Service companies are the backbone of the economy. They make up a large chunk of the economy, and have been for some time. But what is a service company? And how can it use tech to its advantage?
A service company is any company that provides a service to its customers rather than producing or selling goods. Service companies are often divided into three categories: personal services, manufacturing services, and wholesale and retail services.
Personal Services: Personal service companies include hair stylists, housekeepers, tutors, and pet groomers.
Manufacturing Services: Manufacturing services companies include carpenters, plumbers, electricians, and HVAC specialists.
Wholesale & Retail Services: Wholesale and retail service companies include restaurants, hotels/resorts/spas.
The advent of technology has made it easier for service companies to provide customer service. They can now use chatbots to help customers with basic tasks like scheduling appointments or answering questions about the company's products.
Service companies can also use AI-powered virtual assistants to streamline internal operations. For example, they can use AI-powered speech recognition software to transcribe phone calls and then compile reports on call volume trends or feedback from customers. They can also use AI-blog writers to boost their SEO for free traffic (like we did on this article).
A successful service company needs to be agile and adaptable to the changing market. To stay ahead of the competition, you need to invest in technology that will make your business more efficient and productive.
It’s important to have systems in place that will allow you to be more productive, increase your revenue and keep your clients happy at all times.
Some of the ways that you can use technology for your company's success are:
But that’s what we all know in theory, right? But how can technology give your service company an unfair advantage, especially once everyone else in the industry pursues digital adoption?
Technology can provide a competitive advantage in the form of automating parts of your service into software as a service, also known as SaaS, which can enable your team to provide more value at a better price as well as self-serve functions for your customers.
Two great examples come to mind. The first is a market agency that created technology to automate a large portion of their manual labor and to do so in an optimized way to get far better results than their competitors. In this case, they focused on a niche industry, created an aggregating software that automatically checked their website for new inventory or changes, and converted those into ads with daily accuracy. In an industry where sales are fast and up to date, the usual 1-2 month cycle for advertising is largely in effectual as it cannot be based on current inventory, the main factor influencing customer buying decisions.
In the above case, the client was a tech-empowered service company. They had an unfair advantage.
Another company, a friend of ours, was in the roofing industry. They could not find a software to meet their unique needs as a company and decided to solve their own problem by building custom software for themselves. Then they realized they could sell it to other roofing and service companies. Within a few years, the SaaS software company they built rapidly outgrew their roofing company. Now they can scale well beyond a service model. For more on this approach, read our article, From Service to SaaS- How Tech Can Scale your Service Company.
With the introduction of new technologies, businesses must adapt to change quickly in order to stay competitive. This can be difficult for some businesses that are not used to adapting and changing their business models, especially some older service industries.
If a company does not adapt quickly, it will find itself being left behind by competitors that are able to keep up with the times. This could lead to a loss of customers and revenue, which would then lead to a loss of jobs. This will happen gradually and in some industries faster than others, but eventually it will affect every single industry and efficient use of technology will be a baseline, not an advantage.
What problems can you solve for yourself or your customers that could give your company an unfair advantage? Think beyond productivity and focus on problems because that’s where the unfair advantage is.
Not sure how that translates to technology? Schedule a call with us and let’s brainstorm together (seriously, we love chatting ideas). You can also see examples of what can be done to increase profits, productivity, and revenue streams here.
Book a free discovery call with our team to learn more about how tech can leverage your operations, services, and products today!
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