Service Innovation – The Next Corporate Buzzword
Flipping through the pages of The Borneo Post recently, I stopped to read the full page advertisement of Panasonic. I do like their motto ‘Ideas for Life’ which is appropriately coined for this competitive and global economy and the picture of a huge light bulb in the center-page with the words, ‘Questions Breed Ideas’ is a clever representation of their marketing intent.
Panasonic has enacted a clear, creative and inspiring motto and message, attempted at inter-linking their corporate identity with the customers’ identity for a lifestyle or for the need to belong to communities that are seeking the latest, most advanced and innovative products and services. Their message ‘How do we make the clearest pictures clearer? How do we make the most intelligent cameras more intelligent? How do we make the smallest camcorders smaller? Or the largest memory larger? Innovation is the ability to see change as an opportunity – not a threat. It’s when we question and challenge today’s innovations, we will find ideas that will reshape the way we see, hear and play’, is effective and persuasive, achieving an identity salience between the brand, customer and identity.
In a rapidly changing marketplace of technology, diverse consumers’ trends and brands battle, Panasonic’s message has a two-pronged purpose – identity-oriented targeting at the changing customer trends and ‘reassurance of innovation’, convincing customers they keeping up with trends to deliver only the best.
What is Service Innovation? As consumers, we see an abundance of almost every product and service in the developed world. Shopping shelves are overcrowded with tens and hundreds of brands of the same product and services (e.g. 350 brands of beer, 200 types of newspapers, 5000 models of watches). We receive excess information from every channel that we cannot process all that we are seeing and hearing. This phenomenon does not necessarily make businesses more profitable in fact, customers become more confused, even depressed and are derailed from making the right choice and drawn away from making the same choice. Businesses are facing more uncertainty, more competition and more opportunities.
The Business Week dated March 29, 2007, stated that service innovation is ‘The Next Big Thing’. Service innovation is a new or significantly improved service concept that is taken into practice. It can be the execution of new or improvements in service products or processes that is beneficial to service producers, customers and which improves the business’ competitive edge. Contrary to thinking, service innovation lies mainly in non-technological areas although it may include applications of technology or systematic methods.
Nonetheless with more choices, cheaper and snazzier products, customer satisfaction indexes have been dropping, there is higher rate of customer attrition and companies are seeing dwindling profitability. Service innovation is one of the right strategies to keep costs low, strengthen customer loyalty and improve your business performance.
Getting the right data. Consumer behaviors, trends and traditional societal structures are changing on an accelerated level that many businesses find it difficult to keep up with the change. For the reason that there are many consumer trends in the marketplace, companies have to filter through the stockpile and ensure they are getting good data and accurate consumer insights. Companies should be initiating data collection from the marketplace through surveys, research or marketing campaigns and promote customers’ feedback and comments about their services and products. Getting the right data would help to better plan and implement the service innovations to match the changing individual group trends such as the customers’ need for fast solutions, enriching lifestyle, better physical wellbeing, environmental consciousness, individualism, or a need to belong.
Redefining The Experience. Service firms and the service functions in all companies need to realize that they cannot approach their businesses like companies that make physical products. It is difficult to standardize service from one customer experience to the next because individuals delivering and receiving the services are not etched out from a mould like in the products sector businesses.
When companies pay close attention to creating a unique service experience to match their brand, changing the frame of reference for each of its product category, they will be successful in forging strong and close links with their customers and even influence the way customers will behave. Dove’s campaign is not just beauty soaps and shampoos, it is about ‘true colors shining through’ or the inner beauty; Malaysia Airlines is not just an airline company, it is about experiencing ‘Malaysian hospitality’, and Starbucks is more than a cup of coffee, it is a meeting place for like-minded people who share the same ideals and values.
Training for Great Service. Great services companies are built on employees showing real passion in their work and a day-to-day commitment to great execution of their operating discipline. Employees need to feel good about what the company represents and the values it stands for to deliver services that go beyond what is expected in the marketplace. Most companies do agree that people are the most important thing – their most valuable assets, yet how many people could recall a wonderfully memorable interaction with the HR department of a prospective employer?
Hiring the right talents and engaging their motivations for great service execution starts even before day one at work. An orientation program is not a day to fill up forms, sign up for employee privileges and watch videos but one that is purpose designed and dramatically choreographed to let the employees personally experience what makes the company different from the competition. Star performers do expect star treatments and employers should treat their present and potential employees the same way as they would treat their customers.
Real People, Real Service. It takes engaging employees to provide warmth, friendly smiles, cook a good meal or brew a good coffee for the customers. With good hiring policies in place to attract the right talents, management then need to provide intense employee training to achieve a consistent level of quality.
Companies need to create a workplace that advocates equality, provides opportunities to learn and grow, alongside great co-workers, or it will face an uphill battle in attracting and retaining quality employees that are crucial to execute innovative service products and processes. You can imagine that Disneyland is fully committed to finding the right people, orientating and training them adequately, and creating the work environments that keep their employees fulfilled and happy, especially with a motto such as ‘Disneyland – The Happiest Place on Earth’.
Open-minding Your Business. Where do great ideas come from? When the markets have become unpredictable, competition is increasing, technologies evolving so quickly and profits are no longer the propagation of business continuation, even the top man cannot think of everything. Not matter how much time the CEO spends on thinking new ideas, he cannot out-think the collective intelligence of groups of people in his company or across the globe. Companies should create a culture and environment that recognizes and rewards employees’ contribution of ideas and suggestions. Open-minding your business would mean deviating away from traditional leadership thinking that only the top people come up with the great ideas. The characteristics of leadership are already changing in current times and smart leaders know there are never enough great ideas. Even Bill Gates believes in the grassroots approach to innovation and uses it to shape the market leadership of Microsoft.
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