Process Selection in Services
Types of Service Organizations
Service management issues exist in three broad organizational contexts:
- management issues exist in three broad organizational contexts Service businesses are organizations whose primary business requires interaction with the-customer to produce the service. Familiar examples of service businesses include bank airlines hospitals law firms retail stores restaurants and so on Within this category we can make a further major distinction facilities-based services where the customer must go to the service facility and field-based services where production and consumption of the service take place in the customer's environment (e.g. cleaning and home repair services Technology has allowed for the transfer of many facility-based services to field based services. Dental vans bring the dentist to your home Some auto repair service's have repair-mobiles. Telemarketing brings the shopping center to your TV screen.
- Customer support services provide support to external customers who have already purchased the goods and or services of the company. Included here are 800-numbers for registering complaints and obtaining additional information on the firm's products. Product maintenance and repair services also fall into this category.
Internal services are the services required to support the activities of the larger organization These services include such functions as data processing accounting engineering and maintenance Their customers are the various departments within the organization that require such services. (It is not uncommon for an internal service
to start marketing its services outside the parent organization and become a service business itself.)
The three general approaches to delivering on-site services are the production line approach made famous by McDonald's Corporation, the customer involvement approach made famous by ATMs and gas stations, and the personal attention approach made famous by Strongroom department stores.
