Service: any intangible offering that involves a deed, performance, or effort that cannot be physically
possessed
Customer Service: human to undertake to help satisfy their customers needs and wants
Providing good customer service, firms add value to their products
Firms that are engaged in primarily selling a good, restaurant, view service as a method to maintain
sustainable competitive advantage.
Services are INTANGIBLE, INSEPARABLE, HETEROGENEOUS, AND PERISHABLE.
Intangible: Service cannot be touched, tasted, or seen like a pure product.
-Sally is having trouble deciding which college to attend. While there are buildings, classrooms, and
libraries to evaluate, the actual learning is much more difficult to evaluate. It is this ______ of the
purchase that makes marketing the service, a college education, complicated. INTANGIBILITY
Inseparable production and consumption: Services are produced and consumed at the same time.
- When getting a haircut, the customer is not only present but also participates in the service
process.
- Hairstylist appears to have fun while cutting hair this makes the experience more positive.
- One of the basic ways in which services differ from products is that production and consumption
are ______ from each other. Consequently, service providers often include options for the
customer to become more involved in the production of the service, which usually results in
greater customer satisfaction. INSEPARABLE
Heterogeneous: more humans needed to provide a service, the more likely there is to be heterogeneity
or variability in the service’s quality.
- Hairstylist may give bad haircuts in the morning because they went out the night before. Yet the
stylist may offer better service than the undertrained stylist.
- The primary reason there is greater heterogeneity in services than in products is because
HUMAN INPUTS GENERATE DIFFERENCES
- Two different hair stylists working at the same location
- The same hair stylist working at different times of the day, week, or month
- Jane has realized that she does not enjoy taking a taxi to work because there is substantial
HETEROGENEITY the delivery of the service depending on who is driving her cab that day.
Perishable: service that cannot be stored for use in the future.
- You can’t stockpile your membership at the gym like you could with juice.
Service Gaps Model: designed to encourage the systematic examination of all aspects of the service
delivery process and prescribe the steps needed to develop an optimal service strategy.
One of the most effective methods to assess how well a firm is delivering adequate service to consumers
is to employ the SERVICE GAP Model to evaluate their service provision.