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-To build up and strengthen the company\'s ability to survive and to develop
-To guarantee the organisation\'s success and a long- term ability to compete
-To set up, improve and maintain standards
-To ensure a maximum of quality and successful performance out of a minimum input
-To create a satisfying system of teamwork and interdepartmental relations
-To collect and evaluate information required for forecasting and planning
Today, the challenges of Service Management are high, there is a lot of competition, but also potential in this sector- our society is becoming a \"service society\". Despite the growing problems some other markets face, the service sector is among the few that are given positive prognoses by the world\'s economists.
The challenges a manager in a service organisation has to face are very different from those of manufacturing managers.
Although services often include products such as food or cleaning, the service itself is intangible, it cannot be touched and therefore may differ in quality, or in the customers\' perception of quality. For example, one customer might consider a meal as not tasty while another client likes it a lot. This leads to an essential problem for the manager who has to create the service product and, in order to sell it successfully, to reduce the customers\' purchase risk. The Marketing functions of many large organisations such as the Hampton Inn- Hotels offer their guests a 100% Satisfaction guarantee or another guarantee that protects the customers\' rights.
Another challenge service managers face is the fact that in their working field, production and consumption are closely connected and often act parallel. This means that adjustments can only be done before the service delivery and that problems regarding the service have to be tracked down and eliminated before bothering the customers.
Forecasting and planning ahead are extremely important to service managers because they are hardly able to store their products, especially in the F&B sector, and therefore need to know more about their customers\' habits. An example for this is a restaurant which cannot simply warm up frozen food but neither waste expensive ingredients like steaks or, more abstract, cannot store the act of serving itself
As the person responsible for eventually occurring problems, a service manager has to select his employees, especially front- office agents, carefully and they have to be well- trained. The human aspect might be the most important \"variable\" of all, and the way of leadership that employees face is often linked, maybe even reflected, in the way they treat customers and in their loyalty. This leads to the concept of \"The moment of truth\", which says that the competencies and structure of the company\'s service become obvious when the customer meets the employee who delivers this service.
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