Process in the Marketing Mix: Streamlining Delivery

Plan process in the marketing mix: blueprint how a service is delivered, find fail points and waits, and set standards customers can feel.

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At a Glance

Overview

Process is the P that describes how the service is actually delivered. Wikipedia's summary of the marketing mix defines it as a "set of activities that results in delivery of the product benefits" (Wikipedia: Marketing mix). In the 7 P's Marketing Mix, process matters because the customer takes part in it. The services literature describes customers in a service process as quasi-employees who see the operation from the inside, including its glitches (Wikipedia: Services marketing).

That visibility makes process a marketing concern as well as an operations one. A slow handoff, a form that asks for the same information twice or a missed callback is part of what the customer buys. Process in the marketing mix is where a brand promise such as "fast" or "effortless" is either kept or broken.

The main tool is the service blueprint. G. Lynn Shostack introduced it in the Harvard Business Review in Designing Services That Deliver, arguing that managers should subject service development to more rigorous analysis and control. Bitner later co-authored "Service Blueprinting: A Practical Technique for Service Innovation" with Amy Ostrom and Felicia Morgan, listed on her Arizona State University profile. A blueprint maps the process from the customer's side and shows the work behind it.

This skill treats the process element of the marketing mix as service delivery process optimization seen from the customer's side. Use it to design a new service, to fix a service that customers find slow or inconsistent, to copy a service to a new location, or when a 7 Ps audit shows the process cannot deliver what promotion promises.

How It Works

A blueprint is a map with time running across the page and layers running down it. The layers commonly include customer actions, front-stage employee actions the customer sees, backstage actions the customer does not see, and support processes. A line of visibility separates what the customer sees from what happens out of sight, and later versions added a line of interaction between customer and provider actions (Wikipedia: Service blueprint).

Shostack's original method has four parts, set out in the full text of her article. First, identify the processes that make up the service, including invisible ones such as purchasing, since changing them can change how customers perceive the service. Second, isolate fail points, the places the process can go wrong, and design fail-safe steps to correct them. Third, establish a time frame: a standard execution time and the limit customers will tolerate. Fourth, analyze profitability, because delays cost money as well as goodwill.

Her shoeshine example makes the time frame concrete. The standard execution time was two minutes, and research showed customers would tolerate up to five minutes before lowering their assessment of quality (Shostack). The gap between the two is the room the process has for waits and errors before the customer notices.

The services literature adds two design levers: complexity, the number and intricacy of steps, and divergence, the latitude employees have to vary each step (Wikipedia: Services marketing). Reducing divergence standardizes the service and suits volume operations. Increasing it allows customization and suits niche, high-touch services. The right setting depends on the positioning, so a process change is also a positioning decision.

Later additions to blueprinting include marking bottlenecks, points where waiting is likely to exceed what customers tolerate, alongside fail points (Wikipedia: Service blueprint). Those marks turn the blueprint from a picture into a list of problems to fix.

Step-by-Step Guide

Step 1: Choose the service and the scenario

Pick one service and one common customer scenario to map, such as a new customer's first order or a support request. Mapping everything at once produces a diagram nobody can use. Gather the people who deliver each part of the process, plus recent customer feedback.

Step 2: Map the customer's steps

Write the customer's actions from first contact to follow-up across the top of the page, in order. Walk the process yourself or watch customers do it. Note every point where the customer waits, repeats information or has to decide something.

Step 3: Add front-stage, backstage and support work

Under each customer step, add what staff do in view of the customer, what they do out of sight, and which systems or teams support them. Draw the line of visibility, as described in the service blueprint literature. Include invisible processes, since Shostack warned they can change how customers perceive the service.

Step 4: Mark fail points and bottlenecks

Mark every step where things can go wrong and every point where customers wait longer than they will accept. Use complaints, support tickets and staff experience to find them. For each fail point, note what the customer experiences when it fails.

Step 5: Set time standards

For the key steps, set a standard execution time and an acceptable limit, following Shostack's time frame idea (Shostack). Base the limit on what customers tolerate, from feedback or observation. These standards become the measures you track.

Step 6: Redesign the weak points

Fix the fail points customers notice first. Options include adding a check, removing a handoff, moving a task to self-service, or standardizing a step. Decide how much discretion staff keep at each step, balancing consistency against the flexibility the positioning needs.

Step 7: Document, train and monitor

Turn the updated blueprint into a short standard procedure and train the people involved. Track the time standards and the fail points you fixed. Review the blueprint when the service changes, when complaints rise, or before copying the service to a new location.

Best Practices

• Map from the customer's side first. The customer's steps are what they experience, and the backstage work only matters where it affects them.
• Include the invisible work. Shostack warned that changes behind the line of visibility, such as a new billing system, can alter how customers see the service.
• Set standards from customer tolerance. A time standard based only on internal efficiency may be faster than needed in one place and too slow in another.
• Match standardization to positioning. Reducing staff discretion suits a volume service and can undermine a premium, tailored one.
• Keep the blueprint current. A map that no longer matches reality misleads everyone who uses it to train staff or copy the service.

Common Mistakes

• Mapping only the internal workflow: A process map without the customer's steps shows how staff work and hides what the customer experiences. Start with the customer line.
• Automating a broken step: Moving a confusing step online without fixing it makes the confusion faster. Fix the step first, then decide whether to automate it.
• Ignoring fail points until complaints arrive: Fail points are cheaper to design out than to recover from. Mark them on the blueprint and design a check for each.
• Over-standardizing a tailored service: Scripts and fixed steps can strip out the judgement customers pay for. Keep discretion where the positioning depends on it.
• Drawing a blueprint too big to use: One map of every scenario becomes unreadable. Map the most common scenarios one at a time.

References

• Examples: Worked examples and scenarios
• FAQ: Frequently asked questions
• Parent Method: 7 P's Marketing Mix

Related Skills

• 7 Ps Marketing Mix Analysis: Running the Audit
• 7 Ps Marketing Mix Product Strategy: Defining the Offer
• Pricing Strategy in the Marketing Mix for Services
• Place in the Marketing Mix: Mapping Distribution Channels
• Promotion Strategy in the Marketing Mix: Integrated Plans
• People in the Marketing Mix: Optimizing Touchpoints
• Physical Evidence in the Marketing Mix: Proof Points

Sources

• Wikipedia: Marketing mix
• Wikipedia: Services marketing
• G. Lynn Shostack: Designing Services That Deliver (HBR)
• G. Lynn Shostack: Designing Services That Deliver (full text)
• Mary Jo Bitner, Arizona State University
• Wikipedia: Service blueprint

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