Marketing Strategies for Service Firms 209
systematic approach for addressing service failures.^27 They also found that companies
that are effective at resolving complaints:
➤ Develop hiring criteria and training programs that take into account employees’
service-recovery role.
➤ Develop guidelines for service recovery that focus on achieving fairness and
customer satisfaction.
➤ Remove barriers that make it difficult for customers to complain, while developing
effective response systems. Pizza Hut prints its toll-free number on all pizza boxes.
When a customer complains, Pizza Hut sends voice mail to the store manager, who
must call the customer within 48 hours and resolve the complaint.
➤ Maintain customer and product databases that let the company analyze types and
sources of complaints and adjust its policies accordingly.Satisfying Both Employees and Customers
Excellently managed service companies believe that employee relations will affect cus-
tomer relations. In these firms, management carries out internal marketing and pro-
vides employee support and rewards for good performance. In addition, management
regularly audits employee job satisfaction. Rosenbluth and Peters, in The Customer Comes
Second,go so far as to say that the company’s employees, not the company’s customers,
have to be made number one if the company hopes to truly satisfy its customers.^28
The Safeway supermarket chain found this out when it instituted a customer-
friendly policy that actually caused stress for many of its employees. Its Superior Service
program mandates employee friendliness toward customers, with rules such as: Make
eye contact with all customers, smile, and greet each customer. To ensure compliance,
the store employs “mystery shoppers” who secretly grade workers. Those who are graded
“poor” are sent to a training program to learn how to be friendlier. Although surveys
show that customers are pleased with the program, many employees have admitted
being stressed out and several have quit over the plan. Disgruntled workers complain
that they must override their own instincts in favor of the corporate friendliness formula.
For instance, employees are required to greet harried customers whose body language
tells workers that they want to be left alone. The program has set off a spirited debate on
the Internet over false-versus-real friendliness. At one Internet discussion group titled
“Forced Smiles at Safeway,” opinion ran 2-to-1 against the program.^29
Managing Productivity
Service firms are under great pressure to keep costs down and increase productivity.
There are seven approaches to improving service productivity:
- Have service providers work more skillfully. Top service companies such as Starbucks
go out of their way to hire and foster more skillful workers through better selection
and training. - Increase the quantity of service by surrendering some quality. Doctors working for some
HMOs have moved toward handling more patients and giving less time to each patient. - Industrialize the service by adding equipment and standardizing production. Levitt
recommended that companies adopt a “manufacturing attitude” toward producing
services as represented by McDonald’s assembly-line approach to fast-food retailing,
culminating in the “technological hamburger.”^30 - Reduce or make obsolete the need for a service by inventing a product solution, the
way carpet-cleaning services offer stain-removing products for consumers to use on
their own.