Strategic Service Management: Industry Trends

Post-sale Service is Reaching the “Tipping Point”

One of the more obvious indicators of a market reaching its "tipping point" is the amount of media coverage and market research published on a specific market segment.

Recently, we’ve seen a dramatic increase the media’s coverage of post-sale service that has highlighted how and why companies across diverse industries are investing in service as a source of profit, competitive differentiation and customer loyalty – demonstrating the power of service as a growth driver.

Additionally, leading education institutions, industry analyst and consulting firms such as Accenture,  AberdeenGroup, AMR Research, Gartner Group, Forrester Research, and McKinsey and Company have published more than 25 research reports, all of which have a common theme.  As product margins dwindle under intense global competition, post-sale service is becoming increasingly strategic to harvesting revenue and profits, reducing operations costs and improving customer loyalty.

One important fact highlighted in recent research suggests that service led growth strategies require effective collaboration across functions, new decision-making capabilities, and an underlying integrated technology infrastructure to support those processes – an approach the market is now referring to as Strategic Service Management.

The following charts, graphs and quotes have been extracted from such research reports to illustrate a number of thought-provoking trends related to Strategic Service Management.