What Does servuction Mean
The dictionary produced by the Royal Spanish Academy ( RAE ) does not include the term servuction . It is a neologism that is used in the field of business management to refer to the process that is carried out when offering a service .
It is interesting to know that this term was coined in the 1980s by two French teachers named Eric Langeard and Pierre Eiglier. It is considered that it is obtained from the sum of two words: service, of which the "serv-" would be used, and production, of which the "-uction" would be used.
The servuction, in this way, is linked to the organization of resources from the beginning of a project until the idea is materialized in the offer of the service in question. In this way, it can be said that servuction is the process of producing a service .
It is important to know that, although the client is the central protagonist of the service, they do not access the process . The servuction arises from the interaction between the staff, the client and the material support (offices, computers, etc.) that allows to specify the service relationship: the objective is to optimize the management of resources so that the different possible interactions are satisfactory.
It is expected that, through adequate service, the customer experience will improve and, therefore, the level of customer satisfaction will increase. That is why it is essential to analyze each stage of the process.
Specifically, professionals in the field of servuction establish that there are three main axes on which this process is based:
-The physical support, which would be the whole set of material elements that are used in order to achieve that the service is offered in the best conditions and with the highest possible quality. Specifically, this aforementioned support can be classified into two clearly delimited groups: the resources used to present and offer the service and those used to carry out the service itself.
-The contact staff, which is the one whose clear mission is to offer the customer the best possible service.
-The client, who is a fundamental part of the process insofar as it can be considered that if he does not exist there is no service.
These three can be said to be the visible elements that are part of the service procedure at hand. However, then there are others that are not visible, such as the service itself and the internal organization system, which is not seen by the client but plays a fundamental role in shaping the client.
Let's take the case of a person who goes to a travel agency with the intention of hiring a tour package to tour Mexico . The client will have contact with the agency employee, but the service begins much earlier. This employee must have a computer equipment that allows him to consult the available places of each package and register the eventual reservation, in addition to needing brochures to deliver to the client. The agency office, on the other hand, has to be comfortable for the client. All these factors affect consumer satisfaction with the service.
One of the main differences between the manufacture of a product (which we simply call "production") and that of a service (that is, "servuction") is that the former is a process that necessarily ends before the customer acquires the product. This also applies in cases where this is a material that is bought to produce something else: for example, although one buys flour to make a food, the product itself (the packaged flour) is finalized before it is marketed .
The concept of servuction is therefore necessary in part for this fundamental difference between services and products to be understood. When a person goes to a travel agency, to continue with the previous example, he is in the middle of this process , and this is necessary so that he can receive adequate attention from the employee, as well as satisfactory answers to his queries and offers corresponding to a loyalty plan, for example; but there is still a very important part of the servuction missing, the trip being the most important point.
All the experiences that the client goes through from the moment they enter the office until they finish their consumption of the tourist package are part of the service, since until the last moment they must deal with the company's staff and make use of the facilities that it offers them. , as well as the amenities and promotions you receive. Only when the link between both parties is terminated , it is possible to judge the servuction, and this can take several days or months, depending on the case.
Aquí tenemos otra diferencia básica entre producción y servucción: el tiempo que un consumidor necesita para poder apreciar y juzgarlas. Si bien en ambos casos existe un período previo a la primera toma de contacto, los productos suelen tener menos profundidad que los servicios, aunque en la actualidad ambos conceptos no son tan fáciles de distinguir. Este último punto es evidente con los teléfonos móviles, que combinan una parte acabada antes de la compra (el aparato) y otra que evoluciona y cambia constantemente (los servicios a los cuales permite acceder).