Some thoughts on services marketing

Most firms realise the importance of service quality and customer satisfaction. However, it is often unclear on how to achieve these goals.

During the service encounters, when disagreements arise from problems and solutions, customer satisfaction is compromised. This highlights the importance of understanding behaviours and the types of events leading to customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction. Hence, it is vital to comprehend service encounters from various perspectives to assist firms in better educating both employees and customers. 100% service quality can then be better achieved.

Keeping this in mind, it is important to note that from the employee’s viewpoint, customer satisfaction largely depends on moments of truth (the interaction between customer and the employee).

The acknowledgement of existence of wrong customers and move away from the philosophy that “customer is king”. The reason is because organisations have been going on with the philosophy that customers are right all the time and as a result they had to suit their services in order to satisfy their customers. Organisations could have been right with their services initially but had to change for their customers without realising that the customer could have been wrong. For an instance, a guest in a hotel was informed of the policy that if they want a change of any facility, they should call before a certain time in order to have it changed. If the guest finds something not satisfactory and complains about it after the required time and the organisation accommodates to the guest even though he/she is in the wrong, that organisation is going by the policy of “customer is king”. Organisations should be more aware of the customers’ attribution theory when dealing with customers.

Attribution theory refers to situations whereby people point fingers at others when faced with a disagreement rather than realising that the fault could have been theirs possibly.

Creative thinking about customer roles and management of customer expectations can be done. By having this, service personnel would be more prepared to respond in various situations. They can be more sensitive to different cultural backgrounds of customers. For an instance, sales persons in a retail store must attend to different customers accordingly since different customers have different personalities. Creative thinking should be successful to the extent that there should be role congruence for both customers and employees.

These are some critical issues for organisations to consider in order to better their services in satisfying their customers.