Teaming the service sector

Citation

Martin, C.L. (2001), "Teaming the service sector", Team Performance Management, Vol. 7 No. 1/2. https://doi.org/10.1108/tpm.2001.13507aab.001

Teaming the service sector

Teaming the service sector

Increasingly businesses have adopted the team concept as a mechanism to improve productivity, processes and product quality, and to develop employees and future managers. Although the manufacturing sector has garnered much of the focus of the team movement, a compelling case can be made in support of teams in services too.

The heterogeneity factor

The need for teamwork in services stems largely from the much talked about heterogeneous or variable nature of services. As we know, the output of service organizations can vary widely from location to location, from employee to employee within the same location, and from minute to minute for the same employee. Service providers routinely look to automation, standards and training to extract random, unwanted variability.

Details require teamwork

One reason why service output varies has to do with the myriad details that must be orchestrated to make the service a reality. In the most effective service organizations, the details tie Marketing, Operations, Human Resources and other functional departments together in a team knot of cooperation and coordination. Service quality can suffer noticeably when only one of dozens (hundreds?) of service details are neglected. Teamwork is a must.

Service workers vary too

Ordinarily, however, not every service worker is equally motivated or skilled to perform every task. Service details vary, and service workers vary. Team-oriented organizations recognize these internal dimensions of variability. On a well-functioning team, each member brings a slightly different set of knowledge, skills and experience to the team. These differences are welcomed and valued. To capitalize on team members' potentially unique contributions, members may play different roles, but these roles are not detached from the sense of responsibility members share for the rest of the team. In other words, in a team environment individual service workers may be held accountable for specific details, but the involvement of team-mates provides multiple checks to ensure that details are not omitted or incorrectly addressed. The helping spirit of team-mates elevates the entire group's performance and creates a sense of team pride that magnifies individual accomplishments. Otherwise monotonous, uninspiring details take on added relevance when addressed as a team.

Customers bring additional variability to the service

Like service details and employees, customers vary too. Each brings a unique set of expectations and perceptions to the service challenge. Each varies in terms of interpersonal skills, technical knowledge, and mood or temperament. For example, consider the extreme challenge of customer variability faced by computer service technicians staffing telephone help-lines. Customers also bring variable tangibles with them. For example, an automobile mechanic's customers differ in terms of the brands, models and condition of automobiles they bring to the repair shop.

A team orientation is well suited for addressing customer variability. Whereas individual service workers rarely possess all of the knowledge, skills and interpersonal savvy to accommodate the full range of customers, the pooled experience of team members may be deep enough to satisfy the most demanding customer requirements.

Customers as team-mates

Because customers themselves often play an integral role in designing and providing the service (e.g. a patient explaining symptoms to a physician to ensure proper diagnosis, then following the physician's instructions to speed recovery), service organizations increasingly consider customers to be part of the service team. Couched in terms of "relationship marketing" or "customer relationship management", the idea of working closely with customers as partners or team-mates is nothing new. Although the popularity of buzz terms and phrases comes and goes, astute service providers have long realized that informed customers are better customers and that service is something done with and for customers, not to them.

The timing of demand varies too

Customers also vary in their timing of demand, and their timing can be unpredictable. Such unpredictable variation too often results in rush periods of high demand that overwhelm service workers and jeopardize service quality. Understandably service marketers are not inclined to turn away customers when demand outpaces capacity, but allowing service workers to make mistakes while trying to keep up with demand is not acceptable either. Unfortunately, and unlike manufacturers, service providers cannot build inventories of output in anticipation of peak periods of demand. Usually service must be provided on demand – keeping customer waiting time to a minimum.

Although there are many ways in which service marketers have learned to synchronize the timing of capacity and demand, a team approach can be part of a comprehensive plan to ensure that service operations continue to run smoothly. That is, in a team environment workers are often cross-trained to perform more than one job or otherwise taught how they can support their fellow-workers. This engineers into the service process a degree of flexibility that enables team-mates to be deployed in different service roles as the circumstances warrant. This approach is particularly appropriate when the timing of demand peaks varies across an organization's various services. For example, a hotel's front desk personnel may be quite busy early in the morning and late in the afternoon as guests check in and out. Demands may be the highest on the housekeeping staff later in the morning as rooms must be cleaned and prepared for incoming guests. The restaurant staff may be busiest during the lunch hour and early evening, while the hotel lounge may experience its primary demand period later in the evening. And so on. To the extent that cross-trained personnel seamlessly flow from one service to another as demand dictates, hotel guests receive quality service with minimal delays – regardless of the time of day. However, without a spirit of teamwork and cooperation among staff, glitches caused by mismatches in capacity and demand are inevitable.

Individual service providers as relationship focal points

Still another argument for implementing the team concept has to do with the continuity of the organization and its image. When the service is performed exclusively by an individual and customer contact with the firm's other representatives is limited, the association between the service, the service provider and the service organization can become so inseparably intertwined that customers may not distinguish the service provider from the service or the organization. It would seem that this phenomenon is most prevalent when service products are highly intangible and customized, and when customers' contact with service providers occurs away from company facilities.

While close working relationships between service providers and customers is desirable in many respects, there is also a downside. As mentioned previously, a single service rep may not possess all of the skills and knowledge necessary to deal effectively with the full range of customers he or she may be expected to serve. Consequently, there is a danger of mismatching service providers and customers. If personalities or communication styles clash, both the relationship and the corresponding quality of service may suffer. If the customer is not allowed to sever the relationship and work with another company representative, he or she may choose to leave the company entirely.

In contrast, other problems can arise when relationships between customer-contact reps and customers become too strong. When the relationship is with the firm's owner or key manager, customers may resist having their accounts turned over to other personnel perceived to be less experienced, less motivated, or less whatever – thereby slowing the firm's growth. When the relationship is forged with another staff member, the employee may be difficult to control and insist on doing things his way – accompanying an omnipresent risk that the maverick service provider will leave the firm and take "his" clients with him.

Teams and organizations as relationship focal points

To a large extent the disadvantages associated with relationships between customers and individual service providers can be mitigated with the team concept. With the team as the focal point, customers' perceptions of the service organization take center stage and are less entangled with those of specific transactions, specific services and individual service providers. Customers introduced to (or reminded of) the entire service team are likely to develop a heightened confidence in the service organization and a deeper appreciation of the complexity and detail involved in providing the service. Workers who pool their experience to provide the service are likely to provide a higher quality of service. Further, when the team – rather than the individual – is the focal point of the organization's service structure, customers know that they have more than one person they can contact if the need arises (although it is a good idea to assign the task of coordinating communications with the customer to one or a few team members), and relationships and operations are less likely to be interrupted when an individual leaves the organization.

Time to team the service sector

Is the team concept the answer for all of the challenges service organizations face? Of course not. But the unique challenges found in the service sector make a strong case for service organizations to embrace the team concept – if not as a formal way to structure their organizations, then at least as a spirit of helpfulness, cooperation and coordination ingrained in the corporate culture.

Charles L. MartinWichita State University, Wichita, Kansas, USA