Design for Service

From the New York Times:
For the first time, American corporations are acknowledging “customer service as something worth paying for rather than just red ink,” said [Jon] Anton, who looks at call centers worldwide and, using a number of criteria, compares how well they work. “If you can satisfy customers and keep them buying, it’s as [...]

Over on the Work Play Experience blog, Adam Lawrence makes a great observation about sequence in service delivery. He recounts an example from his commute. The train attendant walks down the aisle offering coffee to the passengers, but they generally ignore him until it’s too late:

But if you watch the rows behind him, you will [...]

Here’s an interesting example of the honor system applied to payment. Customers add up how much they owe themselves and drop their money into a fare box:

The thought was, someone can pour his own coffee, grab his own bagel, cut it himself, throw the money in, and walk out. We don’t touch 60 per cent [...]

Jason Weisberger reports on an unfortunate attempt at service recovery. Weisberger bought a $5000 camera through Amazon and was disappointed at how the camera was shipped. He complained to the camera store directly and they blew him off. So he gave them negative feedback:

Rude on the phone. Really, Really, poorly packaged. I think they could [...]

Pixar’s Brad Bird shares a nice example of sociopetal design in an interview with McKinsey Quarterly.

Steve Jobs basically designed this building. In the center, he created this big atrium area, which seems initially like a waste of space. The reason he did it was that everybody goes off and works in their individual areas. People [...]

Adam Lawrence reports on a new type of car dealership over on the Work Play Experience blog. Rather than selling cars from a particular manufacturer (Mersedes-Benz, BMW, Volkswagen), they focus on a particular segment of the market:

At familycars.de the concept is far smarter. They sell only family cars — from a bunch of different manufacturers, [...]

Here’s another emergent service I’d never heard of before. Apparently, people who live near Wrigley Field in Chicago sell their parking spaces to Cubs fans on game night. There aren’t any official rules governing the service, but most of the residents honor a “dibs” system for snagging cars.

There’s an odd relationship between service recovery and customer loyalty from the Customer Experience Labs blog:

The “service recovery paradox” states that with a highly effective service recovery, a service or product failure offers a chance to achieve higher satisfaction ratings from customers than if the failure had never happened. A little bit less academically, this [...]

The Bank of America near my home has a new facelift. They’ve replaced the old ad hoc stanchions for queuing with more substantial metal and glass barricades, and installed new carpetting, but the most obvious change is the addition of three new widescreen TVs above the row of tellers and a huge screen at the [...]

Casual carpooling is an ad hoc service in the Bay Area that involves drivers picking up random strangers at BART stops in the East Bay and giving them a lift into the city. It’s a mutually beneficial arrangement. The passengers get a free ride into work and the drivers get to take advantage of the [...]