Measuring services

One of the challenges that service design faces is how to measure the effectiveness of services provided by companies. The ability to gauge how enjoyable (or not) an experience is can be a valuable tool for innovation. By knowing if a given experience is in fact attracting and retaining customers, companies can elaborate strategies more efficiently, such as focusing on the most profitable customers. Off course, CRM tools are always helpful, but I haven’t come across something 100% effective in terms of measuring service effectiveness yet.

I find the methodology employed by the Customer Satisfaction Index quite interesting, and it could be potentially used as a barometer to gauge experiences. The index is based on a set of causal equations that link customer expectations and perceived quality to customer satisfaction. The expectations are then compared with the actual performance of a service encounter. If the level of expectations is higher than the performance, then dissatisfaction occurs. If expectations meet performance, then customers are satisfied. On the other hand, if expectations exceed performance, the result would be enhanced satisfaction. With a few tweaks, I believe that this model could be adapted to measure service performance. Something to think about…

The art of reinventing yourself

There is a great buzz in the blogsphere about how Starbucks lost it’s ‘cool’. Personally, I think it’s not my coffee shop of choice. There is a Starbucks about 5 min from where I live, which I’ve never visit. I prefer to go to a small, friendly and cosy local café just on the opposite side of the road. Why? Funny enough, because I can get the experience that Starbucks used (and promised) to offer on the early days.

Starbucks need to reinvent themselves. They’ve just launched My Starbucks Idea, a social forum to enable them to listen to the customers’ voice, get some really good customer-driven insight and co-create a new service. Why bother with CSI, KPIs and all of that? Great idea!

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Service design metrics

Last week the CIID (Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design) hosted a Service Design Symposium. The presentations seem to have brought good discussions to the table. One of the topics that emerged during those discussions was the creation of tools and techniques to gauge the value (and more especifically, the monetary value) that service design can bring to companies.

Service design is still a young practice with lots of areas that remain unexplored. Service metrics, or methodologies to enable service designers to measure the added value of service design, is still something that needs further exploration.

CIID will be posting the materials presented during the symposium, so watch this space.

For more info on the conference, please visit the CIID website