Pssst….One word: Service

When my home e-mail system recently needed upgrading, my service provider sent me an e-mail explaining how I should do it. The promised five-minute, three-step operation turned in to a three-day slog, including untold time spent on hold waiting to get through to technical support, who, when finally reached, recited modifications to modifications of the original three-step set-up.

Multiply the above experience by a thousand and you begin to understand why people at work and home feel they have less and less “quality time” — time for tinkering, problem solving, creating, learning, teaching, helping: the value-added aspects of life that at a professional level generate true intellectual capital and competitive advantage, and that on a personal level result in growth and solid relationships.

Indeed twenty years after the launch of the so-called service economy, the million dollar question is what happened to service? The answer, it seems, is that it has been out-sourced — to us.

It is not difficult to conjecture why this has happened. We live in the age of the bean-counter. Service requires infrastructure and staff, which in turn costs money. Asked at an ever-increasing intervals by corporate bean counters to cut costs, managers have frequently focused on eliminating “non-core” services, support staff, etc. Some of these services, such as administrative work, are still essential to operations, and so more work gets spread between fewer bodies. While I have nothing against lean manufacturing, in my view a proper analysis (at least one widely publicized) has never been done to assess the effects of cutting internal and external services on company productivity, morale, net profitability or image. Nonetheless, it seems likely that the trend to trim or off-load services is with us for the near future.

Given this, it is hardly surprising those with clout (your big customers) are demanding more and more services. Our yearly injection molders’ survey (pg. 17) has confirmed this as the number of shops offering full-service capabilities — assembly, printing, moldmaking, design — continues to grow. Such capabilities are especially critical for molders serving markets such as automotive, and are likely to become more important in other end markets as well.

So how are molders handling their expanding service responsibilities? From the manufacturing side, apparently well enough. Molders need to be vigilant, however, that the services they offer are complimentary to their core products, and that they are profitably compensated for this work.

It’s on the “people” side of service where things are going to hell in a hand basket. According to one irate purchasing manager whose letter appeared in leading plastics trade journal, less than 50 percent of the molders responded to his phone enquiry for product-line information. Yet it’s even worse — only about 30 percent did it well.

If this lamentable situation were limited to processors and potential customers, perhaps some of our readers could feel smug. Shoddy service, however, has become the norm in all areas of industry and society. We’re all the victims of un-returned phone calls, inaccurate information and the galling attitude that says “it doesn’t matter if you’re the customer, you’re going to do things MY way”.

If the market works, as I believe it does, the tail will not succeed in wagging the dog forever. Superior, uncompromising service, I believe, will be the next huge business paradigm. It will be the primary way which companies gain competitive advantage. For those that get there first, the future really will be theirs.

e-mail: mlegault@corporate.southam.ca