International service management has become a top priority in today’s society as organisations realise the importance of customer service. With new technological advancements, organisations are learning how easy it is for services to cross international borders to deliver their products to other customers. Organisations are learning that if they do not take care of their customers, both internally and externally, their business will not succeed. There are important factors that organisations look at to determine if they are complying with the needs and wants of today’s customer. Service standards, service quality, the service process, and technological advancements have helped to make service management a fundamental tool for organisations. Euro Disney is an example of an organisation that has incorporated the tool of service management and has succeeded because of it.
International Service Standards
As succinctly stated by Aldous Huxley (1932), “Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.” With this in mind, service standards are hard to define, because they are based on the perception of the individual customer. Therefore, having one set definition is not possible, but having guidelines and benchmarks is possible, and they are necessary.
Each type of organisation must meet and/or exceed their customer’s needs, and in order to do so they must first be knowledgeable of their product and their customer. An example of this would be how British Airways turns negative situations into positive opportunities. British Airways had a three-hour delay, due to fog, that the crew on the plane made a memorable experience for all of the passengers. They not only made the time pass by telling jokes and making light of the whole situation, but they also gave out prizes for a game that the crew made up as a way to pass the time. The passengers on the flight could have been very upset, but the service of the crew saved what could have been a negative experience and turned it into a positive experience.
An organisation must know their product and/or service and customers inside and out or they will fail. This is the first step to becoming successful as a manager. It sounds easy enough, but is it that easy? If so, why are so many organisations all over the world struggling with their services? Almost all organisations can define their product, but what is it about service that makes it so hard to define? According to James L. Walker (1995), service has two aspects. One is the technical aspect and the other is the functional aspect. If you were to ask ten people to define what service is to them, they would each give you a different answer. That is because they each have a different perception of what is happening around them, so they will internalise the information differently than the person next to them.
How do managers meet and exceed the needs of several people who are their customers? First, they must know these customers expectations. Walker defines expectations as “predictions about what is likely to happen during the impending exchange, are used as a reference against which one can compare performance and assess disconfirmation” (Walker, 1995). Once the expectations of the customers are determined, managers must then perform to that level and above. To perform to their expectations, some simple questions need to be answered: what service are they receiving? How are they receiving it? Why are they receiving it? In addition, where and when are they receiving the service (Walker, 1995)? These questions are especially important when the customer only receives value from the service, due to no tangible object (Samiee, 1999). If we look at service to another country from the United States, we have to realise that that country does not have the same points of view and does not practice business the same way.
Therefore, that country’s standards of service will depend on the economy, government structure, and the beliefs or culture of the people in that country (Stauss and Mang, 1999). Once an organisation has its standards in place, it must keep working at them to make them better. When an organisation has found a standard that works for it, it needs to continue to improve on that standard. Once it has made the standard the most effective it can be, its competition will pale in comparison.
