Designing services with innovative methods, a very interesting book

I have recently aquired Designing services with innovative methods, by Satu Miettinen and Mikko Koivisto, and it looks really great!

The first chapter, written by Birgit Mager, reveals key aspects of service design.
A little synthesis to raise your curiosity (and if you're still not sure have a look at this laudatory post):

•    Is service design really useful?
Service companies are starting to identify the need for specific methods, role and structure in order to develop innovative services to win or maintain customer loyalty (that is becoming a more and more touchy subject with the empowerment and the higher demand of the customer >> High Performance in the Age of customer Centricity. Accenture 2008)

•    What to do?
Service design basics (Mager 2006):
1.    “Look at your service as a product”: consider positioning and portfolio management of services (like for a product).
2.    “Focus on the customer benefit”: the user should be the center, structures and processes might be adapted.
3.    “Dive into the customer’s world”: a vivid word of emotions and experiences, find their real desire/need.
4.    “See the big picture”: work on the whole customer’s journey and the whole system of interactions.
5.    “Design an experience”: “to design time”, use techniques from performing arts, experience and interaction design.
6.    “Create perceivable evidences”: “making the invisible visible”
7.    “Go for standing ovation”: help the service provider to have him offering the best performance.
8.    “Define flexible standards”: “balance standardisation and flexibility”
9.    “Living product”: “Services need to be designed for learning and development”.
10.    “Be enthusiastic”: service innovation can be a hard change to implement, it requires support and motivation.

•    How to do it?
About the process, she explains it requires:
o    Holistic approach: need to map the ecology of the service (system, sub-systems, stakeholders)
o    Co-creation: involving users (final customers) and providers (your client and different providers of the service) at different stages of the development.
o    Visual thinking: use tools like Mock-ups, prototype, scenarios, storyboard, etc.
o    Radical approach: look for the change.
o    Special spirit: to have the energy and motivation for change.


Recently, I have been reading lots of websites of service design consultancies, and it is great to see that there seems to be a common background and vision, most of them are really close to the standards proposed by Mager. It is a positive asset for service design in order to gain more and more credibility and sense in the eyes of service companies/institutions.