Walking the Talk on Service
Services are in. I am told that the only part of our economy that is thriving is services. And that even if you are marketing ‘hard goods’ like consumer durables or office automation equipment, in this new world of product parity, the service package that comes along with it is a bigger driver of market share and margins. However in practice, it appears that the actual design of services is quite disconnected from what the consumer actually wants. A lot of service initiatives seem designed to address the frills but not deal with the fundamentals. And even the frills are not perfectly frilly, if the highly personalised letters I get from hotels and airlines and travel agents and banks are any indication. They press the flesh in print very well, with the almost hand written signature which I am sure costs a lot to print, but they don’t bother to […]