Five Predictions on the Future of Service Companies
1) Customer experience (CX) will increasingly be the main competitive differential.
Customer experience is not just about buying, but about before, during, and after the sales and relationship process. Effective businesses in this regard will establish relevant metrics and goals of customer satisfaction, repeat purchases, loyalty, retention, and lifetime value. And the more advanced ones will add financial KPIs to their CX programs.2) Growth will depend on talent.
Having the right technologies, processes, and data will only be a basic prerequisite for action. The main engines of organic growth will be human interaction, new business models and new servicing modalities.3) The boundaries between B2B and B2C services will become increasingly blurred.
While in the past there were clearly differentiated strategies and marketing approaches between B2B and B2C services, we are beginning to see increasingly diluted boundaries. Approaches based on psychographic segmentation and lifestyles will be more embraced by B2B services, accelerated by even greater accessibility to digital tools.4) The most successful service companies - including financially - will be those guided by purpose.
Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.com recently stated that companies "are the major change platforms and can have a huge impact on the state of the world ... We are accountable for the well being of an extended community of employees, customers and partners, as well as our fellow beings on this planet we inhabit." People want to work for and buy from companies that are committed to creating a better world. And they will be more willing to pay premium for services provided by companies aligned with their values.5) Customer experience will depend more and more on collaborative action embedded in an ecosystem of service providers.
The "2018 State of the Economy Services Report" revealed that 89% of companies have expanded their service offerings to customers in the last 12 months. This movement has promoted an accelerated growth in customer expectations regarding the breadth of its suppliers' offerings. To meet these expectations, service companies need to have a much more diverse set of skills. The most effective and efficient way to do this is to participate in a network of suppliers. This allows the company to mobilize specialized skills only when they become relevant and thus rapidly grow their range of offerings without incurring into prohibitive fixed costs.
These trends will require many changes from service providers. And this transformation will not happen overnight. Managers of these companies need to understand what needs to be done, where the company should be, what is best to do on its own and when it makes more sense to seek partners. But they can not stand still.