Business Services

Business services encompass a broad range of industries that benefit companies without supplying a physical product. They include outsourcing labor that doesn’t fall within the company’s expertise or capability, providing additional help for marketing or production purposes, and helping to keep costs low and efficiency high.

Many people work in the service industry as independent contractors or employees. Some of these jobs require a specific location or office, while others can be performed remotely from a home or other business premises. The variety of types of business services includes consulting, advertising, training, facilities management, logistics and supply chain management, and more. The industry may also be called the “service economy.”

A successful service business must get four things right or it won’t survive. This article outlines an approach for crafting a profitable service business, based on these critical elements.

Unlike product businesses, which can be run with a standard tool kit of best practices, service businesses must design their business models from scratch. This requires a different mindset, in which managers focus less on the characteristics that buyers will value and more on the experiences that customers will want to have with the business.

For example, the quality of an architectural firm’s client interactions will be greatly impacted by the way in which clients communicate their needs. Likewise, a customer who dithers at a fast food counter will make the service experience slow for everyone behind him. This type of situation requires strong, centralized leadership from revenue-generating line managers, who must be able to resist the tendency of their subordinates to overrule them during strategic distress.