Saving Half the Marketing Budget Through Better Service Design — Quantity vs Quality, the big trade off in service levels
Whether you're going through the health system, catching a plane, checking into a hotel or buying fast food, someone somewhere perhaps even some time ago has designed the service component of your experience. Do you rate it? The service sector creates 70% of GDP in most western countries. But increasing the efficiency of services differs from that of production because the quality of service is created in cooperation with the consumer of the service.
So many services we use each day have not been redesigned for years to cope with current Quantity.
Every business strives to serve more customers in the same unit of time without dropping the ball and quality. However, it is by understanding the customer's actual needs and taking account of them while delivering the service where the economic impact of service design becomes very clear.
That kindly concierge who greets you after a difficult journey.
Logic and understandability are the main benefits that service design offers both to the provider and user of the service. A customer who understands what is offered, what the benefit is and why he should use it, is also an efficient customer.
A well-designed service saves you half the marketing budget because there is no need to explain the service, or provide instructions for use.
Consider the restaurant where you pay in advance, carry your own food, eat with your hands, and clean up after yourself. It seems counterintuitive but McDonald's has built up a pretty good business using this model. Furthermore, a well-developed service is difficult to copy, which is why there are many burger joints but few that can rival the market leader.
Years of service observations and continuous redesign pay handsomely.
Mapping the customer journey from the point where they begin to consider your business to the point where they've finished using it, and are ready to repeat the process, is a very good method for locating the misunderstandings and bottlenecks in your service.
Competition in services clearly demonstrates that what matters is how the customer feels while using the service not the costs and the time spent. People will talk about positive experiences. Banks all buy and sell money. Mobile operators all sell the opportunity to talk to someone. The selection of goods in grocery stores is in the main the same everywhere.
It's the service rather than the product
that now, more so than ever, influences customer choice.
If the service is delivered, word-of-mouth will spread quickly and advertising money can be invested into what makes youfeel special, rather than trying to explain why you are necessary.
Knowing where you are in the healthcare system at a time of great personal uncertainty.
Service stress is probably the biggest anxiety for today’s travellers.
If you consider me an important customer, you will have my loyalty. If you consider me to be a source of profit, all I want from you is a discount.