Institute Faculty

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Barking Up the Right Tree - How Services Can Help Differentiate a Business During Tough Economic Times...and Good

David Lenhardt
Senior Vice President, Store Operations and Human Resources
PetSmart

Learn how PetSmart's innovative services have helped the company weather the economic storm while setting itself apart from the competition. Head of Services David Lenhardt will share how PetSmart is using services to create a competitive advantage and keep customers coming back, even as shopping trips have slowed dramatically across the retail sector.  Learn why services have helped PetSmart to be more "recession resistant" than other specialty retailers, the challenges PetSmart faced and how they're leveraging the services model to become an even stronger, more focused organization.

Technology is Creating New Opportunities that will Decide Winners and Losers

R. Gary Bridge, Ph.D.
Senior Vice President and Global Lead, Internet Business Solutions Group
Cisco Systems

The global business environment has changed radically in the last five years. Everything is evolving: the macro economy (the "new normal"), your customers (and how they spend money), employees' skills and expectations (which vary by generation), potential competitors (which might not even be in the category today), and government regulations (which are disrupting the economics of healthcare and financial services).  Many of these changes are a direct effect of the Digital Revolution, which is now in its fourth decade and shows no sign of ebbing.  Every sector in is transition, but some business models are closer to the tipping point and therefore highly stressed (for example, media, music, publishing, autos, healthcare, financial services, and retailing).

This session identifies important trends and describes the implications for business strategies, service design, organizational structure, and customer communications.  Rapid change presents rare opportunities for innovation that will determine new winners—and losers.  This presentation will:

• Identify the major shifts and provide a road map for service marketing and management professionals to find their path to success
• Separate the real from the hype for best practices in the services space

Building a Culture of Customer Service Excellence

Steve Church
Senior Vice President, Corporate Business Development and Planning
Avnet, Inc.

presenting with Terry Cain
Vice President, Global Customer Engagement
Avnet, Inc.

Many companies are coming to the realization that one of the few ways they can truly differentiate themselves today is through providing a better experience for their customers than their competitors. And our research indicates that most companies have a segment of their employees who understand this, and deliver great service every day. We call them "Heroes." However, we also know that it takes an entire organization to deliver a great customer experience on a consistent basis, and just one employee can derail that experience.

This session focuses on how Avnet is moving from Heroes to a Culture of Customer Service Excellence, where every employee understands their role in delivering a consistently great customer experience, whether they are a front-line employee interfacing with customers every day, or in the back office.

Frameworks and Tools

Service Blueprinting: Building Services from the Customer's Point of View

Amy Ostrom, Ph.D.
Professor of Marketing
W. P. Carey School of Business Arizona State University

Time and money are often spent revamping business processes, yet they still do not meet the needs of the firm or customers. Why? Because the customer's perspective is left out. Amy will describe the components of service blueprints, outline the design steps, and help you learn how to apply blueprinting to your company. Service blueprinting:

• Injects the customer's experience and point of view
• Helps address the challenges of delivering intangible services
• Brings cross-unit and cross-functional teams together
• Provides a common understanding of "what we offer"

Excelling at Service(s) by Closing the Gaps

Mary Jo Bitner, Ph.D.
PetSmart Chair in Services Leadership and Professor of Marketing
Executive Director, Center for Services Leadership
W. P. Carey School of Business, Arizona State University

All businesses are service businesses - whether they recognize it or not. And the most successful ones have figured out how to align their marketing, operations and people strategies around the customer. Yet, most firms are not quite there, or are just beginning their services transformation. You will learn a process for closing the gaps between where you are and where you want to be on your services journey through:

• Knowing what your customers expect
• Designing, delivering and measuring based on customer expectations
• Delivering quality service every time
• Matching what you promise withwhat you actually do

Service Expertise Topics

Growing Service Solutions

Stephen W. Brown, Ph.D.
Edward M. Carson Chair in Services Marketing, Professor of Marketing and Executive Director
Center for Services Leadership Arizona State University

Most companies are seeking innovative ways to grow profitable revenue. Growing services revenue has much appeal, and yet, most companies struggle in making the significant adjustments needed within their organizations to grow services and solutions. The challenges and the changes being made inside companies and their results in the marketplace will be featured.

ISS Iceland: A Praise Initiative

Roger Hallowell, Ph.D.
Affiliated Professor of Strategy
HEC Paris

There is no better way to find out what to do - or what not to do - to use services strategically than to delve into the inner workings of a service firm. Former Harvard Business School Professor Roger Hallowell will lead you through a thought - provoking case study taught in the classic Harvard business case style. Roger will draw you and your classmates into a high-level, interactive discussion to discover:

• The key ingredients in using services effectively as a competitive strategy
• The importance of sound leadership and decision making to create a service company's game plan
• The ways a company's service culture and service offerings can affect the customer experience

Overcoming Barriers to Change Within the Organization

Douglas Olsen, Ph.D.
Faculty Director, Associate Professor of Marketing
W. P. Carey School of Business
Arizona State University

Sometimes the biggest obstacles we face with a given change initiative, service or otherwise, are forces from within our own organization.  This session will consider thse forces in light of the Comprehensive Change Model, developed by the presenter in his book The 5 Laws of Innovation Success: Generating Critical Momentum for Products, Services and Ideas.  Specifically this session will examine: the three different levels of value communication; decreasing teh stability associated with the existing system; and, reducing the fear/uncertainty surrounding the new offering.

Reinventing the Wheel: The Science of Creating Lifetime Customers

Chris Zane.
President
Zane's Cycles

Everyone knows that acquiring new customers is considerably more expensive than maintaining a relationship with existing ones, but do you know what the lifetime value of one customer is to your bottom line?  In this interactive and engaging session, we will explore the answer to that question.  We will also examine how to:

• Develop an inspiring and unique approach to customer relationship marketing that has resulted in 25% annual growth for 29 years for Zane’s Cycles.
• Understand the psychology of today’s customers
• Reinvent your organization with the tools needed to build trusting lifetime relationships in the B2C and B2B markets

Services Leadership Institute Faculty Director

Douglas Olsen, Ph.D.
Faculty Director, Associate Professor of Marketing
W. P. Carey School of Business
Arizona State University

Prior to joining ASU, Professor Olsen served both as a professor and as the Associate Dean of MBA Programs at the University of Alberta. Douglas has been active in both graduate and undergraduate programs and teaches marketing strategy, research methodology and marketing communication. He has been an instructor in a broad range of executive development programs related to business strategy as well as public consultation. Over the past two decades, his dedication to teaching has been recognized with numerous awards for instructional excellence. On a pragmatic level, Douglas has been actively involved in consultation to both government and private enterprise and currently serves on the Scientific Advisory Committee for Leger Research. His research has been presented at over 30 conferences in Canada, the United States, Europe, South America and Australia. He is a member of the Association for Consumer Research and the American Marketing Association.