Processes and infrastructure to support service branding

It´s said that in a service organization involving employees and putting effort on internal communications in regards to service branding is essential. In comparison, in product branding, it is possible to promote products if the production process works seamlessly and provides the goods which receive a brand identity in the sales and marketing funnel. In a service organization, creating the brand identity, promise and providing information and education on the brand internally is not enough. Involving people should be much more extensive. In order to deliver the expected brand promise and experience, the essential elements in internal involvement is putting people to work. Creating relevant service processes and infrastructure to support the brand promise is needed in order to tie the actual promise to what is being delivered. Service processes are not implemented by sales and marketing but throughout the organization developing and providing the actual service experience. Physical infrastructure, ie environments and locations supporting the service processes are needed to build a coherent entity. Therefore the target of internal information sharing and communications should be partly to create understanding of the value propositions and promises but also to make sure that every employee implements the brand promise in their individual daily work. Managing the work of all employees towards the same goals and same direction is challenging. Building excitement is not easy but necessary to build internal understanding and just getting what the company brand really is all about, to finally showcase the unified experience towards customers.

Cultural change management made difficult

I watched Jamie Oliver´s tv show one night. Not because I`m particularly interested in his cooking. But because his program was a great example of a extremely difficult change management program. Oliver´s mission was to change cooking and eating habits of American schools. Not an easy task. What children eat daily - hot dogs, hamburgers, pizza, pizza, pizza. Even if there is occasionally something green available, the children do not touch it. Another problem is the culture of eating - nobody knows how to use a knife and fork properly. Showing vegetables in a classroom - children did not recognize tomatoes nor potatoes, what french fries are made of.

Jamie´s good intentions were not welcomed. The kitchen staff resisted him. School management resisted him, authorities resisted him and even local press wrote negatively. Jamie cooked fresh food: chicken, brown rice, salad. Children were asked what they wanted, pizza or chicken. Pizza won. At the end of the show Jamie bursted out crying. How to get further? What would you have done? Changing a whole culture in a week is not easy. How can you teach a whole economy that they need to eat healthier? How can you make even one school change?

One of my notions was that children did not even see the food. They were asked what they wanted and automatically chose pizza. Not even seeing what the food looked like. If they were to pick it themselves, would there be a difference?

The story continued in the next episode. Jamie used a tactic so often highlighted in change management: emphasizing a crisis and creating a burning platform. First, he concentrated on one family only. Took them to a healthcheck. The doctor predicted the son of the family, much overweight, might die at the age of 30. Then, he showed children at school how processed food is cooked. Not very successful. Even after seeing the gross stuff of which chicken nuggets are made children still were ready to eat it. Finally, he invited parents to see how much fat the school food includes and had a truckload of fat brought in the school yard. This was much better understood.

As in any change management program, things take time. You need to find right target audiences and make sure they understand the urgency and need for change. Problem is the magnitude and history of the project - of even culture of eating at schools. Jamie Oliver felt already more relieved. He made a difference for one family. Maybe this is a beginning of change for more children and families.

Service branding vs product branding and the role of marketing

In various articles related to services branding, there is debate on whether services branding process differs from the more traditional product branding process.

According to Teemu Moilanen, service branding does not differ much from customer perspective but rather on the company side.

Why service branding is different from product branding is because of the multiple features of services. According to Moilanen, services are intangible, they are produced and consumed simultaneously. Services cannot be stored. Services are difficult to standardize. Customers participate in the production process. In general, a service product is an experience related to service consumption.

This is why brand management models do not fit well to the development of service brands. Service experience models require in-depth dedication in order to set a clear expectation and in best case be standardized to provide efficiencies.

Considering the role of marketing in service branding vs marketing physical products, there are differences. In regards to products, marketing is normally able to communicate product benefits and the organization handles production and logistics. In service business, things are different. All of the levels of the organization are involved in creating the customer experience. Unless the organization and all of its employees are aware of the company values and messages, the service experience will not fly. Therefore, in order to deliver a consistent service experience and be able to do successful marketing efforts, internal communications need to be taken care of, being a vital element in service branding success.

Understanding customer service experience

Myer and Schwager in their Harvard Business Review article on Understanding customer experience (2007) talk about customer interactions. When core offering is a service, interactions matter more. According to Myer and Schwager touchpoints that advance customer to a subsequent and more valuable interaction (example Amazon´s 1-click ordering) matter more. In each touchpoint the gap between customer expectations and experience spells the difference between customer satisfaction and what is less.

And what makes service experience matter more? In a service experience, as a customer, you are greatly involved in the transaction. Due to the nature of your purchase (non physical good) your expectations may vary a great deal. Imagine a travel experience as an example.

I´ve earlier described my experiences in online shopping. Ordering goods was a positive and pleasant experience but returning and exchanging the same goods resulted in a huge disappointment. Same company was managing various customer processes. Some worked while others not. Result was my dissatisfaction and their loss.

In service environments, fundamental is service design - how you plan customer experience from first contact point to the last.

Planning service experience can be done understanding the customer opinion of the company throughout various touchpoints, rather just having customer data on the purchase history (mostly available through CRM approaches). Therefore planning a full scale customer experience is an extended step to managing customer relationship. In practice this could mean focus on customer needs and not fearing to analyze customer opinions; what it reveals and what are the actions to be developed.

In order to implement customer experience management process, companies could extend their evaluation of past patterns (eg surveys) to observation and face to face interviews in order to understand also present or potential future patterns.

Service availability

In some industries, service availability is one of the key success factors of companies. Providing service to customes when and where they need it is crucial.

In Helsinki, there is an ongoing project called "snow fight". Snow fight is a crisis initiative by the city of Helsinki to clean the streets of snow. There are few places where to place snow, there are problems ploughing the snow due to parked cars. Overall there are 2.600 km of streets to plough and there is a question of availability of snow ploughing equipment and personnel. It is difficult to keep their number optimal since we haven´t had this much snow this time of the year in several decades.

I was trying to find snow ploughers myself. It seems the availability of snow services is scarce or I´m simply asking at the wrong time. It´s the high season of snow. In my neighbourhood my household is the only one who would like to pay for snow ploughing service. The experience from previous services is bad. Therefore people rather do it themselves. Nobody was just able to predict the scope of this work few years back. Last winter was horrible. I was out snowploughing even four times a day. This winter I`ve already had enough. I sprained my back. I was out last night. I was out this morning. I will go again since snow just keeps coming.

The companies I called were not interested in just one flat out of many. Too long trip or too small job. Some contact people were just not interested in ploughing snow. They had other jobs more attractive and were busy with those. Service availability is scarce and we´ve not even discussed about price yet. If somebody invented a company where you could call ad hoc? No news, those companies exist already and still no progress. Which online application would integrate people who could do the job vs those who need the service now.