A Customer-oriented Manager for B2B Services. Valerie Mathieu
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which underlines the role that the customer must play in the process in order to obtain the service he or she wants. Servuction being a system, if we remove one element, the client in particular, the system will no longer function. This property of systems demonstrates the necessary presence of the client in the production of the service; without the client, there can be no service.
The customer is, thus, the central issue in service management. Not only must customers be satisfied as clients, but they must also be integrated as co-producers. The service provider must not only meet their expectations to satisfy them but also manage their participation to ensure that his or her service production system works as well as possible. The fourth part of this book returns to this point in depth.
2.2.1.3. The B2B manager facing servuction
To be fully relevant in the B2B context, servuction must integrate two specificities. The first one is a stretching of its temporality; B2B servuction starts well before the production of the service and extends downstream with the maintenance of a relationship within which a next business opportunity can germinate. The second specificity of B2B servuction is an inversion of its spatiality; much more than a client going to the service provider, it is often the service provider who goes to the client.
The temporal specificity of B2B servuction refers to the reality of a service relationship that takes place over a long period of time. In B2B, servuction will often be the result of a first stage of interaction between the service provider and the client, that starts with a contact, then moves towards a purchasing and negotiation process9. In this stage upstream of the usually described servuction, the provider and the client take the time to get to know each other and define, specify or clarify, both the service and the servuction. It is not uncommon, for example, for the client to ask the service provider for the intervention of particular collaborators, thereby influencing the operating mode of the service. On the other hand, the duration of B2B relationships contributes to stretching out the servuction over time, which then tends to evolve and change. Contracts are signed over several years, even over 10 years, 20 years and sometimes even more. This long time span requires adaptations of the servuction.
In the original model, the servuction takes place in the physical location of the service, which is the place where the company welcomes the customer in order to perform the service (the post office, the supermarket, the hotel, etc.). In most B2B services, it is the service provider who moves to the customer’s premises, and the service is no longer performed entirely at the service provider’s premises. This is the spatial specificity of B2B services.
The manager is responsible for his or her servuction. His or her performance will be directly linked to the performance of the servuction for which he or she is responsible. The performance of the servuction is inexorably linked to the long-term maintenance of customer satisfaction, the involvement of the front-line employees and the excellence of the service. Three key competencies will enable him or her to achieve this goal: marketing skills to satisfy the customer, leadership skills to involve his or her team and technical and organizational skills to maintain service excellence. It is undoubtedly a real managerial challenge to develop and maintain these three skills concurrently. Usually, marketing skills are in the hands of marketers and technical and organizational skills are in the hands of engineers, technicians and operational managers. Customer orientation is, therefore, an essential skill for managers to meet this challenge.
Two main profiles are found in B2B services:
– managers who owe their position to a track record of technical and operational excellence. These managers may lack marketing and leadership skills. These profiles are found particularly in technical, scientific and engineering departments;
– managers who have less technical and more generalist backgrounds or training and who, therefore, have more natural marketing and leadership skills, but who may lack technical and operational confidence in tricky situations or when dealing with customers and teams who are more experienced in these areas.
These weaknesses can obviously be worked on. It is essential for the manager to be aware of them by identifying them after an introspection or with the help of HR diagnostic tools such as 360 degrees. These weaknesses can then be addressed through training and also through mentoring and internal coaching.
2.2.2. The market angle: a process and an outcome
If servuction defines service from an internal organizational perspective, the customer will have a different approach to service.
2.2.2.1. Letting the client speak
To find out how the client perceives and defines the service, the easiest way is to ask the client simple questions about their perception and evaluation of the service. When letting customers express themselves in this way, one will see that they have a vision that at first glance seems disjointed, mixing what is incidental and what is essential in the eyes of the provider.
Clients state items that can be grouped into two categories10:
– elements related to the result of the service, that is, the main benefit obtained, which is often related to the core of the provider’s offer;
– elements related to the service delivery process.
In most cases, we will find that clients cite many more process-related elements than outcome-related elements. In fact, it is not unusual for clients to not even mention an element related to the result.
The examination of these elements is then particularly instructive. We will discover in particular that:
– some elements are not identified by the provider;
– what matters to the customer is not always what the company invests in first;
– what counts for the customer is not always what makes the eyes of the engineer, the technician or the manager shine;
– the provider spends energy to be efficient on points that are not taken into account by customers.
What customers tell us is really the experience they have had throughout the service.
2.2.2.2. Customer experience issue
Service is often defined from the customer’s point of view as a lived experience. This experience is built from the observations that customers make voluntarily or involuntarily during the service, from the actions that they are led to perform, from the human or material interactions in which they participate or from the emotions or feelings that are generated within them. This notion of customer experience has been widely addressed in the B2C field but seems to be breaking through more timidly in the B2B field. This can be explained on the one hand by a culture naturally focused on service, results and technical and business aspects. On the other hand, the belief in the rationality of B2B markets makes the notions of emotions, feelings and, more broadly, customer experience suspect. However, the simple question asked to the customer about the service clearly shows the importance of the experience. We should not neglect the fact that B2B customers are also B2C customers who appreciate positive experiences in the context of their personal consumption and who will tend to translate this performance into expectations in their professional sphere. B2B customers are also Amazon or Apple customers who offer a fluid, simple and responsive experience.
A study of a large sample of B2B and B2C customers conducted by Salesforce Research in 2019 sheds light on the importance placed on experience by B2B customers11:
– 89% of B2B respondents confirm that the experience a company delivers is as important as its products and services; the rate is 84% for B2C respondents;
– 82% of B2B respondents say they are willing to pay more for