Designing memorable service experiences

Jennifer Bove & Ben Fullerton

“Oh, you can spend lots of money on experiences. People think a car will last and that’s why it will bring you happiness. But it doesn’t. It gets old and decays. But experiences don’t. You’ll “always have Paris” — and that’s exactly what Bogart meant when he said it to Ingrid Bergman. But will you always have a washing machine? No.”

Daniel Gilbert, New York Times, April 22 2008

Our starting point for this presentation was this quote from a New York Times interview with a professor of Social Psychology at Harvard called Daniel Gilbert - dubbed the “happiness professor”. Here, he’s suggesting a difference between experiences and objects, talking about what gives people pleasure, and pointing out that objects - or, products - decay whereas experiences do not.

Humph IngAnd he was relating it to one of my favorite films, Casablanca, in which Bogart and Bergman share Paris as a memorable experience.

In this talk, we’re going to be exploring a bit about what makes an intangible experience memorable, as Gilbert points out Paris is for Humphrey and Ingrid. We’ll do this by looking at services in particular - something that people cannot hold, touch control or own in the same way as they can with a product. That lead us to ask this question...

How do you design a memorable service experience?

How do you design a memorable experience when you’re dealing with something intangible, something that people cannot immediately form a physical bond with?

Before we start, it’s important to note that service design isn’t a new discipline - by now, it’s pretty well established both as an offering by design consultancies and on design courses in academic institutions around the world. We’ve approached this talk as practitioners of service design, and we hope to show you that all designing services requires is a different way of thinking rather than a different skill set.

It’s easy to identify certain physical characteristics in objects that people find alluring, and design for those. Here’s some examples of things that people lust after. Cars, gadgets, luxury goods, all deliberately designed to evoke feelings of desire in us when we look at them, largely because we have an expectation that owning this object will improve our life. We know how good these are going to feel.

But what about when we start to talk about designing things that people will never own -- and can’t physically hold -- like bank accounts, a mobile phone service, an electronic payment system, an insurance plan or a healthcare provider. How do we engender the same feelings of desire into these intangible services that people will never touch or own, but will still experience?

What makes a service experience different from a product experience?

Designing a service uses the same skills that we already possess as designers of other types of experiences, but a service has different characteristics that need to be considered. Before we dive in and look at what makes a good service experience, letʼs have a quick look at the most important differences to us as practitioners between services and products.

Services are intangible...

so weʼve already touched on intangibility... you canʼt actually hold your bank account in your hand.

...are experienced over time...

theyʼre inherently time-based.

to take banking again, banking is a relationship that unfolds over time -- you deposit your paycheck, you withdraw money from the ATM, you pay your bills, you check your balance -- and itʼs the sum of those activities, over time, that makes up your experience of the “service” that your bank provides.

...over multiple touch points...

a service is a sum of its parts.

you canʼt hold your bank account, but youʼve got that ATM card, your bank statement, the online banking site, maybe a mobile site, and of course the bank itself, not to mention the folks who work at the bank or who answer the phone when you call the number on the back of the card.

all of these touch points impact your experience and need to be considered when designing the service.

...are focussed on the interaction between people...

services are customer-centric -- while our exchanges are sometimes mediated by technology, itʼs still all about interaction with people, and as a result itʼs often the people who have the most impact on the service.

this is a great opportunity for services really -- whereas products always respond the same way, with people thereʼs an opportunity for a different experience - positive or negative - at every exchange.

...with shared ownership and accountability.

and another important aspect of services is moving away from an emphasis on “ownership” and consumption, and promoting shared usage and accountability for a successful experience.

think of being a member of a gym, you often have to wait for a turn on the treadmill, your experience of the gym is definitely affected by the people around you -- especially if their music is loud or (in my case) they've turned all the TVs to football. and hopefully youʼre wiping down I the equipment after you use it.

this model of shared usage hopefully results benefits for the community -- reinforcing positive social behavior - and has less impact on the environment.

6 characteristics of successful services

To think about this more, we looked at a few services out in the real world that get it right - that create service experiences which keep their customers happy.

We studied how they do this, and what they had in common.

And this led us to a set of principles which we think are important to consider when youʼre designing an intangible service experience.

1. Responsive

First, good service experiences exhibit responsiveness.

1. ResponsiveA product experience is self-contained and to a certain extent monolithic - your product, such as this rather attractive Alessi liveried FIAT Panda, behaves in the same way the day you buy it, the day after that, and the day after that - providing the engine still works. And you will also have a similar driver to use the product - the same particular end goal in mind when you pick up a shaver or a kettle, or when you turn the key in the ignition.

1. ResponsivePhoto credit Steve Rhode 2007

Since a service - such as a bank account - is multi-functional and more complex, you might have another goal in mind when you try to use it today from when you tried to use it yesterday. And it's how the service responds to your different needs or wants at the particular point in time at which you access it that is important.

In a well-designed service, this even works with edge cases.

1. ResponsiveA good example of this responsiveness is provided by Zappos. Zappos has a reputation for being fanatical about customer service. I've heard rumors of their call centre staff ordering pizza for people who call them up, and if Zappos doesn't have a particular size or color of shoe in stock, the call centre staff will go so far as to search a competitor's website to find the particular shoe the customer is after. But an even more perfect illustration of the service being responsive to the needs of their customers is this rather touching story.

A woman ordered some shoes from Zappos as a present for her husband. Shortly after she received the shoes and before she had a chance to gift them, her husband passed away. She called Zappos customer service to enquire as to whether she could return the shoes, and was told that she could and would receive a full refund. This is an acceptable resolution, but the Zappos customer service agent went even further - they arranged for flowers to be sent to the woman's home.

The fact that the customer service agent felt empowered enough to do this is remarkable in an age of generally poor call centre interactions. Concentrating on this touchpoint of the service enables Zappos to deliver above and beyond the expectations of their customers, resulting in an unexpected and consequently rewarding experience. An example of one of the innovative ways in which this level of responsiveness can be designed into a service: Zappos offers $1000 to it's employees to quit after they complete a four week training period, going some way to ensure only committed and passionate call centre staff that provide the best customer experience remain at the company.

2. Consistent

Consistency can be a challenge for a service - whereas the product, as we’ve said, is going to provide the same experience time and time again, a service experience depends on many many different touchpoints, often including tangible products as well as people and environments.

2. ConsistentTake for example Virgin America - the experience of flying VA includes the online experience - using the website to purchase tickets...

2. ConsistentPhoto credit Jason Carlin 2007

...to check in... (note civilized table with flowers on it)

2. ConsistentPhoto credit unknown

....to the the gate experience....

2. ConsistentPhoto credit unknown

...and the experience of the flight itself.

Say what you will about their mood lighting, they’ve gone to great lengths to create a consistent experience of the VA brand at each point of interaction. They wrap the whole thing in the detailed design of the language and tone of voice to try to make the VA experience more enjoyable than the average flight. Every point of engagement with the service is designed to be familiar and repeatable (eg the flight attendants all referring to the inflight entertainment system by its first name “Red”), and to give VA’s “guests” the sense that they can know what to expect from the airline - which they claim is “ topnotch service and a host of fun, innovative features aimed at making flying good again.”

3. Adaptable

Another differentiator of a service from a product is the ability to adapt to problems as they arise.

3. AdaptablePhoto credit Jamie Howell 2008

If a problem arises with a product, more often than not the product has to be returned to a specialist for repair. But since a service is an intangible collection of processes, checks and failure points can be designed so that the quality of the customer's experience is maintained even when things go wrong.

3. AdaptablePhoto credit Brian Kusler 2005

The best example I have heard recently of this - and this is a story that makes me incredibly exited as a designer - is from City Car Share.

3. AdaptablePhoto credit S Purdue 2008

A friend had arranged to reserve a car in a downtown location over the weekend of the Bay to Breakers race (for those of you who don't live in the city, Bay to Breakers is a run that starts by the Bay and goes through the city to the Pacific Ocean. Here are some participants which should give you an idea of atmosphere of this serious sporting event). Without realizing, he'd reserved the car from 10 until 2, right at the peak of when the race was meant to start and run.

3. AdaptablePhoto credit Christina 2008

A week before his booking, a customer service agent called him to inform him that as the bay to breakers race was on the traffic would most likely be terrible, so his booking was extended by 2 hours either side for free so that he could both get where he needed to be in time and not be penalized for a late return.

So the service had been designed in such a way to anticipate the problem, and enable a resolution to be put into place before the problem even arose. The preemptive nature of this is an incredibly powerful "wow" moment in the experience of this particular service.

4. Tailored

The individualized and time based-nature of services provide a great opportunity for service designers to tailor the service experience as it gets to know them.

4. TailoredProducts can do this to a degree - my iphone does try to guess what I’m typing. But it doesn’t get any better at it over time, and it doesn’t know my typing style from Ben’s.

A service, however, because it can evolve over time, can learn about its users and use this information to personalize the service experience.

4. TailoredTiVo is a popular example of an intelligent, albeit not always 100% accurate service. Because the TiVo box is connected to the TiVo service that tracks your behavior, it can suggest and automatically record programming you might be interested in, sometimes resulting in slightly-off based profiling such as the “my TiVo thinks I’m gay” scenario that’s made it into primetime tv.

4. TailoredPhoto credit Sandor Weisz 2007

But let’s look at grocery stores as well for a moment.

The supermarket environment is nothing if not designed - top-selling products at eye level, products that are especially appealing to kids at their height, and the smaller and often healthier brands a bit harder to find. And the store layout is designed to guide traffic through the shop a certain way and maximize potential spend.

The things I’m looking for at my local shop are more or less where I’d expect to find them from one trip to the next, but no matter how many times I shop there, it’s never going to know what I normally buy, or anticipate what I might be out of this week.

4. TailoredPhoto credit Ruth Anne Arnold 2007

Contrary to the experience of shopping in a physical store, food delivery services, such as the LIC-based Fresh Direct (my grocer of choice) can layer intelligence over its product offerings to give users a more tailored experience.

Fresh direct (whose primary touchpoint is their website) knows what I usually buy and makes it easy for me to get in and out of the “store” quickly, while also exposing me to new products i might like.

I can ask Fresh Direct to send me weekly reminders to get my shopping done (because I never remember until I’m totally out of food), and it also gives me 1-click access to purchase everything i need to make my favorite recipes.

4. TailoredPhoto credit Alex Rainert 2007

Fresh direct also remembers what i’ve ordered in the past -- i can browse my previous orders by date, or shop the virtual isles of what i’ve purchased in the past. I can also save shopping lists such as weekly and monthly needs.

Wouldn’t it be even better if Fresh Direct could suggest to me that I might be running out of milk soon and remind me to order some? Or even remind me to use up that yogurt that is verging on way past its sell by date?

4. TailoredPhoto credit Karney Li 2005

These opportunities exist offline as well - the last time I visited SF I stayed at the W hotel. When I checked in and received my room key, etc. the key envelope also included a coupon to the Conran shop in NYC. Given that i’d just given them my credit card, and therefore my credit card billing address, I assumed they knew to give me NYC-based coupon. Perhaps everyone got the same one, but lucky for the W it felt to me like a high-touch dose of personalization, and positively impacted my experience of their hotel.

5. Efficient

As designers, we naturally and instinctively place the user at the center of any of our design efforts. but when we work on a service design project, we are often designing the way an organization or business process will work, the way it will arrange itself to deliver the service to the customer in the most efficient and effective way.

5. EfficientLynn Shostack first mooted the idea of designing efficiency into services in her 1982 paper "How to Design a Service", and later expanded on this in 1984 with a second paper, "Designing Services That Deliver". These were among the first publications to feature the term “service design”, although her approach at the time was grounded in a marketing or business analyst perspective. But even as these ideas have evolved more recently into the customer centric discipline still referred to as service design, it is important to remember that operational efficiency remains essential to the delivery of successful services.

Paying attention to how internal actors and processes work together and relate to each other in the context of wider service delivery is essential. And an end goal of this should be efficiency: a service based on efficient and well designed internal processes will be better placed to deliver a best of breed experience to the customer.

6. Rewarding

While services are designed to be efficient and effective, they also need to be desirable. Users need to see the value in a service experience and be motivated to use it, especially when there’s more than one choice out there.

“What’s in it for me?” is an important factor not only in attracting users, but keeping them engaged with a service as well.

After all it’s a lot easier for me to switch from one service to another than it is for me to give up a product I’ve purchased and physically own.

6. RewardingPhoto credit John Bell 2008

Service designers have the opportunity to elevate a service’s value to users by rewarding them -- for trying the service, for sticking with it, or just as an occasional ‘thank you’ for their business.

We’re all familiar with service loyalty programs -- frequent flyer, frequent guest, frequent shopper cards etc. are all designed to keep us faithful to one service over another. These kinds of programs are ubiquitous and often quite similar, really.

As designers we can craft reward experiences that increase the desirability of a service and create customer delight, and it’s often the small details that create the most memorable experiences.

And the time-based nature of interacting with services can be an advantage over using products, because there are multiple opportunities across the experience to improve the users’ perception of the service and keep them happy, which keeps them coming back.

6. RewardingPhoto credit Erika 2008

For example, a Ben told me a story about a Michelin starred restaurant he went to few months back that ended the meal with a small gift box with a freshly baked brownie in it and a souvenir copy of his dinner menu to commemorate the meal.

It’s that extra step beyond what he expected that cemented the experience for him, right ben? It’s details like that that get people excited about using service and that’s what they end up telling their friends.

1. Responsive2. Consistent3. Adaptable4. Tailored5. Efficient6. Rewarding

so...

weʼve found that the nature of services in particular provides opportunity for us to craft experiences that are rewarding and memorable in ways that products canʼt be, and by designing for these six characteristics, and we can create successful service experiences that keep customers happy.

Weʼve also found these characteristics useful when thinking about products in the context of services. What kinds of services can you wrap around a product experience to make it more responsive? adaptable? tailored?

anks! Here’s looking at you, kids.

And finally, we’ll be diving in further to what exactly it takes to design memorable service experiences in our workshop this afternoon, looking at tools and methods that are commonly used in service design projects.

Thanks for your attention - have a great rest of the conference!