A service is basically a transaction where no tangible products are exchanged between the seller and the buyer. The buyer’s acceptance to make the sale holds to be evidenced by his willingness to transact the sale. However, public services aren’t necessarily those which society as whole actually pays for voluntarily. Rather, they are provided voluntarily by government, schools, health care facilities, charities and a plethora of other entities that collectively offer services to the public on an ongoing basis. Public services, then, are the costs that are assumed by governments, society as whole and private individuals who render such services.

An example of a tangible service product is a haircut. Shampoo or conditioner don’t typically constitute service products; instead they are pure services themselves. Likewise, health food stores do not stock physical products like food and drugs that would directly benefit humanity as a whole, but rather offer pure services such as haircutting haircuts. It could be argued that health food store sell healthful products and haircut shops provide haircuts, but the two are distinct – one providing a direct service to humanity and the other merely selling a product to the public.

Another example is tourism. A vacation is often sold as an investment with the potential to yield returns after a certain amount of money has been spent. However, the value of a vacation, like the value of a haircut, does not come from the actual consumption of the vacation itself but from the perceived value that people place on it. When people go away on vacation, they typically do so to have a good time and relax. A haircut is usually seen as having more directly monetary value, even though that value is ultimately purely psychological. In essence then, tourism is a practice that yields returns when the direct value of the vacation service is taken into account while the discount rate associated with the service is ignored.

The value of service and the value of customer service can be seen in the different ways that people view them. An excellent haircut, for instance, will always have a positive overall effect on the customer experience, while a bad haircut will have a negative effect. The practice of incorporating service provision into the service model is necessary because the very nature of a service provider or retailer is that it is focused on satisfying customer needs rather than its own profit margins. Service provision and customer service then become two sides of the same coin: the better the service the higher the margins for the retailer and vice versa. The difference then between a great service provider and a bad service provider is nothing more than the quality of service provided rather than the size of the margins made from the sale.

One final example of the relationship between service and physical products is the relationship between a doctor’s practice and medical equipment. Just as a haircut provides a direct service to the customer by cutting hair, a doctor’s office provides a service to the patient by providing medical products. The two therefore complement each other, rather than compete with each other. The sale of medical products and the provision of service to create money in a doctor’s practice, because the service provider is able to pay for the products themselves rather than pass these costs on to the patient. The same goes for the sale of tangible goods, which many patients find difficult to deal with. When the patient is in need of treatment that the doctor cannot supply, he or she may turn to a service provider, who may be able to supply the needed goods at an affordable price because of the size of the business.

There are numerous additional factors that combine to create a profitable health care business environment, but the basic ones, such as service provision and patient management system design, are extremely important. Without either of these, the revenue stream would quickly dry up, leaving both the service provider and the patient in a lurch. A service management system is therefore a logical investment that provides both the service provider and the patient with efficient sales and administrative mechanism that makes the best use of the assets they have available. With this kind of system, profits will start to roll in for both sides. The service provider can offer more services because of the increased efficiency of the office staff and the physician can offer more services because of the streamlined processes he or she is able to establish. This is how a service management system can make a physician’s job easier.