Page 135 - Selling the Invisible: A Field Guide to Modern Marketing - PDFDrive.com

and what you see makes you feel satisfied.
Now, the contrast: You decide you might need a service. Your roof leaks or

your tooth aches, for example. You rarely desire a particular service, and almost
never covet one. In fact, you regard many services as necessary evils—the
lawyer you must hire to resolve a dispute, the accountant you must retain
because you cannot deal with complicated books, the insurance you must own
should disaster strike. In most cases, you are less eager and enthusiastic—and
less satisfied—when you choose a service.

Unlike products that you buy, the services you use come, then go. They do
not stick around to remind you of your satisfaction and to encourage you to
purchase them again. The lawn the neighbor boy mows nicely one day needs
mowing again just days later; the tooth the dentist filled no longer aches, but
nothing about the filled tooth satisfies you or reminds you of the good service
you received. Your much-needed insurance policy is just sitting in a file
somewhere, doing nothing at all. You no longer can see the few visible
reminders of these services that you received. Your satisfaction with them is
primarily a memory.

So the typical service deliverer—like you—is not present to make its clients
conscious of the benefits that the service still is providing: the pipes that are now
draining properly, the insurance coverage that provides much-needed disability
coverage for the sole proprietor, the contract addendum that retains for the
author valuable rights for his book. The homeowner with the fixed pipes was
satisfied for a couple days, then forgot about it. The business proprietor and the
author one day may be very satisfied—but for now, they are not even aware of
the service; the question of satisfaction does not even arise.

Given these significant differences between typical product and service
buyers and their satisfaction, what should the service marketer do to create a
satisfied client?

Stay present.Advertising and publicity reminds clients and former clients of
the satisfying service that you once provided, and assures them that you still
are around, viable, and successful. Create a feeling of satisfaction by showing
the client how you are satisfying others. Communicate your successes: new
clients, new successes, new awards, new recognition, new testimonials, growth
in staff and revenues.

A product continually reminds its buyers that it is good. With appropriate
modesty, you must, too.

Out of sight is out of mind.