I thought that, I will start my "business advice blog" with a section on "services" as my very first topic in these series. I have a whole lot of personal experience in the professional service industry and I have been responsible for maintaining it too. I have successfully implemented these principles in medical field where its very difficult to keep each patient and/or their family happy and satisfied. Each one of them have a different set of expectations and the issues vary with their "personal faith" in the Doctor along with their personal set of medical and psychological frame of mind at the time of the particular injury or illness. I will try to keep this blog less medical and more general based on my "experiences" in general business areas and topics but of course I will at times gravitate to medical business management. So here we go......
For a common person, services are essentially intangibles. Their purchase do not result in the ownership of anything physical. Services are separately identifiable, essentially intangible that provides satisfaction of expectations, and are not necessarily linked to the sale of a product or another service. There are few basic principles of services, professional or otherwise.
Intangibility: No one can taste a doctor’s treatment, or touch a particular service experience but one can only "experience" it. So, the "Services are intangible". We need to make a conscious effort each time while providing the services so that we make this experience as memorable as possible.
Inconsistency: The second important point of services is, inconsistency with each client. Different clients have different expectations of their upcoming services. Service providers need to be able to alter their offered "services" to meet the expectations of their respective clients accordingly. Consistent quality delivered to a varied range of clients with "inconsistency", based on a clients current needs is the key.
Inseparability: Another basics of "services" is the simultaneous activity of production and consumption. It makes the production and consumption of services seemingly inseparable. Unlike the rule of supply and demand a high demand in clientage asking for professional services should never result in the lowered "services" or a client will surely dump you soon enough.
Inventory Retention: Services have little or no tangible components and, of course cannot be stored for a future use. Services are perishable and providers can, at best, retain their talents for future consistent utilization for old and new clients and the clients will retain them. Majority of us tend to go to the same barber/hairdresser for a reason!
Involvement: This part actually refers to the client in the professional service delivery process. A client should be given an opportunity every time to get the services altered according to their own expectations and unique circumstances.
I am sure I have touched some very basics of the "Professional Services" topic. I will keep updating this blog on various general business and finance topics, on a regular basis. Please email me if you have any questions about the topics, I cover.
~Dr. V
