Services Marketing

Service personnel can be classified in different ways depending on the level and nature of interaction that they have with customers - low-contact and high contact service personnel; consumer-service and professional service employees; and contact personnel, moderate contract personnel, back-office staff, support staff and management.

Some of the problems faced by service personnel in the course of their job are stress and burnout, lack of clarity in their roles and responsibilities and lack of fixed breaks and intervals for relaxation. Service organizations and their employees may sometimes enter into conflict with customers during the course of interaction with them.

The conflicts can be classified as follows - individual-role conflict, customer-employee conflict, inter-employee conflict, client-organization conflict and inter-client conflict. Some of the people strategies to be adopted by service organizations include attracting the best talent, training them in technical and people skills, motivating them through proper compensation, incentives and empowerment, and retaining them by improving the quality of work life and implementing an appropriate reward system.