Global Service Jam Tampere

A café-keepers point of view to service design

jtolvanen — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 18:13:49 +0000

It seems that many of us taking part to our local-global-jam haven’t heard much about service design before. I must say I’m one of those and when I first heard about the term I didn’t quite get the hang of it. Now though (and luckily for you guys participating), I’ve started to understand some things about it.

I’ve been running our school’s little café for a while now and I’m also strongly planning to stick to this line of business in the future as well. So we can create a quite simple mind game by thinking, what would service design mean for an entrepreneur in this branch?

‘Cause to me it’s been like taking customer thinking to a deeper level. You go through in your mind how your client sees the whole picture e.g. in a café all the way from hearing about the place, to choosing the snack and eventually leaving the dishes somewhere. You become aware of all the phases creating the whole customer experience.

For me service design has so far worked as a way of broadening my way of thinking. It’s made me think stuff like: “Could I start cashing the money differently – what if instead of a normal cash machine there was a system looking like a pinball machine? Or what if you could challenge the cashier to a quick computer game, and if you won you’d get the money back?”

I’m sure there are deeper things to deal with service design waiting me to discover them. But at first it’s easy to think it as a way of seeing your whole process from customers point of view and making every step as smooth as possible. Once the steps are smooth you can start thinking how could they become experimental. By changing little things you might end up with a concept that makes one shine apart from competitors!

Marika Aimonen
GSJ Tampere, event coordinator

All the best plans have some red wine on them

jtolvanen — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 16:03:12 +0000

The headline of this blog post doesn’t (necessarily) suggest that you need to consume alcohol to create great plans. What I’m trying to say is that in order to communicate your ideas you must first make them visible and shareable – there must be something to spill onto. And that’s what we service designers do, isn’t it? We use our skills and tools and do our magic: the invisible becomes visible. The visible becomes tangible. And finally – the tangible becomes usable!

Usable. That’s another key word. A service designer approaches the service from the viewpoint of the user. What are they using this service for? Or why aren’t they using this service? What would make it more pleasant to use? What are they willing to pay for? What kind of experience are they after?

Fairly simple so far, aye?

Then comes the tricky part. How do you make something immaterial, such as a service, tangible and consistent? So consistent that it doesn’t matter who the client and the staff member conducting the service process are? Good service design should take into account their different levels of knowledge, their previous life experiences and all the human factors that may affect the process and quality of the experience.

In many cases we’re not that interested in the quality of the outcome as we are in the quality of the process. Even the most delicious meal becomes less appealing if the restaurant loses your reservation, makes you wait at the table for two hours, has inconsiderate staff and tries to overcharge you during the process.

Service designing alone won’t ensure the consistent service experience (since at the end, it’s all about the people), but it’s a very effective tool to communicate expectations. What are you expecting the staff to do, what are you expecting the customer to do and what kind of support do they need from “the backstage” of the service company?

So Jammers – be prepared! Be prepared to think big, be prepared to share your thoughts and be prepared to make them tangible. You are having an amazing 48 hours ahead of you! Give me a reason to be proud of us Finns and create something great to spill that wine onto!

Anna Kulonen
Kolmas Persoona

GSJ Tampere Blog

jtolvanen — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 08:43:04 +0000

Words of wisdom about Service Design, innovation and entrepreneurship by the organising team coming soon.

In the meantime join the jam on Facebook & Twitter and get to know a bit more about Service Design below.

What is Service Design?

Service Design is the activity of planning and organizing people, infrastructure, communication and material components of a service, in order to improve its quality, the interaction between service provider and customers and the customer’s experience.

Customers can mean paying patrons, but also can be within an organization, so long as they are the direct recipients of a service. To do this, Service Design methodologies are used to plan and organize people, infrastructure, communication and material components used in a service.

The increasing importance and size of the service sector, both in terms of people employed and economic importance, requires services to be accurately designed in order for service providers to remain competitive and to continue to attract customers.

Source: Wikipedia (read more here)