SERVICE QUALITY
Application: Part of Marketing Mix, Strategic Defence, Proactive Relationship Building, Part of a Service Offer
The Concept
The concepts and policies of service quality have several different generic names: “customer care”, “after care”, “the after market”, “service recovery”, and “customer experience management”. All capture the fact that the experience of a product or service can contribute to how well or badly a business does in its market. It is a marketing issue because it affects the growth of the firm. A poor experience will undermine any marketing, no matter how good, because negative word-of-mouth will work against any marketing claims.
There are a number of quality issues that need to be understood and acted upon, including the type of after care being offered and how it resonates with customers, the determinants of customer expectations, and all the different aspects that make up the firm’s relationships with them. This is not a vague or imprecise after thought, nor is it an unrefined, passionate desire to give buyers everything they want. As in every other area of marketing, the design of strategies and processes which produce an appropriate service experience and excellent after care is essentially very practical. This is as much about setting policy and installing processes as any other aspect of sensible marketing.
Customer care and service quality are important for several reasons. First, service quality affects the attitude of buyers toward repurchase. If they have a good experience they are more likely to buy again and, if a poor experience, they are less likely. This simple fact can be surprisingly neglected and mismanaged by even the largest and most well intentioned firms. Secondly, customers may judge the service they receive on different criteria from that of the provider. Whereas the marketer might focus on product performance, technical expertise or, say, speed of execution, the customer might value “bedside manner”, the way they are treated and the perceived attitude of employees, just as highly. In fact, the latter can cause customers to question the former, if unsatisfactory.
Academic researchers have explored the effect of quality of service initiatives on the propensity of people to repurchase from the same supplier. Their particular initial area of interest was in transactional measures, such as satisfaction surveys, which are often sent to buyers asking for an opinion of the way they performed or, say, left in an hotel room for visitors to complete. They found that these are, generally, poorly designed research questionnaires, asking the wrong questions about the wrong issues and giving no manageable data which the supplier could use to improve service still further. Worse, they found that it cannot be assumed that satisfied buyers will return to buy again. They found that there was very little evidence that good quality of service increased the propensity of people to buy again. It was quite possible for a buyer to be entirely satisfied with service and yet next time buy from an alternative supplier because there is a better value proposition. Many now argue that quality of service feedback mechanisms must therefore look at underlying motivations and tease out the rational and emotional needs that buyers want satisfied.
Some recent specialists have suggested that the customers’ reaction to service quality induces loyalty to the supplier, which can be measured and managed. Frederick Reicheld (Reicheld, F., 2003), has even suggested that it is the “only measure necessary”. Whatever the reality of these claims, marketers need to determine which issues influence their customers’ views sufficiently to enhance or degrade reputation. They have to understand the components of the service which lead to repeat business and referrals (and thus future revenues) and which processes or techniques should be employed to improve them.
As a result of recent history, a number of concepts, policies and, frankly, ill-founded beliefs have built up around the concept of service quality and customer care. There is lexicography around the subject which rests in the back of the mind of many senior executives, affecting policy formulation. Before constructing a strategy or integrating service quality concepts into marketing programmes, marketers should take a clear-headed view of these concepts. They are:
(i) Total Quality Management (TQM)
This approach to quality came to prominence in the West during the 1980s, led by prominent specialists such as Edward Deming, Joseph Juran, and Philip Crosby. It can dramatically improve customers’ experience of products and services. Analytical in emphasis, it suggests that quality issues should be resolved prior to affecting operations, not checked and counted after they occur. It calculates the cost of quality” in the organization and sets out to reduce failure in a systematic way, using multi-disciplined teams of people. In fact, the prime aim of a TQM system is “zero defects, achieved by progressively examining smaller and smaller errors in an objective and numerate way, using a range of specialist techniques. Its “kaizen” principle of continuous improvement based on analysis, “quality circles” (mixed discussion groups), and open suggestion boxes, are fundamental to its success and must be supported by senior management. Where TQM is particularly powerful is in its philosophy of engaging the whole organization in guaranteeing and improving quality. If companies have a serious quality problem, then marketers can use this approach as a rallying cry for the whole organization.
(ii) “Six Sigma”
Six Sigma, an extension of TQM, was pioneered by Motorola and Allied Signal, although it rose to prominence when implemented by GE in the 1990s. It is a measurement-based strategy that focuses on process improvement by applying a model of: “design, measure, analyse, improve and control”. It appears to have helped many manufacturing companies improve the quality and effectiveness of their operations.
(iii) Moments of Truth
A moment of truth is any moment of interface between a buyer and the firm. These range from interfaces with customer service, reception, and support employees through to administrative processes like invoicing or contracts. All can positively or negatively affect customers’ impression of the service, enhancing or damaging reputation. It is sensible to conduct a periodic review of all moments of truth to ensure that all contribute to the health of the firm. Introduced in the 1980s this is very similar to “customer experience management”.
(iv) The Perceived Transaction Period
This is the time that the buyer thinks they are engaged with the supplier. Service issues arise if the customer thinks that their engagement with the supplier is longer or shorter than the supplier does.
(v) Employee Behaviour and Emotional Empathy
“Emotional empathy” is the term used by service strategists to ensure that employees who serve customers are competent and responsive. This not only means that they listen to the needs of people but also that they demonstrate empathy; that their tone of voice and demeanour show that they sympathize. Interactions need to be warm and flexible, encouraging positive interchanges between people. If a dull, mechanistic approach is taken, buyers will not respond positively to their experience and will, ultimately, move away. As important, but more difficult, this sense of spontaneity needs to continue after the honeymoon period of the initial launch of any new or improved service.
(vi) Empowerment
Uncertainties about script and boundary can be very damaging to the relationship between customer and supplier. One of the roles of employees is to know when and where they can deviate from the script and break rules to give buyers better service without affecting the overall efficiency of operations. So, operational procedures should “empower” front office workers to meet any unforeseen needs by giving them the right to make concessions, within a controlled framework. “Empowerment” is the discretion given to employees to respond to individual customer needs. This concept arose as service organizations needed to communicate their desire to respond to service needs and in response to strong evidence that any inflexibility in employees’ behaviour damages both reputation and future business. John Bateson (Bateson and Hoffman, 1999) suggests that there are three levels to it:
- Routine discretion, where employees are given a list of alternative actions to choose from;
- Creative discretion, which requires an employee to create a list of alternatives as well as choosing between them;
- Deviant discretion, which expects people to do things which are not part of their job description or management’s expectations.
The latter are normally most noticed and appreciated by buyers. Yet, if good service depends on experienced employees consistently breaking the rules, the marketer has not done their job properly. They should ensure that concessions are recorded, so that the fundamental processes of the organization can be re-examined in the light of the type and frequency of concession.
(vii) Delight Factor
A term which is closely related to Tom Peters (Peters, T.J. and Waterman, R.H., 1982), and which sets out to measure the emotional pleasure or pleasant surprise given to customers by a service experience; some even claim that they have “customer delight measures”. The long-term problem with this is twofold. First, it builds cost into the business. Secondly, it introduces an upward spiral of exceeding expectations, with expectations being increased and delivery having to be increased further still. This eventually becomes unsustainable, and the momentum of the company to provide excellent service eventually runs out. Nearly all the examples held up in Peters’ original book have, for example, had massive difficulties since publication, damaging the crux of his thesis.
A practical alternative would be to use communication and marketing techniques to lower expectations. The chief executive of cut price airline, Ryanair, is continually making controversial announcements about planned changes to their policy. They considered charging overweight people more, charging to use the toilet on a flight, and for very precise excess baggage. Many of these ruminations do not actually get implemented but it sets the expectations of potential passengers very low. Some are pleasantly surprised when the experience of such cheap travel is not as bad as they feared.
(viii) Customer Experience Management (CEM)
This is a relatively new term which, at the time of writing, seems to have no clear or generally accepted definition, leaving room for a number of different interpretations. Some think that it is quite simple: every time a company and a customer interact, the customer learns something about the company that will either strengthen or weaken the future relationship. This accumulated experience will affect that customer’s desire to return, spend more, and recommend it to others.
Others distinguish it from generic customer service. They point out that even if customers are served well, they might still buy from competitors next time. They see customer service as limited to the quality of the last transaction but CEM as a framework for building an organizational capability to deliver a distinctive service experience. Much of their writing emphasizes the need for the service experience to deliver the promises raised by customers’ perception of the company’s brand; a practical application of the brand integrity concept (see brand).
(ix) Personalization
This concept argues that, in the modern world, consumers expect communication and service to be personalized to themselves through the smart use of technology. Pre-eminent in this is Amazon, a company that has driven personalization of service on a technical infrastructure to new heights through its Amazon.com experience. With the combination of technological sophistication and proliferation of messages and products competing for consumers’ attention, the idea that “you no longer find products and services, they find you” is becoming reality through Amazon’s approach. Even consumer product companies are adopting this approach. Nike, for instance, has its NikeID facility, through which customers can design their own trainers, adapting the colours and features to suit their personal preferences.
History, Context, Criticism, and Development
Some proponents of service quality concepts normally suggest that an emphasis on customer care was not necessary before the 20th century and only developed as consumerism grew. That is not the case though. For instance, British Potter Josiah Wedgwood routinely used international direct marketing in the 18th century. His offers included a “money back guarantee” and free replacement of breakages, despite there being such poor infrastructure for transporting dinner services. American processed food producer, Henry Heinz, saw lobbying for quality as a foundation for the creation of his brand in the 19th century.
A remarkable example is Chicago’s “up-market store” entrepreneur, Marshall Field, who built a service business on outstanding courtesy and quality at the start of the 20th century. The store offered a money back guarantee and was publicly committed to a “guarantee of satisfaction”. Sales were backed by courteous, unquestioning service. Greeters were employed to meet shoppers at the State Street entrance and expected to learn the names of returning customers. Sales people were instructed to be attentive and courteous to every person they encountered, no matter how lowly they appeared to be dressed and were prohibited from using aggressive sales techniques (see Koehn, N.F., 2001).
Early theoretical work also stressed service. One of the first marketing text books (White, P., 1927) dedicates a whole chapter to the marketer’s responsibility for service and after care; and says that the marketing trend was “towards giving greater service and the establishment of competition upon a service and price basis”.
It seems that difficulty occurred as distribution chains grew and marketing was functionalized in the mid 20th century. As a result, leaders of businesses became more remote from their customers’ experience of their products and marketers grew distant from the responsibility for service quality. In the latter half of the 20th century, this began to change as the result of a number of developments. They included:
(i) An evolution in customers’ standards and expectations, prompting a rise in consumerism after the austerity of the mid-century world-wide conflict.
(ii) The then-steady decline in the performance of much of Western manufacturing in the light of the success of certain Asian, particularly Japanese, companies.
(iii) Emphasis on after care and service in some sectors, particularly retail and computing. One of the early examples was British retailer Marks & Spencer. They gained market leadership and the affections of the entire nation for many decades because of a commitment to service. In the mid 20th century, a time when consumer spending power in Britain was beginning to increase again, they met one of the emotional needs of their buyers with a money back guarantee. This meant that consumers were happy to buy and felt a warmth and loyalty to the company, which underpinned their profits for many years to come.
In business-to-business, IBM made similar strides through quality commitments in the early computer industry. It met an emotional need amongst business buyers when the technology was new and unstable by using leasing to finance many of its early sales. This made it easy and low risk for buyers to invest in the new technology. It also put enormous emphasis on the quality of its maintenance and installation work. This approach has given the company world-wide market leadership for nearly thirty years.
(iv) The publicity gained in the 1980s by several populist writers and speakers on service quality, particularly Tom Peters (Peters, T., 1982), who modelled the dynamics of successful businesses, creating general principles out of case studies. His primary emphasis was on quality of service and customer care. He thought that much Western business had moved away from an emphasis on serving their buyers and had lost world leadership as a result.
(v) Certain well publicized, dramatic improvements in service which affected the share price of the firms involved. Two dramatic examples were in the European airline industry. One was BA and the other SAS.
BA famously improved its market position with a service quality programme called “putting people first”. The importance of excellent service to passengers was stressed and barriers to such service were removed from the employees. This was one aspect of a broader marketing programme which encompassed a new brand initiative and new quality measures, based on extensive market research. Before the programme, BA had a terrible reputation for punctuality, was beset by industrial disputes, and was losing substantial money (£140 million in 1981). A decade later, it was not only popular with customers, it was the world’s most profitable airline. Although there were clearly other factors which contributed to this performance (see, for example Gruglis and Wilkinson, 2001) the impact of the programme caught management attention throughout the world.
At SAS, the new chief executive of this Scandinavian airline, Jan Carlzon, introduced a similar programme under the banner “moments of truth”. Carlzon introduced a company-wide programme to enhance all moments of truth, which had a major impact on the company’s market position. In one year, the airline became the most punctual in Europe and the first choice of its intended segment (business travellers). Just as important, though, corporate overheads were reduced 25% and before tax profit went from a loss of $10 million to a profit of $70 million (Vandermerwe, S., 1988).
(vi) The publication of a number of influential research reports. One was, for example, conducted by TARP (Technical Assistance and Research Programmes) in the United States and Canada, for the White House Office of Consumer Affairs. Interestingly, this research has become part of management rhetoric and is still, often unknowingly, quoted at conferences because, at the time, it was given so much attention. The work, which interviewed 200 companies, showed that:
- The average business did not hear from 96% of its unhappy customers;
- For every complaint received, there were twenty-six other people with problems and six with serious problems;
- People with problems who failed to complain were far less likely to repeat their orders and were likely to stop completely their business with that supplier;
- People who complained and whose problems were handled well were much more likely to continue doing business;
- People with bad experiences were twice as likely to tell others about it as those with good experiences.
(vii) Substantive academic analysis and research. This combination of factors attracted the attention of management throughout Western businesses and put a spotlight on quality of service principles; so, for a period of time, service quality and customer care became a popular management fad. Some of the stories told of employees delighting customers were so anarchic that a number of concerned academics set out to research the field and develop credible principles that could be applied within it. For instance, Sri Parasuraman and a group of academics that specialize in services marketing produced their “GAP model” (Parasuraman, S. et al., 1985) as an analytical tool; Heskett and Sasser applied value chain analysis to service businesses with the “service profit chain” (Heskett et al., 1997) and Fredrick Reicheld published on his “loyalty effect” (Reicheld, F., 2006). Although each has been evaluated, tested, and critiqued since, they provide a range of practical management concepts which ensure that service quality issues can be tackled in as pragmatic and realistic a way as any other aspect of business.
(viii) Public metrics of service quality were then developed. The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) is an economic indicator that measures the satisfaction of consumers across the US economy. Set up in 1994, it is produced by the National Quality research centre, University of Michigan. The ACSI interviews about 80,000 Americans annually and asks about their satisfaction with the goods and services they have consumed. Respondents are screened to cover a wide range of consumer products and services, including goods, services, local government services, and federal government agencies. The results are published each quarter. The programme measures customer satisfaction for more than 200 companies in forty-three industries and ten sectors. The ACSI aims to represent the satisfaction of the “average American consumer”. It was based on a model originally set up in Sweden, in 1989, called the Swedish Customer Satisfaction Barometer (SCSB) and versions now exist in other countries. The UK version, for example, is based on a representative sample of 25,000 adults surveyed over the internet. The British Institute of Customer Service calls its version the UK Customer Satisfaction Index (UKCSI).
Voices and Further Reading
- “Services are performances and people are the performers. From the customers’ perspective, the people performing the service are the company. An incompetent insurance agent is an incompetent insurance company.” Berry, L.L., 1995.
- Luchs, R., “Successful businesses compete on quality – not costs”. Long Range Planning, February 1986.
- Zeithaml, V.A., Parasuraman, A., and Berry, L.L., “Problems and strategies in services marketing”. Journal of Marketing, 1985.
- Szmigin, I., “Managing quality in business-to-business services”. European Journal of Marketing, 1993.
- Schlesinger, L.D. and Heskett, J.L., “Breaking the cycle of failure in service”. Harvard Business Review, March–April 1991.
- Rust, R.T. and Oliver, R.L., “Service quality”. Sage, 1994.
- “Service quality is by nature a subjective concept, which means that understanding how the customer thinks about service quality is essential to effective management. Three related concepts are crucial to this understanding: customer satisfaction, service quality and customer value. … they are quite distinct, which has important implications for management and measurement. Rust and Oliver, ibid.
- DeSouza, G., “Now service businesses must manage quality”. Journal of Business Strategy, May 1989.
- Zemke, R. and Woods, J.A., Best Practice in Customer Service, Amacom, 1999.
Things You Might Like to Consider
(i) Prior to the functionalization of marketing in early 20th century America, many business leaders seem to have regarded after care and service quality as part of their marketing mix. CEM gets near to the application of marketing principles to service experience but it is not nearly enough. Service really ought to be the province of marketing and routinely understood by marketers.
(ii) There are moments (like with BA and the opening of Terminal 5 or BP and the oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico) when a major service aberration affects the perception and profit of the whole firm. The rapid and immediate marketing strategy and activities in these circumstances is unique and critical. Marketing and PR have a crucial role to play in these circumstances. PR skills have to manage the relationship with the media and marketing people have to communicate with customers. A properly run, concerted effort can avoid catastrophic disaster.
British Airways Ensures that Its T5 Disaster Is Not Terminal
British Airways (BA) is one of the world’s largest international airlines, carrying more than 33 million passengers worldwide in the twelve months to 31 March 2009. Together with its partners, BA flies to more than 300 destinations worldwide.
The airline’s two main operating bases are London’s two principal airports, Heathrow (one of the world’s biggest international airports) and Gatwick. In 2008/09, it earned nearly £9 billion in revenue, up 2.7% on the previous year. Passenger traffic accounted for 87.1% of this revenue, while 7.5% came from cargo and 5.4% from other activities. At the end of March 2009, it had 245 aircraft in service.
As one of the world’s longest established airlines, it has always been regarded as an industry leader. The company’s commitment to customer service, and its strong brand, were perhaps two reasons why it was able to ride out the storm that occurred around the chaotic opening of Heathrow’s Terminal 5 in 2008, and why it has since been able to recover its position and the goodwill of its customers.
SERVICE QUALITY HISTORY
In the airline market of the 1980s, passengers had a dreary time. Each airline’s service was as bad as every other, providing stodgy food from harassed staff, with awful track records in luggage safety. It is even reported that some staff referred to their passengers as “SLC”: self-loading cargo. Industry research at the time showed that frequent flyers would tolerate one airline for a while, then switch and switch again until they rotated back to the original carrier. Into this market came Colin Marshall from the ocean cruise market as MD of the recently privatized British Airways, a government-owned engineering-led service. Backed by his chairman, Lord King, he set out to revolutionize air travel through a massive customer care programme. Called “putting people first” it changed the fortunes of BA’s service and had a dramatic impact on its profits. BA shot to market leadership and became “the world’s favourite airline”.
In the following years, BA became a watchword for service quality and an iconic case study for management thinkers. As time went by, though, (like many other firms that have attracted attention through exceptional quality initiatives) that heritage did not make it immune from the forces which buffeted its industry or errors. It has had difficulties from rising fuel prices, environmental pressure, and employee unrest. It has also muddled, for instance, its attempt to be “global” rather than British, earning negative publicity when Premier Margaret Thatcher threw a handkerchief over a model of its new, anodyne, tail plane designs. One dramatic and highly visible mistake was the opening of Terminal 5 at Heathrow.
DISASTER STRIKES AS T5 OPENS FOR BUSINESS
2008 was a difficult year for everyone, not least for airlines. In addition to the credit crisis that spread quickly from the US, the value of sterling plunged, consumer confidence collapsed, and companies like BA faced record fuel prices. Many went bust, including the UK’s third largest travel operator, XL Airways, leaving 90,000 holidaymakers stranded abroad. The disastrous opening of Heathrow’s Terminal 5 came in sharp contrast to an industry-defying, successful year for BA, as the airline reported great financial results with profits up 45% and operating margins up to an industry-leading 10%.
It started so well. The opening of Terminal 5 was the result of twenty years of planning. It was the largest construction project in Europe, and over £4 billion of investment. BA saw it as a chance to redefine air travel, “replacing the queues, crowds and stress with space, light and calm”. It was the largest freestanding building in the UK, designed with both customers and sustainability in mind, and the promise that check-in would take less than five minutes.
A press release, embargoed to coincide with the touchdown of the first flight at the terminal, BA026 from Hong Kong, announced the opening of the terminal with its headline, “Celebrations as Terminal 5 opens for business”. And yet, rather than the celebration envisaged, the opening gave way to one service failure after another, until images from Terminal 5 were transmitted around the world showing the chaos ensuing and damaging the reputation of BA.
A number of factors contributed to the service failures on the day, including:
- Baggage handlers and staff not being able to get into BAA car parks, consequently arriving late for work;
- Poor signage making it hard for BA staff to navigate the building;
- Terminal 5’s computer system not recognizing staff identification cards, meaning that doors that should have opened remained locked;
- 17 out of the 18 terminal lifts jamming;
- The transit system moving passengers from the main terminal to Terminal 5 breaking down;
- A programming error preventing staff from logging onto the baggage system;
- The baggage handling system crashing;
- Staff with already low morale becoming stressed and unhelpful as the problems unfolded.
Passengers became frustrated by a lack of communication around the service failures. Baggage systems crashed and flights were cancelled and yet only two of the twenty-six information desks were operational. Some passengers arrived at the airport to be told their flights were delayed, while others were told their flight was cancelled when it was actually scheduled to take off.
By mid afternoon on 27 May BA had cancelled thirty-three of the 534 services it planned to operate from the terminal. In the early evening, passengers were told that no one would be allowed to fly with their hold baggage for the rest of the day. At one stage during the day, 28,000 bags were separated from their owners and 19,000 were sent to Milan to be sorted.
As a result, five days after the crisis, 250 flights had been cancelled and there was a backlog of 15,000 bags. Thousands of passengers had their travel plans disrupted, with some stranded for days, and BA were unable to find them hotel rooms.
Alistair Carmichael, a UK Member of Parliament, described the failure as, “a national disgrace, a national humiliation”. More seriously for BA, with passenger choice set to increase, particularly on trans-Atlantic routes in the future, the risk of losing customers forever as a result of the fiasco was high.
WORK BEGINS TO RECOVER BOTH SERVICE AND REPUTATION
In sharp contrast to the celebratory press release issued the day before, BA CEO Willie Walsh apologized in a press release the following day, saying, “We disappointed many people and I apologise sincerely. I take responsibility for what happened. The buck stops with me.”
Despite many of the service failures having their basis in issues to do with the terminal operator, BAA, throughout the crisis Walsh did not attempt to blame BAA, saying instead. “… there were a lot of angry customers out there. They buy their tickets from BA, not BAA, so we had to deal with it.”
Later, when facing a Parliamentary Committee, Walsh acknowledged that risks had been sanctioned by him and that, with hindsight, the opening should have been delayed to allow for more training and familiarization for BA staff. He also announced that he would forgo his £700,000 bonus.
Work began to put right the operational issues that had caused the failures on the day. BA announced that they would appoint a new chief operations officer. The airline gave away thousands of free flights in a desperate attempt to retain passengers in the wake of the disaster. Walsh and chairman, Martin Broughton, both set aside time to personally review a significant number of customer letters and emails so that they could drive the necessary improvements to service.
Once the service failures were corrected, there was naturally a lag in public perception, with many people still assuming that Terminal 5 was a failure. To that end, the airline launched an advertising campaign to announce “Terminal 5 is working”, backed by a series of metrics, released daily to prove the claim. The campaign initially ran across a seven-week period in July and August 2008, using a wide range of digital formats. Key metrics from the terminal, such as the percentage of flights departing on time, or the time taken to get through check-in, were sent to media owners at the end of the day before the ads were due to run. The emotions of customers were also drawn on, with roving reporters asking customers to say how they felt about Terminal 5, from a choice of “happy, excited, calm, impressed, frustrated, disappointed or angry”. Their emotions featured on a web site, promoted through web and press advertising. Then head of BA global marketing communications, Katherine Whitton, explained. “As a premium service-driven organization, we understand that we need to deliver not only the rational benefits of flying, but also engage our customers emotionally.”
THE HARD WORK PAYS OFF
The “Terminal 5 is working” advertising campaign resulted in 62% of respondents in a Millward Brown survey agreeing with key statements such as “most flights arrive on time” and 58% agreed that the ads made the brand seem more appealing. Readers of the UK’s Daily Telegraph went so far as to vote the opening of Heathrow’s Terminal 5 one of the travel highlights of the year, having “found its feet”. At the end of 2008, 80% of readers polled felt positive about T5.
Some 21 million passengers passed through Terminal 5 in its first year. Satisfaction levels among them have risen steadily through the year to 76% as over 82% of flights departed the terminal within 15 minutes of their scheduled time, and BA achieved more than 99% regularity.
Source: constructed with publicly available data.
RATING: Practical and powerful