Four Major Characteristics of Services and the Marketing Strategies Available for the Service Organization

Even though the companies have invested heavily to develop streamlined and efficient service-delivery systems, problems will inevitably occur. However, even though the company cannot always prevent service problems, it can learn to recover from them and good service recovery can turn angry customers into loyal ones. In fact, good recovery can win more customers purchasing and loyal than if things had gone well in the first place. Therefore, companies should take steps not only to provide good service every time but also to recover from service mistakes when they do occur.
The first step is to empower front-line service employees where authority, responsibility and incentives are given to the employees that they need to recognize, care about and tend to customer needs.
Studies of well-managed service companies show that they share a number of common virtues regarding service quality. First they are "customer obsessed". They have a distinctive strategy for satisfying customer needs that wins enduring customer loyalty. Second, they have top management commitment to quality. Management such as Ritz-Carlton looks not only at financial performance but also at service performance. Third, the best service providers set high service quality standards. They don't settle for "good" service, they aim at 100% defect-free service. Forth, the top service firms watch service performance closely. Both their own and competitors. They use methods such as comparison-shopping, complaints from and etc. …