Participación Del Cliente En Los Procesos De Servicio

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fames L Heskett

n
A large food and lodging company creates and staffs more general management jobs than any
ten manufacturers of comparable size. This company,
like many others dispensing high customer-contact
services, has eliminated functional lines of responsibility between operations and marketing. In its planning
the company routinely combines operations and marketing withwhat I call a strategic service vision.
D
The most profitable large American
company assumes daily the task of managing a work
force of window washers, cooks, and maintenance
personnel. An almost single-minded concentration on
people-their jobs, their equipment, their personal
development-accounts for much of its success.
n
The quality control process in a decentralized oil-field servicesbusiness involves careful selection, development, assignment, and compensation
of employees working under varying conditions and in
widespread locations where close supervision is impossible. In this prosperous company, the process builds
shared values and bonds people together.
•
An international airline, by paying more
attention to market economies than to production
scale economies,reduces the average size of its aircraft
and increases its net income.
D
Products introduced since 1982 by a
well-known financial service generated 10% of its revenues in 1985. The raw material for these products is
data already existing in other forms in the company's
vast data base.
These examples give a glimpse of forward-looking management practice. When examined
closely, they offer insightsinto the ideas on which successful competitive strategies have been fashioned
in the much-maligned and little-understood service
sector.
It's no coincidence that dominant industries have cutting-edge management practices. Some
U.S. railroads in the nineteenth century pioneered in
divisionalized management of their far-flung systems
and in good procurement procedures to support theirsizable construction and operational needs. At the tum
of the century, basic industries led the way in experi-

Lessons in the
service sector

menting with scientific management. Then the rise of
the large consumer goods manufacturer, epitomized by
the auto industry, spawned concepts of decentralization
and a full product line aimed at carefully segmented
markets.

Whatever your business,services have
something to teach.

Today service industries have assumed
the mantle of economic leadership. These industries,
encompassing trade, communications, transportation,
food and lodging, financial and medical services, education, govemment, and technical services to industry,
account for about 70% of the national income and
three-fourths of the nonfarm jobs in the United States.In generating 44 million new jobs in the past 30 years,
they have absorbed most of the influx of women and
minorities into the work force, softened the effects of
every post-World War II recession, and fueled every recent economic recovery.
In view of this leadership role, now is a
good time to look at the exemplars in the service sector for insights into ways of boosting productivity andaltering competitive strategies. Despite their diversity,
leading companies in many service industries display
some common themes and practices. And they yield
lessons for managers in any sector of business. Let's
look first at the way the best service companies are
structured.
James Heskett is the 1907 Foundation Professor of Business Logistics at the Harvard Business School.
Currently heheads an MBA course. Management Policy
and Practice. This article is an outgrowth of his latest book,
Managing in the Service Economy (Harvard Business
School Press, 19H6).

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Service sector

Integrated functions
Most goods-producing businesses follow
the traditional organizational pattem of separate and
equally important marketing and manufacturing functions, with coordinating...