21 Importance of People in Services Marketing

Dr. Jasveen Kaur

 

Importance of People in Service Marketing

 

Introduction

 

As most services are labor intensive, the employees of the organization will have a big impact on that organizations success. People- frontline employees and those supporting them from behind the scenes- are critical to the success of any organization. Service employees are so important to customers and the firm’s competitive positioning because the front line (Valarie A. Zeithaml): –

 

1. Is a core part of the product- Often, the service employee is the most visible element of the service, delivers the service, and significantly determines service quality. (Christopher Lovelock).

 

2. Is the service firm– The contact employee is the service- there is nothing else, e.g., in most personal and professional services (like hair cutting, child care), the contact employee provides the entire service.

 

3. Is the organization in the customer’s eyes- Even if the contact employee does not perform the service entirely, he or she may still personify the firm in the customer’s eyes.(Valarie A. Zeithaml)

 

4.  Is the brand – Frontline employees and the service they provide often are the core part of the brand. The employees determine whether the brand promise is delivered.

 

5. Affects sales- Service personnel often are crucially important for generating sales, cross-sales, and up-sales.

 

6.  Determine productivity- Frontline employees have heavy influence on the productivity of frontline operations.

 

7. Is the marketer- As the contact employees represents the organization and can directly influence customer’s satisfaction, they perform the role of marketers. Some service employees may also perform more traditional selling roles. (Valarie A. Zeithaml)

 

Roles of a Service Employee

 

Service Employees are required to perform a variety of roles in a service organization. Employees who are involved in service production process needs to perform the following role effectively.

 

1. Product Designer: The basic service package formulated by service organization serves as basic input for the contact employee. Each and every onerequires a different service for solving their problems. Service Employees should ascertain each customer’s specific service requirement and design a distinctive service product by taking into consideration the resources and competencies of service organization.

 

2. Performer: Service Employees are the performers in the service production process. They have to interact with uncontrollable elements and extract quality performance by influencing customers to get involved in the process.

 

3. Technician: Some services require the use of equipment and tools. The service employees who possess the skills to operate such equipment are required for such purposes.

 

4. Associate: Service employees and service consumers together produce service. The expected role of an employee is to associate with the consumer and produce quality service.

 

5. Friend: A service employee has to play the role of friend with consumers as well as co-employees in a team. Every employee of the service organization should respond to consumers’ needs positively.

 

6. Empathizers:Service consumers feel comfortable and perceive better quality when contact employees are empathetic. Service employees should have the patience and inclination to be empathetic towards consumers.

 

7.   Assurer: For the consumer, contact employees are the representatives of the company, so the service employees’ words and actions should reflect assurance to consumers.

 

Boundary – Spanning Roles

 

The frontline service employees are referred to as boundary spanners because they operate at the organization’s boundary. Boundary spanners provide a link between the external customers and environment and the internal operations of the organization. They serve a critical function in understanding. Filtering, and interpreting information and resources to and from the organization and its external consequences (Valarie A. Zeithaml).

 

Motivating support personnel to perform consistent, high- quality work is important for the success of service firms. If a dry cleaner does not get customers’ clothes clean, it does not matter how pleasant the customer contact person was to them. In designing service jobs firm, firms must be aware of five important motivational job characteristics. These characteristics are:-

 

1. Skill variety– Is the degree or range of abilities required by an employee to do a job. In addition to the skills needed to perform the actual service, customer contact employees must have an ability to interact with people.

 

2.  Task identity- Is the degree that a job has identifiable units of work with visible outcomes.

 

3.   Task significance- Is the degree of impact an employee perceives his or her job has on lives of others inside or outside the organization.

 

4.   Autonomy- Is the degree of freedom and discretion an employee has in his or her work design.

 

5.  Feedback- Is the degree of direct, clear information and employee receives from superiors concerning the effectiveness of his or her performance. (David L. Kurtz)

 

Sources of Conflict

 

Frontline employees often face interpersonal and inter organization conflicts on the job. Their frustration and confusion can lead to stress, job dissatisfaction, and diminished ability to serve customers.(Valarie A. Zeithaml).

 

Frontline employees have to deal with these many conflicts:(Valarie A. Zeithaml)

 

· Person/Role Conflict- Service staff may have conflicts between what their job requires and their own personalities, self – perception, and believes. For example, the job may require staff to smile and be friendly even to rude customers. (Christopher Lovelock).Person/Role conflict also arises when employees are required to wear specific clothing or change some aspect of their clearance to conform to the job requirements. For example, a young lawyer just out of school may feel an internal conflict with his new role when his employer requires him to cut his hair and trade his casual clothes for a three- piece suit.

 

· Organization/ Client Conflict – Customer contact personnel must attend to both operational and marketing goals. They are expected to delight customers, who take time, yet they have to be fast and efficient at operational task. On top of that, they often are expected to do selling, cross- selling, and up- selling. (Christopher Lovelock).The organization/ client conflict is greatest when the employees believe the organization is wrong in its policies and must decide whether to accommodate the client and risk losing a job or to follow the policies.

 

· Inter Client Conflict- Sometime conflict occurs for boundary spanners when incompatible expectations and requirements arise from two more customers. These situations occur most often when service provider is serving customers in turn (bank teller, a doctor) or is serving many customers simultaneously (teachers, entertainers). When serving many customers at same time, employees often find it difficult or impossible to serve full range of needs of a group of heterogeneous customers.

 

Strategies for delivering through people

 

Complex combination of strategies is needed to assure that service employees are willing and able to deliver quality services and that they stay motivated to perform in customer- oriented, service-minded ways. These strategies for enabling service promises are referred to as internal marketing. To build a customer- oriented, service- minded work force an organization must. (Valarie A. Zeithaml):-

1.Hire the Right People- Employee satisfaction to be seen as necessary but not sufficient for having high performing staff. Hiring the right people includes the competing for applications from the best employees in the labor market, then selecting from this pool the best candidates for the specific job to be filled. (Christopher Lovelock). However, Successful service organizations generally look beyond the technical qualifications of applicants to access their customer and service orientation as well. (Valarie A. Zeithaml)

 

(i) Compete for the Best People- There’s no such thing as perfect employee. Different positions are often are best filled by people with different skills sets, styles and personalities. (Christopher Lovelock)

 

(ii) Hire for Service Competencies and Service Inclination– Service Employees need two complimentary capacities: Service competencies and Service inclination. Service competencies are the skills and knowledge necessary to do the job. In many cases, employees demonstrate competencies by achieving particular degrees and certifications, such as attaining a doctor of law degree and passing the relevant state bar examinations for lawyers. In other cases, service competencies may not be degree- related but may instead relate to basic intelligence or physical requirements. Service Inclination means their interest in doing service- related work- which is reflected in their attitudes toward service and orientation toward service customers and fellow employee. (Valarie A. Zeithaml)

 

(iii) Be the Preferred Employer– One way to attract the best people is to be known as the preferred employer in a particular industry or location. That means a firm has to compete for talent market share. Furthermore, the compensation package cannot be below average. (Christopher Lovelock)

 

(iv)Tools to Identify the Best Candidates– Excellent Service firms use a number of approaches to identify the best candidates in their applicant pool. These approaches include interviewing applicants, observing behaviour, conducting personality tests, and providing applicants with a realistic job preview. (Christopher Lovelock)

 

2. Develop People to Deliver Service Quality- To grow and maintain a workforce that is customer oriented and focused on delivering quality, an organization must develop its employees to deliver service quality.(Valarie A. Zeithaml)

 

(i) Train for Technical and Interactive Skills– If a firm has good people, investments in training can yield outstanding results. Knowledgeable staff is a key aspect of service quality. They must be able to explain product features effectively and position the product correctly. (Christopher Lovelock). Technical skills for example can be working with accounting systems in hotels, cash machine procedures in a retail store. Service employees also need training in interactive skills that allow them to provide courteous, caring, responsive, and empathetic service. (Valarie A. Zeithaml)

 

(ii) Empower Employees– After selecting the right candidates and training them well, the next step is to empower the frontline. Empowerment means giving employees the authority, skills, tools, and desires to serve the customer. (Valarie A. Zeithaml) For many services, providing employees with greater discretion enables them to provide superior service on the spot, rather than taking time to get permission from supervisors. Empowerment looks to frontline staff to find solutions to service problems and to make appropriate decisions about customizing service delivery. (Christopher Lovelock)

 

(iii) Promote Teamwork– The nature of many service jobs suggests that customer satisfaction will be enhanced when employees work as teams. Because service jobs are frequently frustrating, demanding, and challenging, a teamwork environment will help alleviate some of the stresses and strains. Employees who feel supported and feel that they have a team backing them up will be better able to maintain their enthusiasm and provide quality service.(Valarie A. Zeithaml)

 

3. Provide Needed Support Systems- To be efficient and effective in their jobs, service workers require internal support systems that are aligned with their need to be customer focused. For example, a bank teller who is rewarded for customer satisfaction as well as for accuracy in bank transactions needs easy access to up-to-date customer records, a well-staffed branch, and supportive customer-oriented supervisors and back-office staff.

 

(i) Measure Internal Service Quality– One way to encourage supportive internal service relationships is to measure and reward internal service. By first acknowledging that everyone in the organization has a customer and then measuring customer perceptions of internal service quality, an organization can begin to develop a strong internal quality culture.

 

(ii) Provide Supportive Technology and Equipment– When employees do not have the right equipment or their equipment fails them, they can be easily frustrated in their desire to deliver quality service. To do their jobs effectively and efficiently, service employees need the right equipment and technology.

 

(iii) Develop Service– Oriented Internal Processes- To best support service personnel in their delivery of quality service on the front line, an organization’s internal processes should be designed with customer value and customer satisfaction. Internal procedures must support quality service performance.(Valarie A. Zeithaml)

 

4.   Retain the Best People- An organization that hires the right people, trains and develops them to deliver service quality, and provides the needed support must also work to retain them. Employee turnover, especially when the best service employees are the ones leaving, can be very detrimental to customer satisfaction, employee morale, and overall service quality.

 

(i) Include Employees in the Company’s Vision– For employees to remain motivated and interested in sticking with the organization and supporting its goals, they need to share an understanding of the organization’s vision. They will be motivated to some extent by their pay checks and other benefits, but the best employees will be attracted away to other opportunities if they are not committed to the vision of the organization. And they cannot be committed to the vision if that vision is kept secret from them.

 

(ii) Treat Employees as Customers– If employees feel valued and their needs are taken care of, they are more likely to stay with the organization. Number of initiatives are being done by organization’s to benefit employees like child care resource and referral service, adoption assistance, health care, family leave etc.

 

(iii) Measure and Reward Strong Service Performers- If a company wants the strongest service performers to stay with the organization; it must reward and promote them. Reward system may value productivity, sales, or some other dimension that can work against providing good service. Reward System need to be linked to the organization’s vision and to outcomes that are truly important. (Valarie A. Zeithaml)

 

Effect of Employee Behavior on Service Quality Dimensions

 

Satisfied employee makes for satisfied customer. Unless service employees are happy in their jobs, customer satisfaction will be difficult to achieve. Both a climate for service and a climate for employee well – being are highly correlated with overall customer perceptions of service quality. That is, both service climate and human resource management experiences that employees have within their organizations are reflected in how customers experience the service. Employees who feel they are treated fairly by their organizations will treat the customers better, resulting in greater customer satisfaction. Customers’ perceptions of service quality are affected by the customer- oriented behavior of employees. All five dimensions of service quality (reliability, responsiveness, assurance, empathy, and tangibles) and can be influenced directly by service employees. Delivering the service as promise- reliability- is often totally within the control of front line employees. Even in the case of automated services (such as ATMs, automated ticketing machines, or self- serve), behind – the – scenes employees are critical for making sure all systems are working properly. When services failed or errors are made, employees are essential for setting things right and using their judgment to determine the best course of action for service recovery. Front line employees directly influence customer perceptions of responsiveness through their personal willingness to help and their [promptness in serving customers. One employee may ignore your presence, where as another offers to help you search and calls other stores to locate the item. One may help you immediately and efficiently, where as another may move slowly in accommodating even the simplest request. Assurance dimension of service quality is highly dependent on employees’ ability to communicate their credibility and to inspire the customer’s trust and confidence in the firm. The reputation of the organization will help, but in the end, individual employees with whom the customer interacts confirm and build trust in the organization or detract from its reputation and ultimately destroy trust. For startup or relatively unknown organizations, credibility, trust, and confidence will be tied totally to employee actions. It is difficult to imagine how an organization would deliver “caring, individualized attention” to customers independent of its employees. Empathy implies that employees will pay attention, listen, adapt, and be flexible in delivering what individual customers need. Employee appearance and dress are important aspects of the tangibles dimension of quality, along with many others factors that are independent of service employees (the service facility, décor, brochures, signage, and so on). (Valarie A. Zeithaml)

 

Customer- Oriented Service Delivery

 

Historically, many firms have viewed senior management as the most important people in the firm, and indeed, organizational charts tend to reflect this view in their structure. This approach places management at the top of the structure and (implicitly) the customers at the bottom, with customer-contact employees just above them. If the organization’s most important people are the customers they should be at the top of the chart, followed by those with whom they have contact. Such a view is more consistent with a customer-oriented focus. In effect, the role of top management changes from that of commanding to that of facilitating and supporting employees in the organization who are closest to the customer. Unlike traditional organizational chart where the manager is at the top and the service employees are at the bottom, in the customer oriented service delivery, the organizational chart has been flipped upside down to place the customers and the service employees at the top and the manager at the bottom playing the role of facilitator and supporter to the employees who are the closest to the customer. The customer oriented organizational chart clearly indicates the significance of service employees in garnering the customer satisfaction through quality service which is an outcome of the rigorous and vigorous HR strategies. (Valarie A. Zeithaml)

 

Conclusion

 

Often, service employees are the service, and they represent the organization in customers’ eyes. They affect the service quality perceptions to a large degree through their influence on the fiver dimensions of service quality. It is essential to match what the customer wants and needs with service employees’ abilities to deliver. The front line service jobs demand significant investments of emotional labor and that employees confront a variety of on-the-job conflicts. As service employees are very important for the organization because of the nature of the role played by them, company should use different strategies for integrating appropriate human resource practices into service firms. The strategies are aimed at allowing employees to effectively satisfy customers as well as be efficient and productive in their jobs. The strategies are organized around four major human resource goals in service organizations: hire the right people, develop people to deliver service quality, provide needed support systems, and retain the best people. A company that works toward implementing these strategies is well on its way to delivering the service quality through its people, thereby diminishing the service performance gap. Service quality can be achieved when employees are well organized and well managed. Employee satisfaction is only route through which service companies can satisfy their customers. Service employees play varied roles in the service production process and as an employee of an organization.

 

Learn More:

  • Zeithaml, A. Valarie,Bitner, Mary Jo, Gremler, Dwayne D., Pandit, Ajay(2013). Services Marketing. India: McGraw Hill Education Private Ltd.
  • Clow, Kenneth E., Kurtz, David L. (2009).Services Marketing. India: Biztantra.
  • Lovelock, Christopher, Wirtz, Jochen.&Chatterjee, Jayanta(2011). Services Marketing. India: Pearson Publications
  • Rao,K. Rama Mohana(2013). Services Marketing.India:Prentice Hall.
  • https://www.google.co.in/search?q=STRATEGIES+FOR+DELIVERING+SERVICE+QUALITY&source