Service in the digital era was the theme of the 7th Conference of Customer Relationship Talents organized by the Académie du Service on September 27, 2013.

Le service à l'heure du digital

Two hundred guests - Marketing Managers, Customer Relations, e-commerce, IS, Digital - attended the conference and participated in the workshop co-hosted by the consultants of the Académie du Service and Hardis Group.

It was a day of philosophical, strategic and practical talks.

  • The conference began with the announcement of the partnership between the Académie du Service and Hardis Group by their respective presidents, Jean-Jacques Gressier and Christian Balmain.
  • This was followed by a brainstorming session on the evolution of the human and the digital, with the philosopher Vincent Cespedes: "reducing shock waves (the stress of metallic voices on voice servers) and using charm waves (teaching our clients to prepare a risotto with ceps)".
  • There were round tables on changing service models in the context of the digital economy, with testimonies from managers of the groups BNP Paribas Cardif, Peugeot, Schneider Electric, PMU, Orange and La Poste.
  • A workshop was co-hosted by the consultants from the Académie du Service and Hardis Group with a presentation of the digital application "Dilizy" created for the occasion.

From these talks, we took away the following points:

  • The shift towards Services and Digitization is the bearer of change: a move from a "Product" culture to a "Service" culture, new customer segmentations related to uses, a partial transfer of the porting of digital topics to marketing departments.
  • In this context of acceleration, agility and non-perfectionism are essential: services can be changed little by little through rapid iterations where customer contribution will become paramount.
  • The absolute necessity to balance and coordinate technological and human issues in the production of digital services: the more digital, the less human, and that's why human issues are becoming more important as a differentiating factor.
  • Companies are on the lookout for new organizations, processes and methodologies to help them make these changes.
  • In this great movement of transformation, it is becoming more necessary to show the utility, comfort and added value that digital can bring to services... finally speaking the customer's language.

What the workshop contributed

Ateliers conférence Talents de la relation client 2013

The workshop, run jointly by Hardis Group and the Académie du Service, allowed participants to discover and experience a complete methodological framework, from service marketing diagnosis to the choice and definition of a service and its digital application.

Attendees enjoyed both content and form: a dynamic common thread, a simple and educational approach for defining a service and coordinating its components, work in small groups, sketches played out by those participating.

They also noted Hardis' ability to make a digital application available quickly.