Abstract
One of the complaints against the service sector is that it is comparatively inefficient and that it yields a lower rate of productivity vis a vis the manufacturing sector. The service providers contend this mainly with the argument that their services are as against products, more 'Person-dominant' and that a significant part of service benefit can never be pre-engineered in the workshop. Often a service is 'produced' in interaction with its customers. By extension, therefore, the burden of raising productivity in service sector is not entirely in the hands of service marketers.
The author, with his views on customized and general management programmes on service and satisfaction, offers a solution towards raising productivity in a service firm. He invokes the concept of pace (speed or time consciousness) and customer participation (or using the customer participation (or using the customer as a fellow producer of the service) and marshals both the forces to enhance the general productivity of the service firm. Several suggestions are made in this respect.
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