Читать книгу A Customer-oriented Manager for B2B Services - Valerie Mathieu - Страница 52

To be fully relevant in the B2B context, servuction must integrate two specificities. The first one is a stretching of its temporality; B2B servuction starts well before the production of the service and extends downstream with the maintenance of a relationship within which a next business opportunity can germinate. The second specificity of B2B servuction is an inversion of its spatiality; much more than a client going to the service provider, it is often the service provider who goes to the client.

The temporal specificity of B2B servuction refers to the reality of a service relationship that takes place over a long period of time. In B2B, servuction will often be the result of a first stage of interaction between the service provider and the client, that starts with a contact, then moves towards a purchasing and negotiation process⁹. In this stage upstream of the usually described servuction, the provider and the client take the time to get to know each other and define, specify or clarify, both the service and the servuction. It is not uncommon, for example, for the client to ask the service provider for the intervention of particular collaborators, thereby influencing the operating mode of the service. On the other hand, the duration of B2B relationships contributes to stretching out the servuction over time, which then tends to evolve and change. Contracts are signed over several years, even over 10 years, 20 years and sometimes even more. This long time span requires adaptations of the servuction.

In the original model, the servuction takes place in the physical location of the service, which is the place where the company welcomes the customer in order to perform the service (the post office, the supermarket, the hotel, etc.). In most B2B services, it is the service provider who moves to the customer’s premises, and the service is no longer performed entirely at the service provider’s premises. This is the spatial specificity of B2B services.

The manager is responsible for his or her servuction. His or her performance will be directly linked to the performance of the servuction for which he or she is responsible. The performance of the servuction is inexorably linked to the long-term maintenance of customer satisfaction, the involvement of the front-line employees and the excellence of the service. Three key competencies will enable him or her to achieve this goal: marketing skills to satisfy the customer, leadership skills to involve his or her team and technical and organizational skills to maintain service excellence. It is undoubtedly a real managerial challenge to develop and maintain these three skills concurrently. Usually, marketing skills are in the hands of marketers and technical and organizational skills are in the hands of engineers, technicians and operational managers. Customer orientation is, therefore, an essential skill for managers to meet this challenge.

Two main profiles are found in B2B services:

 – managers who owe their position to a track record of technical and operational excellence. These managers may lack marketing and leadership skills. These profiles are found particularly in technical, scientific and engineering departments;

 – managers who have less technical and more generalist backgrounds or training and who, therefore, have more natural marketing and leadership skills, but who may lack technical and operational confidence in tricky situations or when dealing with customers and teams who are more experienced in these areas.

These weaknesses can obviously be worked on. It is essential for the manager to be aware of them by identifying them after an introspection or with the help of HR diagnostic tools such as 360 degrees. These weaknesses can then be addressed through training and also through mentoring and internal coaching.