By Krithika V. Subramaniam

This millennium, companies will have to review their management styles if they wish to emerge as successful organisations. I believe the one key ingredient in this review should be an organisational mindset that views service not as a post-purchase activity focused on keeping customers happy, but as a critical component of the organisation's strategic planning process.

The service imperative in the new millennium comes in the wake of 5 trends that emerged in the last decade of the previous millennium: customer focus, globalisation, new-age information systems, higher-order marketing strategies, and environmental consciousness. As a result of these changes, the Indian customer at the beginning of this century is in the enviable position of having a range of products and services that she can choose from. Organisations can, thus, expect her not to be content with products of average quality or mediocre service, but demand best-in-class products and services.

Companies have, traditionally, tried to retain their competitive advantage by adding functional values to their basic product or service. This will continue in this millennium too; only, the additional functional values will be built around service. At one level, this will enhance the customer's perceived value of the offering; at another, it will ensure the delivery of Total Customer Value by creating intangible benefit-layers around the offering. What will be the elements of a good service strategy? There are 5: strategic marketing orientation, strategic service vision, total quality, information management, and globalisation.

Strategic marketing orientation is the fundamental element of a good service strategy. Thus, marketing professionals will have to acquire the capability to foresee future trends and translate their foresight into new generation products and services before their competitors do so. This requires corporate conviction, an organisational culture that encourages innovation, and the ability to apply technology to the betterment of the service delivery process.

Strategic Service Vision refers to the service function's alignment with organisational vision. For most of the 20th Century, companies did not like the word service. It was used to describe the process of answering customer queries and solving customer problems. The prevalent logic was: ''If we make a good enough product, we don't need service.'' This approach was, essentially, goal-directed. In this millennium, service will increasingly become vision-directed, as companies evolve ways of making different aspects of service contribute to the realisation of the corporate vision.

The conformance approach to quality has already given way to a customer-driven quality philosophy. Indeed, the essence of techniques like TQM is a focus on providing quality as perceived by the customer, and in all aspects of a company's interactions with her.

Information management will keep pace with service. Relational databases which contain data on the geographic, demographic, and psychographic profiles of customers will offer tailor-made offerings that will allow firms to target the most profitable customers and reach them in the most cost-effective manner.

Millennial service strategies must ensure that they satisfy 3 constraints of the service mechanism. The first is the effectiveness in terms of speed, responsiveness, accuracy, convenience, and reliability. The second is the company's ability to build and maintain a workforce equipped with a service orientation. And the third is a constant focus on developing the existing skill base of the organisation's workforce.

The ideal millennial service model will begin with the customer and understand her needs and value system. Then, the marketing function will analyse the customer's profile and design appropriate products and services. In the next stage, customer expectations will be translated into service-packages and processes. This is an important stage because companies have to build the back-end of the service encounters which comprise the service delivery system.

Good service-management systems also try to take into account the gap between the expected level of service and the existing one. Over time, it should be the objective of the system to bridge this gap.

All markets change. Even strong brands need to be reinvented or refreshed over a period of time if they are to stay relevant. The 21st Century will witness revolutionary changes in the marketplace, the economy, and customer preferences. In order to survive and thrive, corporations need to delight the customer! In a nutshell, it is essential that companies adopt a new corporate mindset, driven by service.

Krithika V. Subramaniam is a trainee at the welcome Group Management Institute  

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