Manage Customer Education

As discussed in Chapter 12, customers must perform their roles properly for many

services to be effective. If customers forget to perform their roles, or perform them improperly,
disappointment may result. For this reason, communication to customers can take the form of customer
education.

 Prepare Customers for the Service Process One of us, on a return trip from Singapore on
Singapore Airlines, neglected to heed the airline's warning that return flights to the United
States must be confirmed 24 hours in advance. Upon arrival at the airport to return home, the
seat had been given to another customer who had conformed to the airline's request for
confirmation. Depending on the perspective taken, you could argue that either the company or
the customer was right in this situation. Whose responsibility is it to make sure that customers
perform their roles properly?

Companies can avoid such situations by preparing customers for the service process. And companies
may need to prepare the customer often, even every step of the way, for the subsequent actions the
customer needs to take. A business-to-business example will help illustrate this strategy.

Customers of management consulting services purchase intangible benefits: marketing effectiveness,

motivated workforces, and culture change. The very fact that companies purchase these services usually
indicates that they do not know how to perform them alone. Many clients will also not know what to
look for along the way to judge progress. In management consulting and other complex service
situations, the effective provider prepares the customer for the service process and creates structure for
the customer. At the beginning of the engagement, the management consulting firm establishes
checkpoints throughout the process, at which times progress will be evaluated, and leads the customer
to establish objectives for project completion. Because customers do not know what that progress will
look like, the consulting firm takes the lead in setting goals or criteria to be examined at those times.

Confirm Performance to Standards and Expectations Service providers sometimes provide service, even
explicitly requested service, yet fail to communicate to the customer what has been accomplished.
These providers stop short of getting credit for their actions when they do not reinforce actions with
communication about their fulfillment of the request. This situation may happen under one or more of
the following conditions:

• The customer cannot evaluate the effectiveness of a service.

• The decision maker in the service purchase is a person different from the users of the service.
The service is performed out of sight of the customer.

When customers cannot evaluate service effectiveness, usually because they are inexperienced or the
service is technical, the provider may fail to communicate specific actions that address client concerns
because the actions seem too complex for the customer to comprehend. In this situation, the service
provider can improve perceptions by translating the actions into customer-friendly terms. A personal
injury lawyer who aids a client with the medical and financial implications of an accident needs to be
able to tell the client in language the client can understand that the lawyer has per formed the
necessary actions.

When the decision maker in service purchases is different from the users of the service, a wide
discrepancy in satisfaction may exist between decision makers and users. An example is in the purchase
of information technology products and services in a company. The decision maker—the manager of
information technology or someone in a similar position makes the purchase decisions and understands
the service promises. If users are not involved in the purchase process, they may not know what has
been promised and may be dissatisfied.

Clarify Expectations after the Sale When service involves a hand-off between sales and operations,
clarifying expectations with customers helps the operations arm of the company align delivery with
customer expectations. Salespeople are motivated and compensated to raise customer expectations at
least to the point of making the sale—rather than to communicate realistically what the company can

provide. In these situations, service providers can avoid future disappointment by clarifying to
customers what was promised as soon as the hand-off is made from sales to operations.

Manage Internal Marketing Communication

The fifth major category of strategies necessary to match service delivery with promises is managing
internal marketing communications. Internal marketing communications can be both vertical and
horizontal. Vertical communications are either downward, from management to employees, or upward,
from employees to management. Horizontal communications are those across functional boundaries in
an organization. A third strategy is internal branding, which consists of various strategies to sell the
brand inside the company. Other strategies, discussed in the following paragraphs, include creating
effective upward communication, aligning back-office and support personnel with external customers,
and creating cross-functional teams.

Create Effective Vertical Communications Companies that give customer-contact employees adequate
information, tools, and skills allow them to perform successful interactive marketing. Some of these
skills come through the training and other human resource efforts discussed in Chapter 11, but some are
provided through downward communications. Among the most important forms of downward
communications are company newsletters and magazines, corporate television networks, e-mail,
briefings, videos and internal promotional campaigns, and recognition programs. One of the keys to
successful downward communications is keeping employees informed of everything that is being
conveyed to customers through external marketing. Employees should see company marketing
communication before it is aired or published and should be familiar with the website, mailings, and
direct-selling approaches used. If these vertical communications are not present, both customers and
employees suffer—customers will not receive the same messages from employees that they hear in
company external marketing, and employees will feel uninformed and not be aware of what their
company is doing. Customers go to them, asking for services that have been marketed externally but not
internally, making the employees feel uninformed, left out, and helpless.29

Create Effective Horizontal Communications Horizontal Communications communication across

functional boundaries in an organization—facilitate coordinated efforts for service delivery. This task is
difficult
One important strategy for effective horizontal communications is to open channels of communication
between the marketing department and operations personnel. For example, when a company creates
advertising that depicts the service encounter, it is essential that the advertising accurately reflect what
customers will experience in actual service encounters. Puffery or exaggeration puts service quality
perceptions at risk, especially when the firm is consistently unable to deliver to the level of ser vice
portrayed in the marketing communication. Coordination and communication between advertising and
service providers are pivotal in delivering service that meets expectations.

Sell the Brand inside the Company Having knowledge about what the company is doing in marketing
communications is one aspect of internal marketing communication, but it is not enough. Consultant
Colin Mitchell emphasizes, the importance of marketing the company's brand and brand message to
employees, so that they can make powerful connections with customers." He recommends three
principles for bringing the brand alive: choosing the right moment to teach and inspire employees,
linking internal and external marketing, and bringing the brand alive for employees. Choosing the right
moment is essential because employees are not capable of or willing to accept too many change
initiatives,

Create Effective Upward Communication is also necessary in closing the gap between service promises
and service delivery.

Employees are at the front line of service, and they know more than anyone else in the organization—
what can and cannot be delivered. They know when service breakdowns are occurring and, very often,
why they are happening.

Having open communication channels from employees to management can pre vent service problems
before they occur and minimize them when they do take place.

The cross-functional team approach can best be explained by the examples of an advertising agency.
The individual in an advertising agency who typically inter acts

directly with the client is the account executive (often called a “suit" by the creative staff). In the
traditional agency, the account executive visits the client, elicits client expectations, and then interacts
with the various departments in the agency (art, copywriting, production, traffic, and media buying) that
will perform the work. All functions are specialized and, in extreme cases, get direction for their portion
of the work right from the account executive. A cross-functional team approach has representatives
from all the areas meet with the account executive, even the client, and collectively discuss the account
and approaches to address client needs. Each team member brings his or her function's perspectives
and opens communication. All members can then understand the constraints and schedules of the other
groups.