All successful businesses are certainly familiar with the well-known four Ps of marketing – Product, Promotion, Price and Place. These are the controllable variables that marketers have at their disposal to tailor and hone their marketing strategy for a particular target market in order to ensure that customers have the right product, at the right price, they are positively informed or influenced with the right marketing communication, and the product or service is available at the right place.
But the concept of the marketing mix and the 4 Ps were developed in the 1960s with a very product centric and industrial mindset, and in the current customer centric experiential world we live in where companies have to deal with highly empowered customers, new marketing models are needed. It is not to say that the 4Ps are not important or relevant anymore. But some authors have tried to modernize them by looking at the four Ps from the customer’s side in order to be more customer centric, and they have proposed new ways of describing the marketing mix which translates the 4Ps to the customer’s point of view. Two of these schemes are the 4 Cs (Customer needs, Communication, Cost and Convenience), and SIVA (Solutions, Information, Value and Access).
It has also been acknowledged that the four Ps are inadequate in the service dominant business world we find ourselves in. To the four Ps were therefore added three more Ps to cater for service businesses – People, Processes, and the Physical evidence of the service. These three additional Ps all relate to services marketing and the customer journey through the interactions that customers have along all the touchpoints of an organization.
But what are the universal guidelines that are more specific to help businesses manage these interactions better in order to ensure high levels of customer satisfaction and loyalty? Based on my teaching of services marketing and consulting in the field for many years, I believe that there are six Es that are of critical importance in achieving services marketing success. These six Es relate specifically to the People and Processes part of the marketing mix and if managed correctly will greatly enhance the success of any service organisation. These six Es are:
1. Expectations
It is critical to align service delivery to brand promises. Service quality has been defined in the marketing literature as “meeting or exceeding customer expectations”. But expectations are not static and one of the most important jobs of a service marketer is to actively manage the customer’s expectations. This is done through communication and promises. If AVIS car rental for instance promises “we try harder”, this is what customers expect to experience at the point of delivery.
2. Education
A service is co-created by the customer. Therefore, in achieving an optimal service outcome both the provider and the customer must know what their roles are, and fulfil them. Therefore a business has to educate customers as to what they must do so that the business can provide a better service to them. Think, for instance, of an airline. They cannot fly passengers safely from points A to B if customers do not know what to do, and if they do not fulfil their roles to ensure order, safety, and a good experience for other passengers.
3. Experience
“Customer experience” has been one of the popular buzzwords in marketing in the past few years. But managing the customer experience along all interactions and the various touchpoints along the customer journey is critical to achieving customer satisfaction and loyalty. These experiences should be intentional, well planned, and cover all relevant experiential dimensions – sensory, emotional, intellectual, behavioural, and relational.
4. Ease of doing business
A big realisation by marketers in the past few years is that an important driver of the customer experience is the ease of doing business with a company. Some authors translate this into the amount of effort a customer must put in in order to achieve a desired service outcome. Companies like Capitec Bank have capitalised on this need and their value proposition which offers the benefits of simplicity, accessibility, affordability and personal service as its foundation, delivers an effortless banking experience to customers. Their incredible success clearly illustrates the importance of this dimension.
5. Equilibrium
A service is mostly produced and delivered at the same time and services cannot be inventorised in a warehouse. Service marketers must therefore carefully manage and create an equilibrium between between supply and demand in order to achieve customer satisfaction and loyalty. Overbooking an aircraft, for instance, which results in stranded passengers missing important appointments and connecting flights clearly illustrate this management imperative. Supply and demand management in services are mostly managed through queuing and reservation systems.
6. Exception management
Service quality management is essentially about delivering at the desired level of service all the time. It is therefore of critical importance to manage the variability of service delivery to an absolute minimum. Exception management is therefore of vital importance in identifying service failures and complaints, resolving complaints and fixing root causes of failures. Businesses therefore need sound service recovery strategies and systems to manage exceptions successfully.
Think of your own experience and frustrations as a customer and the six Es discussed above. If your service providers managed all these extremely well, would you not be more satisfied and loyal towards them?