harvey Thompson suggested that a company like Amazon.com is one of the best examples of a customer centred company. At the other end of the scale he puts Microsoft as an example of a product driven company. The following seven habits distinguish the truly customer centric company from the company that merely thinks a lot about its customers. Tahir Rashid

11. Activity - Seven Habits of the Customer Centric Organisation • Reflect upon the following statements and see how customer centric your organisation is Tahir Rashid

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16. How do You Score? • Add up all your scores for the seven habits and see how you rate Total score • 0 – 14 You probably turn off a large proportion of potential customers • 15 – 20 You probably irritate some of your potential customers • 21 – 25 You’re doing pretty well but the competition may do better • 26 – 28 Now, you’re a company that I would like to deal with! Tahir Rashid

17. Service Positioning • The positioning strategy • Must establish position for organisation or product in minds of customers • Position should be distinctive, providing one simple, consistent message (clues) • Position must set organisation or product apart from competitors • An organisation cannot be all things to all people—must focus Tahir Rashid

18. Activity 2 – Product Positioning 1 • Allow 10 minutes • Consider your own organisation, and reflect upon the following questions • What does your organisation currently stand for in the minds of current and prospective customers? • Which customers do you serve now, and which ones would you like to target in the future? • What is the value proposition and target segment for each of your current service offerings? • How do your service offerings differ from your competitor’s? • What changes must you make to your offerings to strengthen your competitive position? Avoid trap of focusing too heavily on points of differences that are easily copied Tahir Rashid

19. Positioning Maps to Plot Competitive Strategy • Represent consumer perceptions of alternative products in visual format • Compare attributes • Differences between customer and management perceptions highlighted Tahir Rashid

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24. Activity 3 – Product Positioning 2 • 15 minutes • Using your reflections in the activity ‘product positioning 1’, develop a position map of your organisation. This exercise can be repeated using as several attributes. Tahir Rashid

25. Suggested Reading • Collier, D.A., Meyer, S.M. (2000) An Empirical Comparison of Service Matrices. International Journal of Operations and Production Management. Vol 20 No 6 pp 705 – 729 • McDonald, M., Christopher, M., Knox, S. and Payne, A. (2001) Creating a Company for Customers: how to build and lead a market-driven organisation. Prentice Hall • Imhoff, C., Loftis, L., Geiger, J.G. (2001) Building the Customer Centric Enterprise; data warehousing techniques for supporting customer relationship management. John Wiley • Pine, B .J., Gilmore, J.H. (1999) The Experience Economy. Harvard Business School Press • Silvestro, R. (1999) Positioning Services Along the Volume-Variey Diagonal. International Journal of Operations and Production Management. Vol 19 No 4 pp 399 – 420 • Thompson, H. (2000) The Customer Centric Enterprise; how IBM and other world class companies achieve extraordinary results by putting customers first. McGraw-Hill Tahir Rashid