A Customer-oriented Manager for B2B Services. Valerie Mathieu
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generally in B-to-B applications”: Grésillon, G., Perrotte, D., Barré, N. (2020). Thierry Breton: “Pour accéder au marché européen il faudra accepter nos règles”. Les Echos, January 8 [Online]. Available at: www.lesechos.fr/monde/europe/thierry-breton-pour-acceder-au-marche-europeen-il-faudra-accepter-nos-regles-1161004 [Accessed January 9, 2020].
20 20 Forrester (2019). Embrace A New Marketing Era: End Dissonance And Drive Growth. Report, Forrester Research, Inc, p. 4 [Online]. Available at: https://go.forrester.com/marketing-strategies/ [Accessed 30 August 2019].
21 21 Capgemini research institute (2018). The Secret to Winning Customers’ Hearts With Artificial Intelligence. Cap Gemini [Online]. Available from: www.capgemini.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/AI-in-CX-Report_Digital.pdf [Accessed 27 August 2019].
2
Reality and Challenges of Service
2.1. Economy and service: from data to discourse
Service dominates the economies of developed countries and plays a major role in development. While economic analysis strongly emphasizes the weight of service in our economies, interpretations of this reality are far from consensual.
2.1.1. The economic weight of service
2.1.1.1. Service in general
The work of the British economist Colin Clark in the 1940s, taken up by the Frenchman Jean Fourastié, proposed classifying the economy into three sectors: the primary sector, the secondary sector and the tertiary sector1. This classification is the basis for our national accounts and INSEE today. But it must be recognized that service activities cannot be confined to the tertiary sector alone. If we look more closely at the activities of companies belonging to the first two economic sectors, we find two other types of service activities:
– internally deployed services such as research and development or the corporate university;
– services that the company combines with its products in order to position itself more advantageously in its markets or to benefit from additional financial income. The car manufacturer has long offered financing and after-sales services. The winegrower is increasingly interested in new activities such as wine tasting, cellar tours and the creation of an art center.
Without even including this tertiarization of the primary and secondary sectors, the tertiary sector has a major weight in all economies, and particularly in developed economies like France. In terms of value added, the tertiary sector accounts for 79.2% of the French economy and 56.8% if only the market services sector is taken into account. The primary and secondary sectors represent only 1.8% and 19%, respectively. In terms of employment, the hierarchy of sectors is the same; the tertiary sector accounts for 80% of total domestic employment, the secondary sector for 17% and the primary sector for 3% (INSEE 2019a).
2.1.1.2. The B2B service
Looking at the diversity of the tertiary sector, we see the vitality of a specific set of services, that of business services. This vast group of heterogeneous activities, which share the common denominator of offering services to companies rather than to households or consumers, represents a particularly dynamic field in the French economy. In the INSEE nomenclature, business services are not explicit, but they correspond broadly to scientific and technical activities and administrative and support services (see Box 2.1).
In its July 2019 note (INSEE 2019b), INSEE does not hesitate to describe business services as the main driver of growth, emphasizing the particular vitality of specialized scientific and technical activities.
This dynamism can be seen from the main economic indicators listed in Box 2.2.
Box 2.1. Business services according to INSEE2
The new nomenclature introduced in 2008 by INSEE does not define an explicit category for services rendered to businesses. INSEE considers that these activities correspond broadly to sections M and N of its nomenclature.
Section M includes scientific and technical activities:
– legal, accounting, management, architecture, engineering, control and technical analysis activities;
– scientific research and development;
– other scientific and technical activities (advertising and market research, veterinary activities, other specialized activities – design, photography, translation and interpretation).
Section N includes administrative and support services:
– rental and leasing activities;
– job-related activities;
– travel agencies, tour operators, reservation services and related activities;
– investigations and security;
– building and landscaping services;
– administrative and other support activities (including call centers, trade show and convention organization, etc.).
Box 2.2. Dynamism of business services
– Number of companies: nearly one in four service companies is a company that caters to the B2B market; 18% of companies in France are B2B service companies (INSEE 2018a).
– Business creation: the INSEE considers the business services sector to be the most dynamic in terms of business creation, ahead of trade. A quarter of the businesses created in France are in the field of business services (INSEE 2018b).
– Number of jobs: 10% of jobs are in the business services industry and they account for 13% of service jobs (INSEE 2018c).
– Job creation: in its target scenario for job growth in France over the period 2012–2022, France-Stratégie-DARES considers the business services sector to be the largest contributor to net job creation (France Stratégie-DARES 2015). The business services sector has the largest number of job creations (INSEE 2019a).
– Value added: business services concentrate half of the value added of market services (47%) (INSEE 2018d).
2.1.2. Discourses on service
While the economic data are unambiguous and show a reality dominated by services, the interpretations can diverge and confront us with a multiplicity of discourses, often contradictory, on the contribution of services to the economy. Should we be enthusiastic or worried about this quasi-monopoly of services?
Analysts of the macroeconomic evolution of societies have established two opposing theses3: the post-industrial thesis and the neo-industrial thesis.
2.1.2.1. Post-industrial thesis
The proponents of the post-industrial thesis identify the growth of services as the major feature of contemporary economic history and support the reality of the transition from an economy dominated by the industrial sector to one dominated by services. Daniel Bell in the United States, Alain Touraine in France and, before them,