Page 391 - Marketing Management

368 PART 5 SHAPING THE MARKET OFFERINGS

|Fig. 13.5| Extremely Important
A. Concentrate here B. Keep up the good work
Importance-
1
Performance Analysis 2
3
4
5
6
7 8
Fair Performance 10 Excellent Performance
9

11
12
13
14

C. Low priority D. Possible overkill
Slightly Important

• Quadrant B shows important service elements that are being performed well; the company
needs to maintain the high performance.
• Quadrant C shows minor service elements that are being delivered in a mediocre way but do
not need any attention.
• Quadrant D shows that a minor service element,“Send out maintenance notices,”is being per-
formed in an excellent manner.
Perhaps the company should spend less on sending out maintenance notices and use the savings to
improve performance on important elements. Management can enhance its analysis by checking
on the competitors’ performance levels on each element. 54

SATISFYING CUSTOMER COMPLAINTS On average, 40 percent of customers who
suffer through a bad service experience stop doing business with the company. 55 But if those
customers are willing to complain first, they actually offer the company a gift if the complaint is
handled well.
Companies that encourage disappointed customers to complain—and also empower em-
ployees to remedy the situation on the spot—have been shown to achieve higher revenues and
greater profits than companies without a systematic approach for addressing service failures. 56
Pizza Hut prints its toll-free number on all pizza boxes. When a customer complains, Pizza
Hut sends a voice mail to the store manager, who must call the customer within 48 hours and
resolve the complaint.
Getting frontline employees to adopt extra-role behaviors, and to advocate the interests and im-
age of the firm to consumers, as well as take initiative and engage in conscientious behavior in deal-
57
ing with customers, can be a critical asset in handling complaints. Customers evaluate complaint
incidents in terms of the outcomes they receive, the procedures used to arrive at those outcomes,
and the nature of interpersonal treatment during the process. 58
Companies also are increasing the quality of their call centers and their customer service represen-
tatives (CSRs).“Marketing Insight: Improving Company Call Centers” illustrates what top compa-
nies are doing.

Differentiating Services
Finally, customers who view a service as fairly homogeneous care less about the provider than
about the price. Marketing excellence requires service marketers to continually differentiate their
brands so they are not seen as a commodity.
PRIMARY AND SECONDARY SERVICE OPTIONS Marketers can differentiate their
service offerings in many ways, through people and processes that add value. What the customer