Fundamentals of Service Systems

Service Design

Summary
This chapter provides an overview of service design as a human-centric approach for creating, describing, and operationalizing new or improved services. It outlines how service design relates to topics such as service innovation and new service development, as well as the key characteristics associated with the concept today. The service design process includinga selection of specific methods is introduced and illustrated.

 

Review Questions
1. Remember a disappointing service situation you experienced yourself and reflect on why you were disappointed. What was worse, the fact that something went wrong or the way the service provider reacted to your complaint?

2. What could the service provider have done to fix the issue in a satisfactory way? Do you see a possibility how a service provider could turn the unlucky accident into a positive experience for the customer?

3. What types of education that business students as well as technical students typically do not receive do bring designers to the table when it comes to designing a service?

4. As discussed in the chapter there is no standard template for a persona. What pieces of information would you include in your template and why?

5. Where exactly do you see a difference between the typical description of a customer segment and a persona? What do you reckon is the ratio between a customer segment and the number of personas needed to represent the segment? Is it 1:1?

6. What are the pros and cons of the various customer journey maps as shown in Fig. 4.8 on page 125?

7. Can you think of any downside of deriving ideas for innovations from the customer journey?

8. Thinking about the Kano model, do you expect the association of a requirement to type 1, 2, or 3 to be stable over time?

9. Explain how service blueprinting achieves the following goals: map the value exchanges and identify touchpoints; explain the interactions between customers and provider’s staff; and expose how interactions are supported by backstage activities.

10. Self-service technologies are technological interfaces that enable customers to coproduce services without a direct employee involvement (e.g., ATM, gas pump terminals, and hotel check out kiosks). Can blueprinting also be used to model the services provided by self-service technologies? If the modeling is feasible, explain any adaptation that needs to be made to the method. Otherwise, justify why blueprinting is not adequate to use with self-service technologies.