The idea of productizing your service is becoming quite popular especially on the internet. But what exactly does this mean?

To productize your service means to set up your service so it behaves more like a product rather than a service. The idea of doing this is to increase efficiency and profitability.To do this right, you need to become efficient at doing one thing to the extent that you are at least 20 times faster than the average person.

Productizing your services comes with its cost, such as:

• In ability to connect with your customers at a personal level
• High customer turnover rate
• Compete based solely on price

However, if you can figure out a way to consistently fill your marketing pipeline and a deeper relationship with clients/ customers is not a premium in your field, then going the product route is not a bad idea.

Steps to productizing your service

In a regular service business, each job done is customized to the request of the client. You might have packages you offer but for the most part, might tweak it a little to meet the needs of a client. In a productized service, there is no tweaking. Every output has to be exactly the same as the previous one (or at least as close as possible).

Here are some steps you can take:

• Determine what service you need to productize. You will need to refine this product many times because it needs to be as narrow as possible. For instance, if you a graphic designer you will need to be as specific as: I will provide 5 edits to a jpeg file for $20.
• Next, define all the processes necessary to accomplish one unit of output.
• Then, figure out the most cost effective way to complete your processes. In the example above, if edit, 2 and 3 require a different skill than edit 4 and 5, you will need to create separate departments that handle edit 1, 2 and 3 while the other ones handle edit 4 and 5. This is because every job that comes in has to consist of the same amount of labor time, materials and overhead. Each department literally has to do the same job again and again as this is where the gain in efficiency is found.
• Once that is done, ensure the following:
  • Create a process for collecting input from clients in exactly the same format.
  • Department 1 does exactly the same thing for all jobs using the input from client and transfers it to department 2.
  • Department 2 does exactly the same thing for all job and sends the job completion report to client.
  • The output is always in the same format for all jobs:
    • No customization allowed for any job: Just like you cannot order custom coke from McDonald’s, you should not be able to custom order a productized service.
      • Once you start customizing it loses the product feel.

     

As you can see not all services will lend themselves to this structure. I see people making the mistake of productizing service they should not productize. Trying to fit a circle into a circle peg causes a lot of frustrations so before your start the productizing product ask yourself, “what do I really want my business to look like?” and “how can I best serve my clients?”.