Chapter 12 - Services and Nonprofit Organization Marketing

   Even though Motorola is a product oriented company, they still have to provide services to ensure customer satisfaction after purchase. For example, it provides free phone consultation, and online chat service for its customers' to help them to navigate, or troubleshoot in an emergency. Moreover, it has several repair centers in major cities to provide after purchase repairs for the their products. 

   These few services I mentioned above are all intangible. They cannot be felt or touched as their products. Also, these services are heterogeneous. For example, the repair centers of Motorola could take different amount of time to repair the mobile phones from center to center, since it depends on the skills of the assigned engineers and technicians. Therefore, from center to center the quality and the rapidity of service could vary. Same goes for their customer service. 

Service Quality

   Service quality can make or break a company's reputation regardless of their orientation. With the ease of access to internet, consumers have the ability to get valuable information about services provided by certain companies. Therefore, companies have to provide a reliable service for the customers. In fact, is the utmost important aspect of service quality. For instance, if you were to call Motorola's customer care to claim the warranty for a damaged phone, (assuming that the damage has been covered by the warranty) you would not expect to have an argument with a representative to prove your eligibility. In other words, it should be accurate to the written warranty, and the process should be effortless to the customer. 

   Moreover, responsiveness is a key component in service quality. In the example above, if you were put on hold for 15-20 minutes because of the representative's incompetency, it would definitely irritate you as the customer, and it could lead you to give him/her a negative feedback. In the worst case scenario, they could lose you as a customer out of frustration. Therefore, response time is an important aspect in service quality. To counter those issues, companies like Motorola educate their customer service representatives about products, as well as issues that are related to them.