Service Strategy refers to providing superior performance versus competing alternatives. Successful service strategies are primarily focused on taking advantage of your organization’s unique capabilities when delivering superior value to customers through your services.

How can you distinguish high-performing organizations?

Many companies focus so much on their product or service that they completely neglect the intended outcome the customer wants from that product or service. The heart of high-performing organizations is primarily synergistically balancing the three core pillars of a high-performance strategy: distinctive capabilities, market focus and performance anatomy. ¹

1. Distinctive capabilities are the unique services or products that are very difficult to duplicate. More importantly, the product or service provides a customer outcome that is very difficult to duplicate.
   
2. Market focus is when the organization knows precisely what its current service or product offering entails. More importantly, they know precisely who their customers are and what outcome the customer expects to receive from their product or service.
   
3. Performance anatomy looks at staying ahead and on the cutting-edge of your service or product offering – always out-performing your competition. It is the relentless pursuit of perfection by looking at services as a strategic asset, increasing employee productivity, measuring selective key performance metrics and ensuring continual service improvement.

The value provided by a service or product can be influenced by the customer’s perception of the attributes of the service and their expectations of the service. Customers use a reference point from either a past service experience or a similar service experience to assist them in measuring the value of the service. Let us take a very real example that is close to home – the “9-1-1 National Emergency Number.” The three-digit telephone number "9-1-1" has been designated as the "Universal Emergency Number" for citizens throughout the United States to request emergency assistance. It is intended as a nationwide telephone number and gives the public fast and easy access to a Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP). ²

When you think of the “9-1-1 National Emergency Number,” the first outcome that comes to mind is that you will receive onsite emergency assistance and critical care from a nearby police department, fire department or hospital. The outcome is that they will arrive in a timely manner to your home or place of business to respond efficiently and effectively to the crisis at hand. The code 9-1-1 was chosen because it best fit the needs of all parties involved. First, and most importantly, it met public requirements to be brief, easily remembered, and dialed quickly. Second, because it had never been previously authorized as an office code, area code, or service code, it was unique and best met the long-range numbering plans and switching configurations of the telephone industry.³ 

You will notice that the first reason for selecting this number considered the requirements and outcomes of the public and only then did it focus on the requirements of the telephone industry. Imagine if they had not emphasized the focus on the intended outcome and created a National Emergency Number that was hard to remember, and different in every state within the United States. This would ultimately be a national failure in emergency response, and more than likely many lives would have been lost due to misrouted calls and delayed response from the local emergency teams.

To deliver the customer outcomes and create value for the customer in terms of goods or services the right resources and capabilities must be in place. Resources represent direct inputs for delivery of the service. The capabilities involve coordinating, controlling and deploying resources to deliver value to the customers. Capabilities are considered knowledge-intensive and experienced-based. In the “9-1-1 National Emergency Number” example, the resources are Public Safety Answering Points (PSAP), police departments, fire departments, hospitals, telecom infrastructure, public contact and address details, federal and local state government funds that all support the “9-1-1 National Emergency Number.” The capabilities would include skilled and experienced emergency dispatchers, police officers, firefighters, nurses and physicians. It is important to note that capabilities are developed and enhanced over time through the experiences obtained by servicing customers, continual development of services and products, servicing contracts and servicing different market segments.

The ultimate purpose of Service Strategy is to provide the customer with the intended outcome they expect from the service or product. As Sir Winston Churchill eloquently stated, “However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.” So the next time you are building a Service Strategy make sure you have the customer’s outcome in mind first.

About the Author:
Alex Hernandez is a qualified ISO/IEC 20000 certified consultant and ITIL^® service manager at Plexent, an IT service management (ITSM) company and leading provider of ITSM-focused intellectual property, itDNA^® .  He can be reached at ahernandez@plexent.com or 972.381.0077.

¹ Iqbal, Majid; Nieves, Michael; Taylor, Sharon, ITIL^® Service Strategy, First impression, Published by The Stationary Office (TSO) for the Office of Government Commerce under license from the controller of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, United Kingdom, © Crown Copyright 2007, pages. 55 - 56.

² Iqbal, Majid; Nieves, Michael; Taylor, Sharon, ITIL^® Service Strategy, First impression, Published by The Stationary Office (TSO) for the Office of Government Commerce under license from the controller of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, United Kingdom, © Crown Copyright 2007, pages. 31-32.

³ National Emergency Number Association: http://www.nena.org/pages/ContentList.asp?CTID=22

 

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