De Mar Product Strategy How

De Mar Product Strategy

How All Areas of De Mar Can Support Its Product Strategy

De Mar continues to succeed as a services business because they see the entire user experience as their responsibility, and are willing to step up and be accountable for their performance, from the first call to the solved problem. When a services business galvanizes and unifies all of their functions around the experience as the product they excel (Gopalani, Shick, 2011). De Mar continues to grow their customer base due to the trust their existing customers have and the references they provide of excellent service (Norton Pine II, 2009).

Analysis of Support for the Product as Experience Strategy

As the experience their customers have is actually the "product" each functional area of De Mar has to concentrate on how their contributions maximize each customer interaction, each day. From within personnel and the hiring processes used to screen candidates who have a "whatever it takes" attitude to getting work done, even on holidays to the accounting and finance teams willing to put in extra hours on special projects for customers, De Mar is hiring skill sets that can create exceptional customer experiences (Gopalani, Shick, 2011). Human resources and personnel also have a critically important job in defining the overall compensation, recognition and additional learning programs within the company as well. All of these factors contribute to a higher level of satisfaction with employees, making them more willing to give extra hours and effort to ensure complete customer satisfaction. There is also the element of customer respect and value that comes out of the case study, and hiring people that have these mindsets can be difficult and time-consuming. The hiring practices of the best customer service firms are continually focused on this attribute of being able to internalize and identify with the unmet needs and highest expectations of consumers (Gopalani, Shick, 2011). Personnel plays a critical role in defining what the most critical priorities are in terms of skill sets as well, defining the hiring strategies going forward. When the product is a service being delivered the hiring decisions is the most critical one there is. Secondary only to training (Norton Pine II, 2009). Finally there is a passion a person must have about what they are doing working for De Mar. The personnel department has to find people with a passion for service if they are going to excel over the long-term as well (Gopalani, Shick, 2011).

Marketing is critically important in that it sets the expectation levels of customers and explains what they will be getting as an experience (Gopalani, Shick, 2011). This is where many services businesses fail as their marketing overcommits and their services department under delivers. De Mar has turned this around and under commits then over-delivers to a very wide variety of customers under a broad spectrum of services engagements. This helps the company become more agile in serving customers and also helps set the tone for the entire organization in terms of focus and continued market direction.