How companies can innovate from within

Almost everyone can tell the difference between a scripted and a natural approach from a shop assistant. Some jump on the customer with catchphrases that reinforce brand messages or offer a set list of options.

From a customer’s point of view, there’s nothing better than a spontaneous, helpful and cheerful approach, without too much pressure. In these situations, you can feel the shop assistant is not so much selling you something as delivering a much-needed solution.

A customer’s first contact with a company crucially affects how the customer thinks about the product, the brand, and the company. The service encounter between a customer and a frontline employee has been referred to as “the moment of truth” in academic research. It is critical to a service company because service, different from a manufactured product, is produced and consumed on the spot.

The trend in retailing industries has been for the service encounter to be micro-managed from start to finish; standardised so that when we enter a shop of a global chain, we can expect to receive the same branded greeting anywhere in the world.

Managed on the mass production principles of predictability, calculability and efficiency, it represents what we call “McDonaldisation” of society. Interestingly, in the past year or so, even the standard product formula of fast food giants such as McDonald’s is changing to allow for individual tastes.

Frontline employees often deliver a consistent brand message but there’s a risk of a backlash. Research has shown that customers can distinguish between scripted and impromptu service at a hotel check-in desk, and customers don’t like scripted service. Other research has shown the effectiveness of an adaptable approach, e.g. a decision by a 7-Eleven part-time worker in Japan to change the lunch offering to cool noodles when the weather suddenly turned warm.