Service Design

 Service design is a process in which the designer focuses on creating optimal service
experiences. This requires taking a holistic view of all the related actors, their interactions, and
supporting materials and infrastructures. Service design often involves the use of customer
journey maps, which tell the story of different customers’ interactions with a brand, thus offering
deep insights.

1. User-centred, through understanding the user by doing qualitative research

2. Co-creative, by involving all relevant stakeholders in the design process

3. Sequencing, by partitioning a complex service into separate processes

4. Evidencing, by visualizing service experiences and making them tangible

5. Holistic, by considering touch points in a network of interactions and users

 To employ a service design process, a designer uses a wide range of design tools for
exploration and creation. Qualitative research methods for service design are similar to general
user-centered research methods: observations, contextual interviewing, etc. Using such
methods, designers can envision a spectrum of situations in which users may interact with
brands, from discovery to conversion and attendant issues such as customer reengagement.

 The design process includes the creation of personas, customer journey maps, stakeholder
maps, and value network maps—based on the insights from qualitative research. For example,
the development of personas carries the vital benefit of allowing designers to consider
characteristics of their target audiences that they may otherwise overlook.

 A heavyweight issue is accessibility. This is why including personas of would-be users with
disabilities (such as color blindness) is instrumental in helping to filter through the elements
that will make a better design overall. Finally, co-creation sessions result in service prototypes
and advertisements, which are further developed in an iterative design process.

 Service design is the activity of planning and organizing people, infrastructure, communication
and material components of a service in order to improve its quality and the interaction
between the service provider and its customers. Service design may function as a way to
inform changes to an existing service or create a new service entirely.
 The purpose of service design methodologies is to establish best practices for designing
services according to both the needs of customers and the competencies and capabilities of
service providers. If a successful method of service design is adapted then the service will be
user-friendly and relevant to the customers, while being sustainable and competitive for the
service provider.
 For this purpose, service design uses methods and tools derived from different disciplines,
ranging from ethnography to information and management science to interaction design.
 Service design concepts and ideas are typically portrayed visually, using different
representation techniques according to the culture, skill and level of understanding of the
stakeholders involved in the service processes.
 Service design practice is the specification and construction of processes that delivers valuable
capacities for action to a particular customer. Service design practice can be both tangible and
intangible and it can involve artifacts or other elements such as communication, environment
and behaviors.
 Several authors of service design theory including Pierre Eiglier, Richard Normann, Nicola
Morelli, emphasize that services come to existence at the same moment they are being
provided and used. In contrast, products are created and "exist" before being purchased and
used.
 While a designer can prescribe the exact configuration of a product, s/he cannot prescribe in
the same way the result of the interaction between customers and service providers, nor can
s/he prescribe the form and characteristics of any emotional value produced by the service.
 Consequently, service design is an activity that, among other things, suggests behavioral
patterns or "scripts" to the actors interacting in the service. Understanding how these patterns
interweave and support each other are important aspects of the character of design and
service. This allows greater customer freedom, and better provider adaptability to the
customers' behavior.
 There are various objectives that Service design focuses at and some of the same are
mentioned as below to provide you better insights on Service design.

 Designing services to meet agreed business outcomes

 Identifying and managing risks

 Designing secure and resilient IT infrastructures, environments, applications and data

 Producing and maintaining plans, processes, policies, standards, architectures,

 Four P’s of Service Design:

1. People: This refers to the people, skills and competencies involved in the provision of IT
services

2. Products: This refers to the technology and management systems used in IT service
delivery

3. Processes: This refers to the processes, roles and activities involved in the provision of IT
services

4. Partners: This refers to the vendors, manufacturers and suppliers that are used to assist
and support IT service provision
SERVICE QUALITY
 Service quality is generally viewed as the output of the service delivery system, especially in
the case of pure service systems. Moreover, service quality is linked to consumer satisfaction.

 Although there is no consensus in the research community about the direction of causality
relating quality and satisfaction, the common assumption is that service quality leads to
satisfied customers.

 For example – customers leaving a restaurant or hotel are asked if they were satisfied with the
service they received. If they answer “no,” one tends to assume that service was poor.

 Customers, however, form opinions about service quality not just from a single reference but
from a host of contributing factors.

 The term quality focuses on standard or specification that a service generating organisation
promises. We can’t have a clear-cut boundary for quality. Sky is the limit for quality generation.

 It is right to mention that the service quality satisfaction is the outcome of the resources and
activities expanded to offer service against the expectations of users from the same. It is also
said that the service quality can be broken into technical quality and functional quality.

 For the purpose of improving the levels of the quality of services that service organisations
offer. The service generating organisations are required to identify the reasons entailed behind
mounting dissatisfaction amongst the users and to activate appropriate measures (technical or
functional) to minimise.

EXAMPLES:

 Restaurants

In restaurants, service quality tends to focus on timely service (not too rushed or too slow), server
attentiveness, and friendliness.

In fine dining restaurants with a fairly engaged experience, an expected part of service quality is
the ability to make relevant recommendations. This can be easily measured by a manager asking
the customer questions at the end of the meal, such as “how satisfied were you with the server's
recommendations?”  The manager can also ask if the order placed was influenced by the
recommendation(s).

However, this is clearly not a measure that would be relevant in a quick service restaurant,
showing the importance of context. In quick service restaurants, things like order accuracy and
speed of delivery are more accurate measurements. To gather this data, you can put a link to a
survey on a receipt and giveaway a free menu item upon completion.

 Automotive

Service quality is especially important in automotive because the customer’s car must be fixed and
completed on time. This is mostly focused on the service itself, and less about the interactions with
the technician or front desk attendant, except when it comes to trust (because they must trust the
professionals recommendations).

You can ask questions like “how would you rate the quality of the service you received” or “is your
car now running like you expected after it was serviced?” You can also ask an NPS question like,
“how likely are you to recommend our service to a friend or colleague?”

 Retail

In retail, you typically ask things about staff product knowledge (think adidas and knowing what
type of running shoe best suits your use) and recommendations.  You can also assess
merchandise knowledge (what goes with what), friendliness, and availability (were team members
on the shop floor easy to engage).

While there are all very straightforward questions to ask, they can be conditional based on the text
comments or score provided on that element.

These questions help to identify both the frequency with which it happens and the customer's
satisfaction with the experience.

You can then regress that against the outcome measure and see how big an impact that makes
on the overall experience.  This provides direction on what to focus on in your store (or
restaurant), and what action you should take. For example, if shoe recommendations are a
significant part of the experience and guests are not satisfied - you can provide better
merchandise training, and if they are knowledgeable but not making relevant suggestions, retrain
to better read guests' interests.
SERVQUAL

 SERVQUAL is a multidimensional research instrument, designed to measure service quality by

 Tangibles: appearance of physical facilities, equipment, personnel, and communication

 Reliability: ability to perform the promised service dependably and accurately.

 Responsiveness: willingness to help customers and provide prompt service.

 Assurance: knowledge and courtesy of employees and their ability to convey trust and
confidence.

 Empathy: the caring, individualized attention the firm provides its customers.

 These five SERVQUAL dimensions are used to measure the gap between customers’
expectations for excellence and their perception of the actual service delivered. The
SERVQUAL instrument, when applied over time, can help you understand both customer
expectations, perceptions of specific services, and areas of needed quality improvements.

 SERVQUAL has been used in many ways, such as identifying specific service elements that
need improvement, and targeting training opportunities for service staff.

 Proper development of items used in the SERVQUAL instrument provides rich item-level
information that leads to practical implications for a service manager.

 The service quality dimensions evaluated by SERVQUAL should be adjusted for optimal
performance in different industries, including public and private sector applications.

 SERVQUAL scores are highly reliable, but when used in different industries may fail to produce
a clear delineation of the five basic dimensions. Other measures, such as the Six Sigma model
should be considered for applicability in quantifying the gap between service expectations and
perceptions.