2. Objectives:
• To know what actions required to move a service firm
from a reactive position of merely being available for
service, toward the status of world-class service
delivery.
• To understand the extent of marketing, operations and
human-resources management functions
interdependent in service organisations.
• To discuss the causes of inter-functional tensions and
how can be avoided.
• To know how does leading differ from managing.
3. Marketing’s Role in the Service
Firm
As marketing gains
increasing prominence as an
orientation that everyone in the
organization shares and as a
process that all functions
participate in deploying, a
critical issue that arises is the
role of the marketing function
4. Marketing as a Bridging
Function
Marketers like to be
thought of as professionals
too. Part of their role is as
social engineers, fostering a
strong customer focus and
linking the entire organisation
to the markets in which it
competes.
5. Changing Relationships Between Marketing,
Operations and Human Resources
One of the
challenges facing
senior managers in
any type of
organisation is to avoid
“Functional Silos”,
6. The Marketing Function
• Evaluate and select the market segments to serve
• Research customer needs and preferences within
each segments.
• Monitor competitive offerings
• Design the core product and tailor its characteristics
to the needs of chosen market segments.
• Select and establish service levels for
supplementary elements needed to enhance the
value and appeal of the core product, or to facilitate
its purchase and use.
7. The Marketing Function
• Participate with operations in designing the entire service
process to ensure that it is “user friendly”, and reflects
customer needs and preferences.
• Set prices that reflects costs, competitive strategies and
consumer sensitivity to different price levels.
• Tailor location and scheduling of service availability to
customer needs and preferences.
• Develop communications strategies.
• Develop performance standards for establishing and
measuring service quality levels.
• Ensure that all customer contact personnel.
8. The Marketing Function
• Create programmes for rewarding and
reinforcing customer loyalty.
• Conduct research to evaluate customer
satisfaction following service
9. The Marketing Function
Marketing function in service businesses is
closely dependent on the procedures, personnel
and facilities managed by the operations function
and on the quality of the service personnel recruited
and trained by the human resource function.
10. The Operations Function
The Operations function
brings together raw materials
with the production process to
make products that customers
need. It also shares ideas
across the company about
how to improve processes or
achieve cost savings.
11. The Human Resources Function
In many service
businesses, the calibre
and commitment of the
labour force have
become a major source
of competitive
advantage.
12. Inter-functional Conflict
As service place more emphasis on
developing a strong market orientation and
serving customers well, there is increased
potential for conflict among the three functions.
• Cost versus Revenue Orientation
• Conflicting Goal for Workers in Boundary-spanning
Jobs
• Marketing Concerns with operational Goals.
13. Inter-functional Conflict
• Cost versus Revenue Orientation
• Conflicting Goal for Workers in
Boundary-spanning Jobs
• Marketing Concerns with operational
Goals.
14. Inter-functional Conflict
• Cost versus Revenue Orientation
• Conflicting Goal for Workers in
Boundary-spanning Jobs
• Marketing Concerns with operational
Goals.
15. Inter-functional Conflict
• Cost versus Revenue Orientation
• Conflicting Goal for Workers in
Boundary-spanning Jobs
• Marketing Concerns with operational
Goals.
16. Improving Intra-Organizational
Coordination
Transfers and cross training
Cross functional taskforces
New tasks and new people
Process management
teams
Gain-sharing programs
17. Marketing Imperative
target “right” customers and build
relationships
offer solutions that meet their needs
define quality package with competitive
advantage
18. Operations Imperative
create, deliver specified service to target
customers
adhere to consistent quality standards
achieve high productivity to ensure
acceptable costs
19. Human Resource Imperative
recruit and retain the best employees for
each job
train and motivate them to work well
together
achieve both productivity and customer
satisfaction
20. From Losers to Leaders:
Four Levels of Service Performance
Service Losers
Service Nonentities
Service Professionals
Service Leaders
21. Service Losers
bottom of the barrel from
both customer and
managerial perspectives
customers patronize
them because there is no
viable alternative
new technology
introduced only under
duress; uncaring
workforce
22. Service Nonentities
dominated by a traditional operations
mindset
unsophisticated marketing strategies
consumers neither seek out nor avoid
them
23. Service Professionals
clear market positioning strategy
customers within target
segment(s) seek them out
research used to measure
customer satisfaction
operations and marketing work
together
proactive, investment-oriented
approach to HRM
24. Service Leaders
the crème da la crème of their
respective industries
names synonymous with
outstanding service, customer
delight
service delivery is seamless
process organized around
customers
employees empowered and
committed to firm’s values and
goals
25. Moving Up the Service
• Firms can move either up or down the
performance ladder. Once-stellar performers
can become complacent and sluggish.
Organizations that are devoted to satisfying
their current customers may miss important
shifts in the marketplace and find themselves
turning into has-beens that continue to serve a
loyal but dwindling band of conservative
customers.
26. IN SEARCH OF SERVICE LEADERSHIP
• Service leaders are those firms
that stand out in their respective
markets and industries.
However, it still requires human
leaders to take them in the right
direction, set the right strategic
priorities and ensure that the
relevant strategies are
implemented throughout the
organization.
27. Leading a Service Organization
• Josh Kotter, perhaps the best known writer on leadership, argues
that in most successful management processes, people need to
move through eight complicated and often time-consuming
stages:
1. Creating a sense of urgency to develop impetus for change.
2. Putting together a strong enough team to direct the process.
3. Creating an appropriate vision of where the organization needs
to go.
4. Communicating that new vision broadly.
5. Empowering employees to act on that vision.
6. Producing sufficient short–term results to create credibility and
counter cynicism.
7. Building momentum and using that to tackle the tougher change
problems.
8. Anchoring the new behaviors in the organizational culture.
28. Leadership versus Management
• Leaders need to be concerned with the development of
vision and strategies and the empowerment of people
to overcome obstacles and make the vision happen.
Management by contrast, involves keeping the current
situation operating through planning, budgeting, and
organizing, staffing, controlling and problem solving.
29. Leadership versus Management
• Leadership works through people and culture. It
is sift and hot.
• Management works through hierarchy and
systems. It is harder and cooler...
• The fundamental purpose of management is to
keep the current system functioning. The
fundamental purpose of leadership is to produce
useful change, especially non-incremental
change. It is possible to have too much or too
little of either. Strong leadership with no
management risks chaos. The organization
might walk right off a cliff. Strong management
with no leadership tends to entrench an
organization in deadly bureaucracy.
30. Leadership Qualities
• Vision, charisma, persistence, high expectations,
expertise, empathy, persuasiveness, integrity
• Ability to visualize quality of service as foundation for
competing
• Believe in people who work for the firm, make good
communications a priority
• Possess a natural enthusiasm for the business, teach it
to others, pass on nuances, secrets, crafts of operating
• Cultivate leadership qualities of others in organization
• Use values to navigate firms through difficult times
31. Evaluating Leadership Potential
• As we have seen, the need for leadership is not confined
to chief executives or other top managers. Leadership
traits are needed of everyone in a supervisory or
managerial position, including those heading teams.
Federal Express believes this so strongly that it requires
all employees interested in entering the ranks of first-line
management to participate in its Leadership Evaluation
and Awareness Process (LEAP).
1. LEAP’s first step involves participation in an introductory,
one-day class that familiarizes candidates with
managerial responsibilities.
2. The next step is a three-to-six month period during which
the candidate’s manager coaches him or her based on a
series of leadership attributes identifie3d by the
company.
3. A third step involves peer assessment by a number of
the candidate’s co-workers
32. Leadership, Culture and Climate
• In an organizational context, the word “culture” can be defined
as including:
Shared perceptions or themes regarding what is important in
the organization.
Shared values about what is right and wrong.
Shared understanding about what works and what does not.
Shared beliefs and assumptions about why these things are
important.
Shared styles of working and relating to others.
33. Leadership, Culture and Climate
• “Climate” can be thought of as the more immediately tangible
surface layer on top of the organization’s underlying culture.
Among six key factors that influence an organization’s working
environment are it’s:
flexibility-how free employees feel to innovate
Their sense of responsibility to the organization
The level of standards that people set
The perceived aptness of rewards
The clarity people have about mission and values;
And the level of commitment to a common purpose
34. Leadership, Culture and Climate
• From an employee perspective, this climate is related directly to
managerial policies and procedures especially those associated
with human resources management. In short, climate represents the
shared perceptions of employees concerning the practices,
procedures, and types of behaviors that get rewarded and
supported in a particular setting.
• Leaders are responsible for creating cultures and the service
climates that go along with them.
• Creating a new climate for service, based upon an understanding of
what is needed for market success, may require a radical rethink of
human resources management activities, operational procedures
and the firm’s reward and recognition policies.
35. Leadership, Culture and Climate
• Every manager should be role a role model to his or her peers and
subordinates. All supervisors’ should be role models to those whose
work they supervise. Experienced employees should be mentors
and role models for new employees. The skills and behaviors that
are taught in training sessions must be exemplified day-in and day-
out on the job. Otherwise much of the effort put into careful
recruitment will be wasted; a leadership will degenerate into “do as I
say, not as I do”.
36. Conclusion
• No organization can hope to achieve and
maintain leadership in an industry without
human leaders who can articulate a vision and
help to bring it about. Service leadership
encompasses high performance across a variety
of dimensions that fall within the scope of the
marketing, operations and human resources
functions. However, since these functions often
overlap and are interdependent, it is difficult to
perform really well without internal collaboration
and cooperation.
37. Conclusion
• Within any given service organization, marketing
has to coexist with operations traditionally, the
dominant function-whose concerns are cost and
efficiency centered, rather than customer
centered. Marketing must also coexist with
human resources management, which usually
recruits and trains service personnel, including
those who have direct contact with the
customers. An ongoing challenge is to balance
the concerns of each function, not only a head
office, but also in the field.