Service Management: Strategy and Leadership in Service Businesses (Review Part Two)Richard Normann (1984) Wiley Press
Richard Normann appears to have set a new benchmark for explaining the service process as consecutive moments of truth. His framewwork satisfies and continously solidfies the working relationships among business co-participants, internal and external customers and perhaps establishes strong loyalites among these herds where the model is well demonstrated through continued patronage and purchase. However the analogy of matador and bull where carried through to its full cycle is somewhat worrying for the health of the customer. The analogy maintains a position of superior control in the hands of the skilled business service management of the customer and implies that the customer is somehow difficult, dangerous, unpredictable and unreliable unless handled with a coup de grace and quickly dispensed.
While the visual artistry of the matador may be more heavily relied upon to support a positive allegory such entertainment which in some manner must be convincing in solidifying purchase decisions or commitments on the part of undecided customers by observation of and appreciation for the spectacle takes on an incredibly artistic and thus intangible element. This positively supports the process of finding and achieving moments of truth in service. Such moments of truth engage and compel the business service due to the delight and satisfaction of customers who appear to remain in some ways prey-like in the analogy. How the gleam of an iridescent pearl might catch the eye of a raven or otherwise curious bird - excellent service is thus portrayed as the asset that many of today’s companies claim are the goals while in the backroom their adage might be process the customer as quickly as possible at the same time.
A friend of mine who manages things somewhere in the call centre industry reminds me of the swift progress made from moments of truth to common moments of hurry up and wait in reality. The services customers often contend with today as a global standard often lack humanity. Her early beginnings in call centre services were novel, new, creative and ground-breaking in the early nineties. Enough so that her office was situated in a leafy block of trendy West Vancouver and she and her coworkers were eager to demonstrate the support of their software assistance contracts to new users globally. The days of call centres being a new idea are long over and perhaps the end of their useful lifecycle is at hand.
Normann demonstrates in Chapter 9 the problems associated with service businesses over their lifecycle. Schumpeter's creative destruction theories suggest something will follow the era of call centre service to replace it even in its outsourced or off-shored formats through a continued diversification, a continued internationalisation over time which will propel further new innovations to consume and reflect more profitable moments of truth. He also posits that technology while serving a significant role in shaping service innovations is not more important than social behaviours which adapt and change as readily which tend towards greater client participation in the refinement of service delivery. Here he describes reproduction of innovation and the growth of a service company as being the two most difficult challenges through numerous examples. But Normann fully reaffirms the process of continuous self-improvement as being the focal dynamic capability which companies require to succeed in a simple variable approach to change and innovation, process location, context, resources, client input, self-designed versus borrowed improvements and economic benefits which coincide with dispersed diluted managerial head office control over the changes desired.
In Chapter Ten Normann delivers a positive cycle of successful internationalisation which defines foci as the structural capacity of a company to develop a deep network of business contacts to infuse new knowledge into the business, attract good customers and personnel alike, retain them through developing high quality and cost advantages which lead to profitable results and opportunities for continued growth which enrich the nodes of the cycle. His description of quality in product and service reveals different areas of discussion of quality as precepts enrobing product, process, production, and philosophy. He affirms that the goals of quality are an affirmation of human dignity which coincidentally support aspects of human nature which I believe need to be confirmed in the present world globally as to the standards of humane treatment of customers and workers alike to encourage the continued growth of enlightened attitudes of care and helpfulness for others even in the context of competitive businesses. He defines hard and soft features of service which determine its quality such as core packaging, delivery and interactions and the culture of the service itself in a systemic view.
Again, Normann believes the defining strategic positioning of a service process is the drive to create quality in the transaction of the service benefiting from continuous feedback mechanisms between personnel and clients in the interest of precisely matching a need for moments of truth to encourage higher customer loyalty, satisfaction and limit turnover. He defines failures in service as directly the responsibility of top management not driving the company through example, specialization of quality improvements into a service department responsibility rather than a general employee motivated element of work, ambiguity as to the role of customer management, an inability to motivate or maintain quality circles as the essential ownership and responsibility of staff without support or actions taken upon their considerable recommendations, a failure to conceptualize long-term planning, and attempts to attach price tags to sustained customer satisfaction improvements.
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