590 The Marketing Book
service being provided. A person buying a ticket
for a concert by Madonna may derive no benefit
at all from the concert if it is subsequently
produced by Britney Spears instead.
Variability
Most manufactured goods can now be pro-
duced with high standards of consistency.
However, when asked about the consistency of
services such as railway journeys, restaurant
meals or legal advice, most people would
probably have come across cases of great
variability in the standard of service that was
delivered. For services, variability impacts
upon customers not just in terms of outcomes,
but also in terms of processes of production. It
is the latter point that causes variability to pose
a much greater problem for services, compared
to goods. Because the customer is usually
involved in the production process for a service
at the same time as they consume it, it can be
difficult to carry out monitoring and control to
ensure consistent standards. The opportunity
for pre-delivery inspection and rejection which
is open to the goods manufacturer is not
normally possible with services. The service
must normally be produced in the presence of
the customer without the possibility of inter-
vening quality control checks.
Variability in production standards is of
greatest concern to services organizations,
where customers are highly involved in the
production process, especially where produc-
tion methods make it impractical to monitor
service production. This is true of many labour
intensive personal services provided in a one-
to-one situation, such as personal health care.
Some services allow greater scope for quality
control checks to be undertaken during the
production process, allowing an organization
to provide a consistently high level of service.
This is especially true of machine-based ser-
vices; for example, telecommunication services
can typically operate with very low failure rates
(British Telecom claims that in over 99 per cent
of all attempts to obtain service, customers are
able to make a connection to their dialled
number at the first attempt).
The tendency today is for equipment-
based services to be regarded as less variable
than those which involve a high degree of
personal intervention in the production proc-
ess. Many services organizations have sought
to reduce variability – and hence to build strong
brands – by adopting equipment-based pro-
duction methods. Replacing human telephone
operators with computerized voice systems
and the automation of many banking services
are typical of this trend. Sometimes reduced
personnel variability has been achieved by
passing on part of the production process to
consumers, in the way that self-service petrol
filling stations are no longer dependent on the
variability of forecourt serving staff.
Variability can also be considered in terms
of the extent to which a service can be deliber-
ately customized to meet the specific needs of
individual customers. Because services are cre-
ated as they are consumed, and because con-
sumers are often a part of the production
process, the potential for customization of
services is generally greater than for manu-
factured goods. The extent to which a service
can be customized is dependent upon produc-
tion methods employed. Services that are
produced for large numbers of customers
simultaneously may offer little scope for indi-
vidual customization. The production methods
of a theatre do not allow individual customers’
needs to be met in the way that the simpler
production methods of a counsellor may be
able to.
The extent to which services can be cus-
tomized is partly a function of management
decisions on the level of authority to be
delegated to front-line service personnel. While
some service operations seek to give more
authority to front-line staff, the tendency is for
service firms to ‘industrialize’ their encounter
with customers. This implies following clearly
specified standardized procedures in each
encounter. While industrialization often
reduces the flexibility of producers to meet