Question

Locate a current article that addresses a services marketing issue related to service expectations of customers from the Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Newsweek, Business Week, or other publications that are applicable. (PLEASE SITE THE ARTICLE USED). Then write an entry pertaining to the following issues (800 words minimum):

1. A brief summary of the key point(s) of the article.
2. A discussion of how this article relates to a key concept examined in this course (i.e. service exceptions of customers, the customer gap, or the provider gaps (the listening gap, the service design and standards gap, the service performance gap, and the communication gap)) and the implications for services marketing practitioners.
3. Your personal reaction and several detailed recommendations to the article based upon the service marketing perspective gained.

Answer 1

Vodafone : From best Customer service to high customer market share loss.

Issue: The company has had huge plunge in net profits due to bad customer service, unresolved querries, lpw products availability, high pricing an dlack of awarenss in rural areas all due to communication gap.

Key Recommendations and Implementation :

The Facebook page by Vodafone has been most amazing and happening which has leveraged various brand assets like celebrity endorsements, brand mascots, user stories, testimonials, etc. The brand has engaged audiences with various live contests , quizzes, surveys, webinars, engaging videos, participative games,etc.

The fans are called "Vodafone Fan Army" and audiences are engaged and highly resonate with brand image and its famous Pug which denotes Vodafone and symbolizes coverage everywhere. Various social media campaign on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat are run simultaneously to achieve top of mind recall and touchbase maximum audiences.

The marketing has seen series of TV commercials which depicts the product benefits and are in continuation to target compelling user story. The brand has consistently clocked millions of views on YouTube and has meticulously used Facebook for penetrating new markets and high profile customers as per demographic segmentation.

The brand has leveraged and optimised page to track Analytics and measure success using metrics like bounce rate, exit rate, unique page views, unique customers and have also optimised search engines through programmatic buying which helps customers land on Facebook page itself.

The benefits exceed the costs for this campaign as it has proliferated customer base and has achieved diversity and higher average reveneue per user and decreased lifetime customer acquisition cost.

The brand however can improve its profile by using cliud storage for customer analytics, Artificial intelligence and Machine Learning algorithm for drill down Analysis and using Tableau as data visualization tools for devising right strategy.

The brand also needs to integrate various social media profiles and repetitively generate new fresh campaigns over period of time so that buzz remains active for longer period and helps create brand equity and brand resonance.

Moreover, various testimonials can be used to create awareness and generate positive word of mouth marketing amongst customers. Usage of referral marketing on Facebook can bring down costs substantially and increase revenues through profit maximizing. All in all 360 degree marketing campaign with well planned time frame can help brand optimise cost and grab maximum market share .

The usage of Radio and out of home media and newspapers can also help create propaganda for all Facebook campaign and bring organic traffic from multiple sources such that outreach is maximum and impact is well optimized.

This creates well crafted and well timed turnaround strategy for any brand and successful campaign can be created with seamless execution and implementation.