Your service product is unavoidably different from your physical products. Physical products are manufactured. Service is "manufactured" at the instant of delivery, and in most cases, there are many points of delivery, not just one.

Jan Carlzon, president of Scandinavian Airlines is credited for the metaphor, "the moment of truth." He believed that there are 50,000 moments of truth each day in his business...that his company existed only during those incidents when customers came in contact with specific aspects of his airlines’ operation. When contact happens, it is a moment of truth to show the customer whether the company is a good airline or a bad airline.

This definition helps concretize the conception of service as a product. What is the service you produce and deliver? Think in terms of outcomes, not jobs and tasks. Analyze every one of your moments of truth from the standpoint of quality to help you improve those that need improving and to discover ways to add value to them. Some moments of truth to analyze are:

The list continues through final disposition with many moments of truth - and only the outcome really matters. And, don’t forget: Driving by your facility is a moment of truth for the customer, as is receiving a statement in the mail or reading your advertisement in the newspaper. The sum total of all the possible moments of truth your customer experiences, both human and nonhuman, becomes your service image! In actuality, each employee is the manager, the president, the CEO of their moment of truth incidents.

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