MBA Sales and Marketing Assignment

SEM - IV
Course Name: Service Marketing
Module IV: Service Product & Operation

Q1. Explain the product life cycle concept with Example of any company?

Answer: The Concept of Service Product The offer can be both a good as well as a service. The
offer can be a good or a service or a combination of both. The service product is an offering of
commercial and not-for-profit intent, having intangible and tangible features going on to satisfy
various needs, wants and desires of the customers.
Example: A ride on the super-luxurious Volvo bus from Mumbai to Pune is a service. The customer
experiences the journey but never owns the bus. His quality of experience is definitely affected by
tangible components of the service offer: cushioned seats, air-conditioning, complementary food,
music and video entertainment etc. Thus, service transaction remains the main focus for the
service marketing strategies and management.
As mentioned above, there are four stages in a product’s life cycle - introduction, growth, maturity,
and decline – but before this a product needs to go through design, research and development.
Once a product is found to be feasible and potentially profitable it can be produced, promoted and
sent out to the market. It is at this point that the product life cycle begins.
The various stages of a product’s life cycle determine how it is marketed to consumers.
Successfully introducing a product to the market should see a rise in demand and popularity,
pushing older products from the market. As the new product becomes established, the marketing
efforts lessen and the associated costs of marketing and production drop. As the product moves
from maturity to decline, so demand wanes and the product can be removed from the market,
possibly to be replaced by a newer alternative.
Managing the four stages of the life cycle can help increase profitability and maximise returns,
while a failure to do so could see a product fail to meet its potential and reduce its shelf life.
Writing in the Harvard Business Review in 1965, marketing professor Theodore Levitt declared that
the innovator had the most to lose as many new products fail at the introductory stage of the
product life cycle. These failures are particularly costly as they come after investment has already
been made in research, development and production. Because of this, many businesses avoid
genuine innovation in favour of waiting for someone else to develop a successful product before
cloning it.

Stages
There are four stages of a product’s life cycle, as follows:
Stage 1. Introduction
The first of the product life cycle stages is the introduction stage, where your product is first
introduced into the market. Most people won’t know about your product at this stage, so it’s a
struggle to make people aware of it and convince them of its benefits.

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Example: The iPhone
Back in 2007, Steve Jobs and Apple released the first iPhone. At first, the product was met with
skepticism by many people — who needs a touchscreen?
To promote the product, Jobs spent an hour on stage talking about it during its initial announcement.
Apple then spent six months running marketing campaigns that hyped up the benefits of this new
device before it was even released.

How to optimize for the Introduction stage

At this stage, you want to focus most of your marketing on brand
awareness. Since you’re just starting out with your business or product,
most people don’t know you, so it’s your job to introduce them to your
business and tell them what you do.
Social media ads, paid search ads, and introductory website content are
all good strategies to employ at this stage.

Stage 2. Growth
The growth stage is where your business first finds success. At this stage, you’re getting a lot of
publicity, and you’re constantly gaining new customers and expanding your budget. In many ways,
it’s like the “honeymoon phase” of the product life cycle.
Example: Air fryers
The air fryer was first invented in 2010,
but it wasn’t until 2015 that it exploded
into popularity. It then spent the next
five years progressing through the
growth stage.
Between 2018 and 2020, air fryer
brands hardly even had to run their own
marketing due to the popularity of the

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 product across social media — people were constantly posting about how much they loved their air
fryers.
How to optimize for growth
During the growth stage, you should aim to keep expanding your product line. That means you
should continue your brand awareness marketing, but also start shifting your focus from “here’s who
we are” to “here’s what makes our products so great.”
Since people will search for your products a lot at this stage, search engine optimization
(SEO) and paid advertising are two of the best strategies to use to reach these leads.

Stage 3. Maturity
The most profitable of the product life cycle stages is the maturity stage. At this stage, your business
has become well-established in the market and is generating a steady flow of revenue.
However, competitors are now springing up left and right trying to sell the same product.
Example: Netflix
Netflix may have had humble beginnings, but by the mid-2010s, it had become the biggest
streaming platform in the world.
Countless films and TV shows were available there at various points, from The Office to Indiana
Jones. However, despite Netflix becoming a staple of Friday movie nights across the globe, its
success also spawned a bevy of competitors like Hulu and Disney Plus.
As a result, Netflix has since had to work hard to stay in the game and keep driving high revenue.
How to optimize for maturity
Since the maturity stage brings so many new competitors, one of your biggest priorities should be
persuading your audience that your brand is the best one.
Advertise all the ways you stand out from the competition, while continuing to highlight the benefits
you offer customers. The best marketing strategy here is a well-rounded one, where you use
everything from SEO to social media to email marketing to advertise online.

Stage 4. Decline
The final stage in our product life cycle overview is decline. Every business wants to avoid this
stage, because it’s where the demand for your products goes down and you stop stocking them. At
the bottom of this stage is extinction, which obviously isn’t desirable.
Example: Blockbuster
We already touched on Blockbuster earlier in this post as the biggest video rental chain of the ‘90s
and early 2000s. If you wanted to watch a movie that was out of theaters, Blockbuster was the place
to go.
But with the rise of streaming platforms in the late 2000s, Blockbuster began to flounder.
Eventually, it became so outcompeted that the entire chain shut down, except for one store that was
preserved purely for nostalgic purposes.
How to optimize for decline
Despite decline often leading to extinction, that isn’t a guarantee.
A business whose products enter this stage can still recover if they market themselves correctly. The
best strategy is to figure out a way to rebrand yourself and your products, changing along with the
times.
For this stage, things like social media and paid advertising are excellent tools. You essentially want
to reintroduce yourself to your audience, which means it can be helpful to use methods like those in
the introduction stage.

Product life cycle examples

1. Cable TV
Since the introduction and growth of online video streaming platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime,
and more, cable TV has started seeing a decline as more people cut the cord and turn to online
streaming. Here’s an overview of how this product moved through each stage of the cycle:
 Introduction: Cable TV was first introduced in the United States in 1948.

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 Growth: Cable TV started gaining traction several years later, and by 1989, more than 53 million
U.S. households had cable television.
 Maturity: Cable TV reached its maturity stage in the 1990s, with 60% of U.S. households having
a subscription.
 Decline: Cable TV started experiencing a decline around 2015 as more households opted to
make the switch to cheaper and more convenient online streaming options.
2. Video Home System (VHS)
Before DVDs became popular, a VHS was one of the only ways you could watch your favorite
movies whenever you wanted, granted that you owned the VHS tape.
 Introduction: The VHS was first introduced to consumers in 1976.
 Growth: The VHS dominated the home movie market for several decades after its introduction,
with millions of American households owning the device along with a collection of VHS movies.
 Maturity: The VHS reached its maturity stage in the early 2000s, with 83% of Americans owning
the system.
 Decline: The VHS began its decline around 2003 with the introduction and popularity of DVDs
and online rentals.
3. Typewriters
Once the most popular writing method, typewriters began to lose traction as new technologies
entered the market.
 Introduction: The first commercially made typewriter was made in 1868 by Christopher Latham
Sholes, Carlos Glidden, and Samuel W. Soule.
 Growth: The typewriter quickly became a must-have writing product for homes, offices, colleges,
and more.
 Maturity: The typewriter was a dominant writing product up until the 1980s.
 Decline: Typewriters went into decline with the spread of word processing systems in the 1990s.
4. Compact discs (CDs)
Do you remember owning a CD collection of your favorite songs and albums? Portable CD players
and in-home CD entertainment systems were once the best way to listen to music before
advancements in technology like smart phones, music streaming platforms, and Bluetooth speakers
and devices.
 Introduction: CDs were first introduced to consumers in 1983.
 Growth: CDs quickly become a popular way to store and listen to music, with many households
investing in CD collections and portable players to listen to music anywhere at any time.
 Maturity: CDs reached their maturity around the late 1990s and early 2000s.
 Decline: CDs started to decline in 2003 with the introduction of new technology like the iPod that
made listening to music cheaper and easier.

Stage 4: Decline
Decline In the decline stage, there is a downturn in revenues, customer acquisition and retention.
This could be due to a number of factors:
Direct Competitors: could be doing a better job in offering the same service with more value.
Emergence of Substitute competition: The market could witness other offers that could give
the customers the same benefits and satisfy their same need.
Changing preference of the customers for the service offer or the category: The
disappearances of the pool parlours as well as the low-key demand of pager messaging service
are some of the examples.
Technology obsolescence could make the service offer redundant with better service being
offered from those equipped with the latest technology.

Stage 5: Post-mortem
Post-mortem This stage is an after-effect of the changing environmental factors and the paradigm
shift in global managerial thinking and is newly emerging to grab the attention of decision makers. It
implies that even after the service product and the market have declined and the managers have

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stopped any further investments, expenditures, or allocating any responsibility and accountability,
quality time is spent in monitoring and servicing the customers. This has been necessitated by the
societal as well as other environmental consideration. In case of goods, an automobile firm may
have stopped the production of certain models but is bound by government and international
regulation to continue making spare parts available to the customers and servicing their cars.

Example: Daewoo exiting from India leaving behind numerous owners of their Matiz cars.

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Q2. Discuss Theodore Levitt’s Product theory.

Answer: Theodore Levitt’s Total Product Concept Theodore Levitt explained that a product was
now no longer an isolated goods offering. It now was a combination of three products:
A) The core product:
B) The formal product (or the actual product):
C) The augmented product (or the extended product):

A) The core product: This had the very basic features and was the main reason for consumption.
Example: A motorcycle as a core product should have engine, petrol tank, wheels, handlebars and
a seat. A product with such features was necessarily at the introduction stage of the life cycle. At
this stage, neither was the market/consumer mature nor was there much competition. This implied
that consumers did not really recognize the depth of their demands nor did they have much choice
in goods. It implies that every service product should provide a basic function ñ which goes on to
solve a customer’s problem and satisfies his need. Without the “core” product, no service offer
would exist. It is only the core product that will lure potential customers, offering benefits to them.
Example: A tour package by SOTC/ Kuoni will have guided tour of destinations as the core service
with arranged accommodation, transportation, travel formalities as key benefits

B) The formal product (or the actual product): Once the first version of the product was
launched and was made available to the market, technology and manufacturing/business know-
how started permeating down to many players. This resulted in lots more competition and therefore
lots more choices for the consumers. Example: While the internal combustion engine and motorcar
were invented in Germany, mass manufacturing and mega marketing was perfected first in USA
and then in Japan, and now South Korean carmakers like Hyundai are world-beaters. Thus, to stay
ahead of the competition, marketers started offering more features like colour, styling, designs,
brands, prices, etc., that would attract customers to their products. The intention was that the
products would be noticed and bought.

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C) The augmented product (or the extended product): With further competition, marketers
sought more differentiation and added more features/attributes to the original product. At the third
level of the product, the features were becoming more and more intangible and they were all
services. This time, they added guarantees/warranties, customer education and training, different
payment options, installations, home deliveries, etc. The intangibles were offering mostly
psychological benefits to the consumers, with the objective of enhancing the value of the core and
the formal/actual product. It definitely helped to underscore the differentiation and get noticed.

Guarantees warranties, and free after sales service assured the customer of continuing reliability;
strong brands implied trust; customer education and training went a long way towards reduce the
consumer’s anxiety in handling complex features; easy finance helped the customer to make a spot
buying decision courteous behaviour and prompt dealing would increase loyalty. And finally, when
all competitive products looked the same, service became the only differentiator. Example:
Between two similar brands of washing machines, a customer would plunk for the one that had a
better service component. Thus, despite their intangibility, services became the crucial factors for a
firm to derive competitive advantage. Example: Between two similar brands of washing machines,
a customer would plunk for the one that had a better service component. Thus despite their
intangibility, services became the crucial factors for a firm to derive competitive advantage.

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Q3. “Offer can be a good or a service or a combination of both”. Explain the statement with
examples.

Answer: The service firm should be in a position to offer a wide range of products. This will enable
them to get more customers and satisfy their wide-ranging needs. The wider range would also
enable the firm to be more competitive. A new service firm might, to begin with, offer only one
product.
Example: Mobile phone operator Orange offered only one basic product during the launch of their
service in 1995. But with competition, they have expanded the range of their service offers.
But some service firms use their range of offers (or the lack of it) as a strategy.
Example: Talwalkar’s, the famed health-and-fitness franchise chain of Mumbai, have stuck to their
offer since the last five decades;
Lakme Beauty Salon is only for beauty treatment while Ayush Therapy Clinic is for ayurvedic
treatment.
The complete bouquet of all offers of a firm is called Product (or Offer) Mix. It is with this set that a
service firm can offer the maximum choices to its customers and enhance its strength in the market.
How can a service firm increase its product mix to get the best possible response from the market?
It can do so in the following three ways:
1. By creating a service product line (new product development),
A Service Product Line can be explained as a group of closely related offers, targeted at the
same type of customers, having the same end use. A bank having twenty different types of
mutual fund schemes would fall under one product line.
If it offers bancassurance products, then the latter will fall under a different product line
altogether (insurance), having different end use and different types of customers with
different needs.
Very simplistically, the different brand names that are available under a particular product
line (or the length of the service product mix) can be an indication of the strength of the
service product line.
Example: SBI Mutual Fund has over twenty-six different basic offers, like Magnum
Childrenís Benefit, Magnum Gilt, MSFU Pharma, etc. HSBC Mutual Fund has over fifteen
schemes like Gilt Fund Long Term, MIP Regular, Income Investment,
2. By increasing the number of service offer items within each product line (length), or
The breadth (or the width) of the product mix of a service firm refers to its different business
propositions or different business lines. As mentioned before, certain service firms specialize
in one or a few product lines (i.e., their breadth is less) while others have deliberately spread
themselves wider to cover more business areas, trying to satisfy variety of needs of the
market. In the case of the latter, sometimes, they may be addressing themselves to an
entirely different audience.
Example: ITC, the tobacco giant, is in the hospitality business (Welcome chain of hotels),
travel and cargo (International Travel House), golf course management, education (Sangeet
Research Academy, Kolkata) and off-the-shelf leisure wear branded as Wills Lifestyle.
3. By increasing the number of product lines (width)
The depth of the service product mix of the firm gives another perspective to the number of
items in a product line. It gives to the customer varieties of choices of the same service
product - either by weight, size, volume, colour or other special features. Pure service offers
being intangible, the first four choices may not be feasible. Addition of special features to the
same service product might give more choices to the customers.
In retailing, the same apparel brand can be offered in different sizes and colours; ice cream
parlours offer the same ice cream in different flavours, colours etc. Service firms like tour
package operators, beauty parlours, restaurants, clubs, offer different grades of services at

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 different prices, with different add-on features.

Q4. What is Blueprint? Explain benefits of blue print?

Answer: Role of Blueprints

Blueprint maps the entire service delivery process. To facilitate maximum satisfaction to the
customers, more inputs were added to the service delivery. Service evolved from very simple steps
to complex processes, and there arose a need for the marketer to get a ‘bird’s eye view’ of the
whole process.

Blueprinting is flowcharting of a service operation. This methodology was devised by Lyn Shostack
in 1984, to help out new service firms in mapping the sequences before the beginning of service
delivery or any encounter. This would help the service manager in identifying areas of potential
failures, and weak service delivery points — and identify solutions to overcome them. This would
prevent the manager from learning by costly trial and error.

It (blueprinting) also enables marketing managers to understand the parts of the operating system
that are visible to the consumer and hence parts of the servuction system. In the servuction
system, it is very difficult to identify components of an individual firm. Worse, firms underestimate
the sensitivity of points of contact.

Example: Many banks, schools, travel agencies fail to understand the importance of the first
enquiry telephone call. If the telephone rings for too long, without any response, the potential
customer has already formed an opinion of an uncaring organization. If the first encounter itself is
not pleasant, the customer is not going to come back.

Service firms are now starting to realize the importance of the first call and its potential for
generating revenues. They are setting up ’24 × 7 × 365' call centres to be manned by efficient and
alert call handlers. The providers are adequately enabled by training, and computer facilities for all
Service Product and Operation enquiry data access and customer and product details. The service
providers are trained to pick up the phone on the first ring.

Service flowcharts allow managers to better understand servuction processes. Designing the
process becomes the key to product design. In the design stage, it is ensured that the visible part
of operations is supported by invisible processes. Flowcharts seek to identify the following:

The time it takes to move from one process to another;

The costs involved with each process step;
The amount of inventory build-up at each process step;
The bottlenecks in the system.

A customer blueprint has three core elements:

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 Identification of all those functions that is essential to deliver a service along with the appropriate
personnel with requisite responsibility, authority and accountability.
The relationships amongst different functions of service components are explained by graphics
and charts. The relationship is based on time and sequence with each other. For a hotel, the
sequence of housekeeping in relation to reception and registration has to be elaborated with a
specific time interval.
Setting up of standards for each function with tolerance levels and variance from standards.
These tolerances for variance should not adversely affect the service quality adversely.

Benefits of Blueprinting

The objective of blueprinting is to show how information, assets and customers are processed. To
put all of them in a blueprint is to imply that they are elements of uncertainty. The following are the
benefits of blueprinting a service process:
Through blueprinting, marketing and operations personnel are able to communicate with each
other on paper before they do so in real time.
It provides a check on logical flow of the whole process.
Bottlenecks represent points in a system where the consumer waits the longest. This
identification would help the service manager understand the reasons for the delay and come
out with solutions.
Balanced Production Line: This implies that process times and inventories of all steps are the
same. If not, the consumer never waits for the next process. This implies for the service manager
that there will be incomplete service experience.
It is an effective tool for managers to recognize the benefits of a changing system to process
consumers more effectively.
It helps the marketer to set target times initially based on consumers expected level of service.
Operations Blueprint

There are alternative ways to develop service blueprints. This is a process where consumers are
allowed to describe the process they follow while using the service. Their usage becomes the
guideline for blueprinting. There are two types
of Blueprint:
1. One-sided Blueprint: These are
unbalanced blueprints based on
management’s perception of how a sequence
of events should occur. This is the beginning of
marketing myopia. Sincerity of efforts on the
part of the management is no substitute to
effectiveness. An example of an employee
blueprint is given in figure

overnight stay in the hotel. Employee scripts

are equally important in identifying parts not
observable to consumer.
2. Two-sided Blueprint: This considers both employee and customer perceptions of how
events occur. Consumers are asked to pay special attention to contact activities of service
encounters. The blueprinting process is undertaken with scripts. There are some norms for the
scripts which are attempts to group events and order them in the sequence of occurrence.

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Q5. Suppose you are the marketing manager of a social club like Country Club. What factors will
you keep in mind to meet customer expectations? ( Use SERVQUAL method)

Answer: SERVQUAL Model This method says that customer service expectation can be
measured along a few factors. There are two versions of this method. Dimensions of Service
Quality We will discuss two works both of which will give the totality of dimensions to service
quality.
David A. Garvin: Eight dimensions of quality were identified by Garvin:
1. Performance: Every product is supposed to deliver benefits and the measure of its quality is
performance of the offer. A dish sourer, which can clean plates completely and quickly, would be a
performance measure.
2. Features: These are in addition to the core product, which does not come as standard features,
like add-ons.
3. Reliability: This is a measure of the degree of probability of the product delivering what had
been promised.
4. Conformance: Delivery quality meeting design standards.
5. Durability: This is a measure of the length of time that a product can deliver benefits, without
deterioration.
6. Serviceability: If the product can be repaired with ease and speed, then it is a measure of
quality. It could include the behavioural dimension of service personnel, like their politeness.
7. Aesthetics: This is a measure of the products looks, design, touch and feel.
8. Perceived quality: Consumers develop a perception due to company-controlled stimuli like
advertising, publicity and brand promotion, and social effects like word-of-mouth.
A Parasuraman et al: Parasuraman, Valerie Zeithaml and Leonard Berry identified five dimensions
with which consumers judge services.
1. Reliability: The service should be performed with dependability, and as per its promise.
2. Responsiveness: This concerns the attitude of the service provider to be willing to provide
service. It also includes their sensitivity as well as timeliness in responding to customer requests.
3. Assurance: This relates to the knowledge, skill and competence of the service providers. It also
indicates their ability to generate trust and faith, and also capability in service delivery with
politeness and consideration.
4. Empathy: This dimension relates to caring, feeling as well as the ability to give personalized
service.
5. Tangibles: This is a measure of the effectiveness of the physical evidence of the service
provider like design layout and facilities.

If you wish to build a loyal customer base, you must be willing to go the extra mile to meet
customer expectations every time you engage with a customer. That’s because customer loyalty is
a by-product of high customer satisfaction.
Many companies seem to think that their customer expectations will be met with whatever it is that
they offer, but that’s rarely ever the case. Instead, companies need to take the time to understand
what their customers want and adjust their offerings accordingly.

How to meet customer expectations

Here are the eight strategies to learn more about your customers’ expectations and close the gap
between their goals and your business needs.

1. Get to know your audience

The first step to meeting customer expectations is simply establishing a clear picture of who your
customers are. This requires you to go beyond basic demographic information like age, gender,
and location.
You need to understand your customers like you understand your product. Dig deeper to learn
about customer needs, interests, and factors influencing their buying decisions.

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 The best way to learn about your customers is to conduct market research. You may want to talk to
a group of loyal and new customers to seek information about how they found you, what problems
they are trying to solve, and why they chose your product/services over other competitors in the
market. Their answers can help you develop a stronger understanding of what your audience is
looking for when they research your company so you can ensure you’re providing precisely that.

2. Make sure you’re reaching the right buyers

Once you have done your market research, you are in a better position to understand who your
potential customer is, how you can reach them, what interests them, and the challenges they’re
trying to overcome.
You can expand your research by analyzing your existing customer base and finding answers to a
few questions like
 What encourages a customer to indulge in repeat purchases?
 Which customer segments tend to become long-term, loyal customers?
 How can you identify an unhappy customer at the earliest?
The answers to these questions will help you paint a more accurate picture of who you should be
focusing on with your marketing and customer retention efforts.

For example, let’s imagine you’re an accounting software company whose target audience is
business owners. After studying your customer base, you notice that customers who work at mid-
sized businesses are more likely to upgrade to your premium plan and to stay with your product
longer than their small business and enterprise-sized counterparts. They even prefer real-time
customer support and may churn if timely support is not provided. These signals help
you prioritize these high-value customers when making key business decisions.

Tip: Don’t forget to keep an eye out for social media mentions. Disgruntled customers tend to
share negative reviews on social media platforms.

3. Look for new ways to exceed customer expectations

Once you’ve identified who your most valuable customer segment is, you should focus on finding
new ways to meet their needs.
Sticking with the account software example, let’s say you’ve determined that your mid-size
business clients prioritize the need to improve process efficiency to save time. The next step is
to consider how to reflect this through your product- You may add new functionalities or change the
existing user interface. After making any changes, you can follow up with your customers to see if
the changes help make their work easier or meet their expectations. Customer interactions like
these will make them feel valued and will likely continue doing business with you.

Tip: When you focus on what your customers want, they will welcome your product improvements
instead of viewing them as unnecessary bells and whistles.

4. Set clear standards for your team members

As the team that interacts with your customers most often, your support team has a major impact
on whether or not your company meets customer expectations. Hiring and training an excellent
team of support agents is one of the most important investments you can make. And the best way
to ensure that your agents provide the level of service your customers deserve is by setting clear
standards.
First, you’ll want to set goals for key support metrics like first response time, average resolution
time, and first call resolution rate. These are the easiest metrics to monitor and measure, and they
can help you establish concrete benchmarks for your team.
Then, create guidelines for responding to specific queries. Write a list of the most common
questions and issues you hear from customers, and establish appropriate responses for each. This
way, you can provide a consistent customer service experience for each customer.

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5. Be as transparent as possible
One of the most important factors in whether you’re able to meet customer expectations is whether
you take the time to set accurate expectations in the first place.
Some companies focus on generating sales at the beginning of every customer journey. But, it’s
not the best way to set your customers up for success. Instead, companies need to focus
on educating their potential customers on how they can benefit or derive value from the
product/services, what they can expect from your brand, and what policies they’ll be agreeing to if
they become a customer. You should be transparent about your pricing information, return and
cancellation policies, and the level of support your customers can expect from your team when they
need assistance.
Sharing this information may not be as fun for your sales team as showing off new features and
impressive case studies, but taking the time to do so upfront prevents your customers from being
caught off guard by policies they don’t like.
Your customers also prefer self-service over waiting for their queries to be answered. Ensure you
have built a comprehensive knowledge base with all the resources and guides your customers may
need or enabled a chat bot that answers common queries or redirects customers to the right
resources. The presence of community forums will also help customers help each other with
unbiased feedback and reviews. This way, they will be able to make an informed decision about
making a purchase and have clear expectations from your brand before they spend a single cent.

6. Develop a customer-centric culture

Many companies put the responsibility of managing customer happiness solely on their support
teams, but this shouldn’t be the case. That’s because when it comes down to it, each employee’s
contributions impact your customers’ experience. The best way to ensure your customer service
experience is delivered at par with customer expectations is by developing a customer-centric
culture.
Encourage your employees to keep your customers at the center of each decision, whether they’re
a developer working on new features or a marketer coming up with new campaigns. This way,
everything your company does will be executed keeping the end user in mind and will more likely
meet and exceed their expectations.

7. Collect customer feedback regularly

As you work towards meeting customer expectations, the best way to gauge whether your efforts
are successful is to collect customer feedback regularly.
Send customer satisfaction surveys, and ask questions about the entire customer
experience. Are customers able to easily find the information they need to make decisions? Is the
buying process user-friendly? Does your product meet their expectations?
Asking the right questions will help you understand the level of experience your brand provides. It
can also help you learn which parts of the process you could be doing better. For example, when
you offer Omni channel customer service, you may want to deliver consistent customer service
experiences across every communication channel. Collecting customer feedback and keeping tabs
on key metrics like your NPS (net promoter score) can help ensure you act as per your customers’
expectations.

8. Evaluate your competitors

If a customer has worked with one of your competitors in the past, they are likely to compare the
two brands. Their expectations of your company will be largely based on their previous
experience with the competitor.
The only way to know whether you’re living up to those expectations is to spend some time learning
about your competitors. Evaluate these brands to learn what they are doing well. What do their
customers like about their brand? And what are they doing that you aren’t?
If there’s a particular part of the customer experience that a competitor is doing better than you, it’s

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in your best interest to focus your efforts on improving that part of the experience with your brand.
Then, instead of worrying about living up to the expectations created by other companies, you can
focus on making the kind of improvements your competitors will struggle to keep up with.

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