Service Strategy doesn’t get as much attention as it deserves when it comes to business success. Many new subscription makers fall into the trap of relying too much on the direction set by their peers rather than set a new standard of quality.
Welcome to the Subscription Maker Podcast. This is your host Zachary Alexander, Enterprise Architect at SubscriptionMaker.net. Please hit the subscribe button where ever you get your podcasts so that you won’t miss any new episodes.
Making a case for a service strategy can be difficult given the level of effort required just to keep up with the rate of techno-economic change. A lot of very serious people have adopted a mindset of publishing first and fix later. However, you may want to consider the impact that this strategy will have on current and future subscribers.
The best predictor of business success is your ability to nurture a great reputation. Inconsistent service delivery will not help your cause or garner confidence in your stakeholder community. Subscribers watch how you handle change in your business when they are making decisions about whether to trust your advice about theirs.
What is a service strategy?
You can think of a service strategy as a high-level action plan. It shouldn’t get too far down into the weeds because of the need for major stakeholder participation. You could even make the case that too much detail will limit its usefulness as a tool for identifying new opportunities.
A service strategy defines general guidelines about how to treat subscribers and service delivery. Bill Capodagli outlined the most famous service strategy in his book the “Disney Way.” In that book, Bill showed how Disney uses it’s four principles to guide planning, to support its current business, drive team building, and guide leadership.
Why is a service strategy so important?
A lot of very serious people on cable news shows will tell you that speed is the great differentiator. They cite success stories of companies like Netflix and Amazon Prime. I would agree that being first to market is a huge competitive advantage in product-related businesses.
The challenge is that when you want to build trust, you need to go market with a set of services that share a common theme for delivering subscriber success. Everything needs to hang together and appear to be planned by the same team. When this doesn’t happen, subscribers start to think that you are throwing things against the wall to see what sticks.
What’s the process of developing a service strategy?
The good news is that developing a service strategy doesn’t have to take years. You determine who you serve. Next, you identify your strengths. You use those strengths to define your high-level action plan or service strategy. You test your strategy on a small and willing subset of potential subscribers. The results of this test plus any improvements becomes your service strategy.
If you don’t know what your strengths are, you would well-advised to take the CiftonStrengths assessment. At this point, more than twenty million people have taken the test either individually or through their employers. So there is very little danger that the results will reflect a confirmation bias.
Some of you may ask why not start with your purpose? The reason is that your strategy should rely heavily on the people you serve, your strengths and those of your team. Starting with the why makes it all about you. The why makes it about self-expression or self-satisfaction. Starting with the who makes it about service and bringing your strengths bare on delivering the best service possible.
Conclusion
A service strategy is a high-level action plan. One that helps you meet the go-to-market challenges associated with creating a set of services that share a common theme for delivering subscriber success.
Thank you for listening to this episode of the Subscription Maker Podcast. This is your host Zachary Alexander. The music track was Spring Cleaning by Dylan Sitts. You can find it at Epidemic Sound. Also, please hit the subscribe button where ever you get your podcasts so that you won’t miss any new episodes.