Service Leadership Study | Nimit Chowdhary & Bhagwati P. Saraswat

The discussion about services has revolved around bigger players and their precision and professionalism in delivering excellent quality services. While we talked of SAS, Disneyland, McDonalds, Ritz Carlton, Apollo Hospital and the likes, we have often neglected the small and medium size service endeavours. During nineties, while the third world has relentlessly worked to boost their economies, the growth of services has been a natural corollary to this effort. The greater proportion of contribution both in quantitative and qualitative terms has come from the smaller and medium sized players. There have been innumerable examples of excellent services, though not really considered professional in theoretical terms. Unfortunately enough, the management gurus have preached to these players to be all the more professional in approach and follow the examples learnt from the world-class players, not appreciating that the ultimate aim of any business is to satisfy its customers, notwithstanding its size. What matters is the customer satisfaction and not the management theory/school one follows. On the contrary, we can learn many lessons from these smaller players to enhance the levels of our service quality. This paper is based on case studies of 18 Mexican small ticket service providers who were considered offering some excellent services. These providers in a relatively high context Mexican society, with more or less family businesses have organized their activities to be translated into a superlative customer satisfaction. The author have made an attempt to explore in depth what makes these services tick. Not living up to the prescribed service models and best practices, these have without fail lived up to the expectations of their customers. The study attempts to analyze the service leadership and cultural constructs of these companies. Findings suggest that though these companies do not go by the prescriptions of a so-called professionally managed service firms, they have often devised their indigenous approaches to reach the goal of customer satisfaction. Despite being small, they have successfully carved a niche for themselves. The charismatic leaders are proving equally successful as the professional-enlightened managers