This is a Marketing and Sales related question. The question is By reading over

Question

This is a Marketing and Sales related question. The question is By reading over the two prior paragraphs, please provide your insight into the role of technology in the services marketing triangle and in enhancing productivity and efficiency in sales operations and provide real-life examples to support your discussion. Attached is the "Services Marketing Triangle."

Reading:

By looking at the services marketing triangle, it is very clear that technology plays a significant role to link: (1) the company to its customers (“to set the promise” through external marketing efforts, including sales promotion, direct marketing, advertising, and public relation), (2) the company to its employees (“to enable the promise” through internal marketing efforts and proper horizontal and vertical communication), (2), and (3) the employees to their customers (“to deliver the promise” through interactive marketing effort, including personal selling, customer service centers and social media). According to Rapp, Calamusa, and Bachrach (2014), the technology tools, systems (e.g., CRM), and applications are used to: (1) accomplish a wide range of core strategic purposes for organizations today and expands to a comprehensive modern selling apparatus; (2) create a system that effectively integrates support for sales, marketing, and service across all channels and all products; (3) create a single snapshot of the customer and augment the skills and core competencies of the sales force at different levels; (4) facilitate the collection and maintenance of the most current information and data on markets, customers, products and competitors; (5) decrease sales costs as it increases efficiency of sales operations; (6) improve communications among the company, its employees (including salesforce), and its customers (as shown in the services marketing triangle in the prior paragraph); (7) improve forecasts through sophisticated analytics software and data mining; (8) improve management effectiveness by enabling more accurate and detailed data enabled performance evaluation and deployment of self-paced training modules; (9) improve sales effectiveness by offering salespeople real-time, in-depth customer analysis that can be leveraged prior to and during sales calls; (10) facilitate team selling by creating data-rich ties among members of the sales team.

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Explanation / Answer

Role of Technology in Services Marketing:

Considering banking industry as example to explain the role of technology in Services Marketing

Internal Marketing - Communications between Company and Providers (Employees)

Technology plays an important role in internal marketing. Below are the key areas which have major positive impact-

i) Adequate training on the technologies of the services to be delivered to customers

ii) Internal evaluation systems

iii) Performance rewards system based on the quality of customer service delivered

Example: In banking sector, employees are trained on various banking technologies to deliver better customer service. Every bank has its own internal softwares to maintain customer account data and his/her entire account history. These application softwares increase efficiency and productivity of employees thus delivering more business in lesser time.

External Marketing - Communications between Company and Customers

Below are the key areas which have major positive impact of technology on extrenal marketing -

i) Advertising and brand promotion

ii) Website and mobile app services

iii) Online services

Example: Banks have been providing excellent customer satisfaction through online services, reducing the number of times and amount of time the customer has to spend in the bank. The services include online transactions, ease in account opening, online loan applications etc.

Interactive Marketing - Communications between Providers(Employees) and Customers

Below are the key areas which have major positive impact of technology on interactive marketing -

i) Customer service centers - complaints and feedback

ii) Customer onboarding- Helping customers get acquainted to the company's technology

iii) Personal selling - Email and other modes of interaction between employee and customer

Example: This is the most crucial marketing area which is a make or break factor for customers. Interaction between bank staff and customers comes through service requests, phone interactions, emails, helping customers onboard the online and mobile app services of the banks etc.

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