TAX SERVICE PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT 2

Tax Service Product Development

The new proposed service is online tax filing. This product will allow customers to file
their taxes online using the company’s e-tax platform. The company will provide tax experts who
will aid customers throughout the tax filing process. Customers will pay according to the
complexity of their tax filing homeowners and persons making donations paying the least
amount while small businesses and self-employed customers paying the highest amount. The
service’s strength is that it will save customers time and also increase convenience.
Service product characteristics
This service product, like other service products, is characterized by the main features of
services. These are inseparability, intangibility, heterogeneity, and perishability (Polyakova &
Mirza, 2015). These characters inform how the service product is designed and implemented.
Intangibility means that, unlike physical products, service products cannot be touched,
tasted, smelt, or felt because they are simply actions (Polyakova & Mirza, 2015). Due to these
characteristics it is very hard for all the people involved in service development and delivery to
have the same idea of what the service will be. To mitigate this problem, the development of the
service product will involve employees, customers, managers, and marketers so that everyone
has the same idea of the service that is being developed. Moreover, the service content will be
presented in form of pictures, drawings, and charts to make communication of the intended
service easier.
As for heterogeneity, service products are non-standardized (Polyakova & Mirza, 2015).
Even though there are a number of e-tax filing platforms run by different tax services, they are

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differentiated by the expertise of tax personnel that help them during the process and reliability
of the services themselves and platform used. To make sure that employees do not perceive this
service to be like any other it will be important to offer employees thorough training so that they
effectively understand the service that is being offered.
Inseparability means that the service delivery process involves both the provider and the
customer (Polyakova & Mirza, 2015). As recipients and deliverers of the service, customers and
their contact personnel or those who will help them during the filing process will be involved in
the development of the service to make sure that it is feasible and effective.
Lastly, perishability means that a service product cannot be stored (Polyakova & Mirza,
2015). Thus, the service has means of varying demand and capacity so that it is not overwhelmed
by excess demand or lead to idle employees when demand is low.
The service will largely rely on technology because it will be based online. It will,
therefore, require development of an online payment system integrated in the service’s online
platform. It will also require extensive data security system to protect data of customers who will
be using it.
Measuring quality of service
There are many methods that will be used to measure the quality of the service. One of
them will be asking customers to rate how the delivered service met their expectations based on
factors such as responsiveness and helpfulness of employees, and general reliability of the
system (Bienstock et al., 2015). This method will use an online survey. Positive responses will
show that the service is of high quality.

TAX SERVICE PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT 4
Another way of measuring the service’s quality is through monitoring customer feedback
on social media platforms of the service (Bienstock et al., 2015). Many customers nowadays use
social media to provide feedback for the services that they use. Monitoring the nature of the
feedback will help determine the quality of the service.
Barriers to globalization of the service
The world is increasingly becoming like a global village where goods and services easily
cross borders. However, the tax service proposed will have difficulties being used by people
from other countries because of the differing requirements for different tax jurisdictions. To
effectively serve customers from different jurisdictions, there will be need to employ new staff
experienced in tax regimes of the different jurisdictions or train existing staff about requirements
of those jurisdictions. Both of these options are relatively expensive. Thus, it may not be
necessary to globalize perhaps until later dates.
Marketing the service product
Marketing the product will use product, place, promotion and pricing (Isoraite, 2016).
The product is time saving and very convenient because customers can even use their phones.
Compared to similar services, its prices are relatively low. As for place, it customers can use the
product from wherever they are. Lastly, the service product will be marketed on various search
engines and social media platforms to make it easily available to customers. The diagram below
shows a summary of the marketing mix that will be employed for the e-tax filing product.
Fig.1: Diagram of Marketing Mix Used

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In conclusion, the product development process takes into consideration the main
characteristics of a service product so that the service delivery is highly effective. To measure
this effectiveness various methods have been proposed such as surveys. Feedback on the
product’s quality will then be used to improve its quality.

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References

Bienstock, C. C., Mentzer, J. T., & Kahn, K. B. (2015). How are service firms measuring and
managing service quality/customer satisfaction?. In Proceedings of the 1996 Academy of
Marketing Science (AMS) Annual Conference (pp. 161-161). Springer, Cham.
Išoraitė, M. (2016). Marketing mix theoretical aspects. International Journal of
Research–Granthaalayah, 4(6), 25-37.
Polyakova, O., & Mirza, M. (2015). Perceived service quality models: Are they still
relevant?. The Marketing Review, 15(1), 59-82.