We see a very powerful behavior change in our clients when they make the transition from providing service (aka customer service) to selling services.
The Service Design Group is intimately familiar with the macro trends driving mid-market and enterprise B2B companies towards servitization, digitalization and as-a-service transformation. We’ve been at it since 2011, and are encouraged by the increased pressure for companies to create customer value with services, whether that pressure comes from internal sources (e.g. a new CEO driving a customer-centric vision) or external preferences (e.g. end customers have a decreased appetite for upfront CAPEX-intensive purchases). Whatever the driving force behind servitization may be, we continue to observe confusion about what it means to offer a service. Additionally, we see a very powerful behavior change in our clients when they make the transition from providing service (aka customer service) to selling services. We call it “The Shift.”
The norm…
Many of our clients believe they have a portfolio of services when they begin their services journey. In fact, they typically pride themselves in the service catalog they have in hand – often, a highly produced, glossy, multi-page physical artifact created by their Agency of Record (with the requisite fancy graphics and branding included!). While impressive looking, these catalogs are never customer facing. They are not presented to customers and they most certainly do not appear on a website as something you can order from the company.
Rather, these catalogs are internal tools, made to explain to internal teams what the company is capable of doing for its customers in addition to selling products. More often than not, the service catalog is actually a customer segmentation exercise – “here’s what we’re willing to do to maintain business for different classes of customers.” In other words, the mission is to sell products, and only as needed, if we really must, throw some promises in the mix to sweeten the pot and maintain the business! Service is, at best, an after-thought. The name of this game is to sell products and service accounts.
Imagine, instead…
What if services were each discrete offerings, with a SKU, a price, and a specified measurable outcome, backed by an enforceable service level agreement
Instead, what if there was an actual portfolio of services? What if services were each discrete offerings, with a SKU, a price, and a specified measurable outcome, backed by an enforceable service level agreement (SLA) and offered via a compelling go-to-market vehicle (say, a subscription or an outcome-based pricing model).
Well, that’s exactly the mission of The Service Design Group! We help our clients up-level their service approach so instead of servicing accounts, they start selling services! It’s a journey, for sure, that takes around 3 years to materialize, but somewhere along the way – typically around 18 months – something magical happens. The Shift.
/ The Shift / – .defined –
The shift is when a mid-market or enterprise B2B first realizes that instead of maintaining their existing product accounts they should view all current accounts, competitive accounts, and white space accounts as targets and opportunities to which they can and should go sell new service offerings AND they view accounts who have accepted their service(s) as installations of a service offering that require programmatic account management along with continual service improvement and innovation.
It’s profound when this switch happens. It’s game changing. Some might even call it transformational. It’s a behavioral change that comes only from getting started, building new services, and taking them to customers.
