Service Encounter

What service encounter is, and its importance was examined in the June 2009 exam of the subject planning and control of the chartered institute of marketing professional diploma study program. Having discussed it with some of my clients, I will here address that topic.

What is service encounter?

There are two words here, service and encounter. When asked to explained phrases, it does help to break one down by its different words. Let us proceed.

Service. This is a product. Examples of services include study tuition and consultancy.

Encounter. An encounter is an experience resulting from an interface. The interface here is with a service. A service encounter therefore is

...an interface and experience that a customer has of a service...

There you have it. That is what service encounters means.

A service encounter can be positive or it can be negative. This means that a customer, prospective or actual, can have either a negative or positive experience with a service. Marketers must always work at ensuring that customers have a delightful experience with services. There must be adequate investment of financial, physical and human resources into the extended marketing mix. When talking about services, people, physical evidence and processes are important variables to consider when talking services.

PEOPLE

A customer will not be happy to be attended by a services representative who does not have adequate knowledge of what the company has to offer and on the interested product in particular. If this takes happens it will result in negative service encounter. Agents and representatives must know their services well to be able to advice a client accordingly. In fact, it is also important to know about key competitor products.

From agents and services support staff, a customer will also expect attention, patience, kindness and courtesy. Marketers and indeed front-liners must always put a smile and maintain calmness even when doing so makes one looks foolish. There are difficult customers who openly express their dissatisfaction loud. Let them speak and assist them where you can. When they feel that they have been helped and received the attention they needed, it can be said that the service encounter has been positive.

There is another important point to include under this sub-heading of People. Staff members must be uniformed. In case that came out too blunt, what I am trying to say is that there is way in which it must be easy for customers to identify who is a customer support staff and who is not. At Shoprite, they all put on company branded shirts and tops. At other organisations such as Multichoice, they place name tags on their shirts/tops. There must be a way in which staff members and indeed front-liners are easily identified.

PROCESSES

A process is simply a combination of related steps or stages to achieving a predefined objective. In this case, these are stages in accessing and providing the service. Easy access is important to customers and must also be to marketers. Customers must always be thought to be busy people, each preoccupied with their own business and therefore their time must not be wasted. So, the process must be easy, making the product accessible. Convenience is an important point to add. Accessing the service must be something that a customer must be able to do without unnecessary huddles. Lines must be reduced. Technology must be integrated and used to make the life of the customer easy and ensure that the encounter they have with your service is positive.

Today, processes have been greatly affected by technology. A number of organisations now exist that will make at your disposal products that will enable your create better services to customers. Even just delivery can make a service more supreme to those of competitors. Talking of technology, take the Internet for example. Customers of banks such as ZANACO and Stanbic can access their account records online and transfer money into other accounts straight from the Internet. This is good because the customer does not have to worry about getting to the bank before it closes up at 15:30hrs. They can bank at any time and indeed, almost anywhere as long as they have an Internet connection.

PHYSICAL EVIDENCE

Imagine you walk into a club like ZENON and you find in there a choir sing the hymn Amazing Grace. I do not know what your immediate thoughts will be, but one thing for sure is that the presence of the choir and the song being sung are very inappropriate. One would ask what has happened to the churches...

Physical evidence encompasses not just what you can see that attests that a particular service is offered in a specific place, but also that which you cannot see. It matters how the desks and tills are arranged. The arrangement in a restaurant is different from that for a classroom. And the walls, yes, even them, it matters what is placed on them. In banks, you expect to see an electronic exchange rates board. And at a hospital, posters of health tips on what, what not to do and what to use.

If you were blind folded and without being told you are lead into a cold storage, would you know where you are? Maybe, maybe not, but one thing for sure is that you would know is that you are in a cold place. Obviously! You can guess it to be indeed a cold storage room, a butchery or Ice Cream Land (thought not really cold in there). The point here is that the temperature and general surrounding is an important aspect of physical evidence. The word used to describe the surrounding is Ambiance.

People, processes and physical evidence are important to ensure positive service encounter between the organisation and the customer. Marketers must plan the three in consultation with its customers as that their blend is one that will lead to customer satisfaction. A satisfied customer is an asset because they certainly will return to purchase more and more, and better still, they will influence more to do the same.