Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Week 5_ Blog 1
In Chapter 10 the term differentiation caught my eye. Differentiation is a popular business strategy that highlights unique and special qualities of a company’s product or service. Thinking back to my previous work experience I believe that I can relate this term to when I worked for Macy’s. The company really put an emphasis on “outstanding service”. For example, the correct way to answer the phone was by ending the greeting in “How may I provide you with ‘outstanding service’ today?” or when closing a sale we would end it with, “ I hope I was able to provide you with ‘outstanding service’ today”. At Macy’s everything was about the “outstanding service”.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
Differentiation is vital to a company’s success. It provides an explanation and reasons why you choose to consume the products and/or services of one company over another. Differentiation can be communicated through a form of branding which you described in your required greeting at Macy’s. Other company’s utilize special shirts (uniforms) with their logos plastered on their employees. Differentiations are clearly communicated through mottos, branding, and catchy sayings. A good example of a motto is, “Be all that you can be in the Army.” This suggests the other military branches don’t fulfill this void. How about, “Like a good neighbor, Statefarm is there.” This suggests that Statefarm is less business and has a softer side to conducting transactions. Their industry can be brutal and they are branding themselves as a more personal service.
Athina Scores!
I think that EVERY business has their differentiation in order to highlight their special qualities. Working at the bank, there are so much competitors out there and our #1 moto is YOU. Everything we do is about YOU. We will bend over backwards just for YOU. I think that having a motto is probably the best differentation a company/business can have because it's what sticks out. Sometimes, I catch myself singing phrases or mottos of the different businesses because they are so catchy.
However, I think the company that has the BEST customer service is Nordstrom. I still can not get over at how incredible they are to their customers. It just amazes me sometimes.
I experienced this when I worked at Jamba Juice. The company also stressed the importance of excellent service with certain phrases we were supposed to say.
The image of Jamba is supposed to be young, fresh, healthy and active. Everything we did in the store was supposed to emphasize that point. Even our uniforms, with the bright colors, pins and visors, made us stand out.
Differentiation is key to making businesses successful - if they don't stand out, they need to do something that will make themselves do that.
I have to agree that differentiation is vital and every company's main priority because it is so important. To every company there is something being communicated within the "brand". Therefore, it is important to have a motto or something stand outish. When a company creates a catchy phrase that also emphasis the importance of the customer, the customer wants to return to the business---if it is something like thank you for coming in today, hope to see you soon. Makes the customer feel appreciated and desired.
Differentiation seems to be pretty similar to that of competitive strategy, as explained in Chapter 10 of the text. When you bring up your experience with working for Macy's and ending your phone calls in a certain manner, it reminded me of my current job with the Marriott. Whenever we answer the phones, we have to say, "Thank you for calling the Santa Clara Marriott, this is (insert name here) speaking, how may I assist you?" In this regard we are offering up our assistance to the guests who call us for our help. At the end of the phone call, we are required to say "Is there anything else we can assist you with?" and then we must close by saying "thank you for calling, and have a great day!" This shows that we genuinely want to show our guests that we care about their experience with our company. Our customer service and focus on guests make us unique and special because everyone must partake in these actions or else they are at risk for losing their job.
Post a Comment