Characteristics of Service
Whether you own your own business, work for a business, participate in a community organisation or donate time to charity – EVERYONE can benefit from truly understanding the characteristics of SERVICE.
Let’s take a moment to better equip ourselves with some NECESSARY TOOLS to benefit our daily lives.
What is a Service Encounter?
Ok, this one is easy. Essentially a service encounter is any time you encounter or experience service. Seems too easy right? I know. Let’s delve a litter deeper… “Service is otherwise known as any activity or benefit that one party can offer to another that is essentially intangible and does not result in the ownership of anything.”
Some basic assumptions:
- There are a number of unique characteristics that separate service from tangible goods.
- These service characteristics pose issues that are not faced by everyday goods marketers
- Goods marketing strategies are not adequate in dealing with those issues.
Thus, services are:
- Intangible – Non-physical activity or benefit from one person to another.
- Variable – No two staff members will deliver service the same way, even when scripted.
- Synchronous in delivery and consumption – Production, delivery & consumption of service all happen at the same time, they are very difficult to separate.
- Perishable – Services cannot be stored. Accurate demand forecasts for service (e.g. sales staff around Christmas) are necessary for correct management of supply. Self-service options like an automatic car wash can to help meet demand.
Services cannot be seen, touched or tasted
Challenges |
Responses |
| Provide Tangible Evidence | Symbolic Cues (pilots uniforms) |
| How to signal quality | Provide tangible cues (membership cards) |
| How to reduce risk | Display trusted brand/logo (VISA/Mastercard) |
| How to communicate the offer | Guarantees & Promote qualifications/experience |
As you can see it is difficult to separate the service from the person who performs the act. The service provider’s role is therefore very important, as the production and delivery of customer service is consumed by the customer simultaneously. That is to say, no two service deliveries will ever be the same despite numerous efforts to practice and polish the delivery.
This goes to show that adequate preparation and highly skilled service staff, will easily separate the boys from the men of a particular industry.
What do you think? Do you agree? Did I miss anything? Leave me a comment about your experience with everyday service.
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If we haven’t met before, I’d love to meet you! You can find out a little bit about me here and get in contact with me here. Are you on Twitter? You can follow me here: @mikeboyd
