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2011 | Book

Understanding Services and the Customer Response Read chapter Read first chapter

Service Design and Delivery

Editors: Mairi Macintyre, Glenn Parry, Jannis Angelis

Publisher: Springer US

Book Series : Service Science: Research and Innovations in the Service Economy

Part of: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

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About this book

Service Design and Delivery provides a comprehensive overview of the increasingly important role played by the service industry. Focusing on the development of different processes employed by service organizations, the book emphasizes management of service in relation to products. It not only explores the complexity of this relationship, but also introduces strategies used in the design and management of service across various sectors, highlighting where tools, techniques and processes applicable to one sector may prove useful in another. The implementation methods introduced in the book also illustrate how and why companies can transform themselves into service organizations.

While the book is primarily intended as a text for advanced-level courses in service design and delivery, it also contains theoretical and practical knowledge beneficial to both practitioners in the service sector and those in manufacturing contemplating moving towards service delivery.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter
Chapter 1. Understanding Services and the Customer Response
Abstract
So why have you picked up this book? Perhaps you are in a bookshop, browsing through titles and were attracted by its cover. Perhaps you bought it on-line and are now reading it in your bedroom. Maybe you’ve borrowed it from a friend and are browsing its pages during your coffee break. Whatever the circumstances, you, evidently, are the customer.
Jagdeesh S. Dhaliwal, Mairi Macintyre, Glenn Parry
Chapter 2. Goods, Products and Services
Abstract
Defining terminology is a useful starting point when reading or writing on the subject of service to prevent any confusion or assumptions that we all understand the terms to mean the same thing. So, what do we mean by goods, products and services? This is a book about service, but what is a ‘service’ and how is it different to ‘goods’ or ‘products’? Whilst most people intuitively know the difference between a product and service, actually defining this difference with clarity and accuracy of text is not straight forward.
Glenn Parry, Linda Newnes, Xiaoxi Huang
Chapter 3. The IBM Story
Abstract
This chapter explores an actual transition from a product-based company to one where services dominate. That company is IBM and the transition started in the early 1990s. As you will see, the changes do not happen overnight in a “big bang” ­apocalyptic event but more gradually in a series of phases; indeed, at the time of writing (2009), we are almost 20 years into the transition and we know that we are not finished yet. Underneath the headline change from products to services, there are a myriad of other process and procedural changes that have to be made to support the business and allow it to change dynamically in order to meet the needs of its clients, its shareholders and its suppliers. In this chapter, we will show how IBM has responded to these requirements and how it is applying the lessons learnt in this process to create an agenda for innovation in service creation and delivery to address global problems.
Charles Loving
Chapter 4. Rethinking Lean Service
Abstract
Ever since Levitt’s influential Harvard Business Review article ‘Production-Line Approach to Service’ was published in 1972, it has been common for services to be treated like production lines in both the academic literature and more widely in management practice. The belief that achieving economies of scale will reduce unit costs is a common feature of management decision-making. As technological advancement has produced ever more sophisticated IT and telephony, it has become increasingly easier for firms to standardise and off-shore services. The development of the ‘lean’ literature has only helped to emphasise the same underlying management assumptions: by managing cost and workers’ activity, organisational performance is expected to improve. This chapter argues that through misinterpretation of the core paradigm ‘lean’ has become subsumed into the ‘business as usual’ of conventional service management. As a result, ‘lean’ has become synonymous with ‘process efficiency’ and the opportunity for significant performance improvement – as exemplified by Toyota – has been missed.
John Seddon, Brendan O’Donovan, Keivan Zokaei
Chapter 5. Designing Competitive Service Models
Abstract
The explosives developed in Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth ­century by the famous Swede and patron of the world peace prize, Alfred Nobel, were extremely durable and, apart from the introduction of the electric detonator, have remained in use with minor modifications for almost a century (Fig. 5.1a). In the 1970s a new invention started a process of change that has transformed the explosives business from being a supplier of products to a provider of a service. Survival very much depended on the agility of ICI Explosives UK, hereinafter referred to as “ICI Explosives,” in adapting to the new competitive environment. Manufacturing excellence was not a solution. Innovative thinking was required to sustain the ­business as changes in technology reduced the complexity that had ­protected the business from serious competition for over a century.
Veronica Martinez, Trevor Turner
Chapter 6. Shifting from Production to Service to Experience-Based Operations
Abstract
This chapter covers the shift in focus of value added business operations from ­production to services, and in turn, to experience-based operations where customer involvement itself becomes part of the offering. The shift has significant implications for how businesses are managed. The greater service focus affects the firm’s unique value proposition, which necessitates considerations on strategy, supplier relations, post-sale offerings and so on. Meanwhile, the inclusion of customer ­experiences affect the way operations are designed and employed so that these are structurally systematically captured and capitalised.
Jannis Angelis, Edson Pinheiro de Lima
Chapter 7. Complex Deployed Responsive Service
Abstract
A pizza restaurant must provide product, in the form of the food and drink, and service in the way this is delivered to the customer. Providing this has distinct operational challenges, but what if the restaurant also provides a home delivery service? The service becomes deployed as the customer is no-longer co-located with the production area. The business challenge is complicated as service needs to be delivered within a geographic region, to time or the pizza will be cold, and within a cost that is not ­prohibitive. It must also be responsive to short term demand; needing to balance the number of staff it has available to undertake deliveries against a forecast of demand.
Glenn Parry, Marc McLening, Nigel Caldwell, Rob Thompson
Chapter 8. A Multi-organisational Approach to Service Delivery
Abstract
Who is involved in delivering a service? There has been growing recognition in a wide variety of contexts that service is increasingly being delivered by multi-rather than single-organisational entities. Such recognition is evident not only in our experience but in a number of areas of literature including strategy development, core competence analysis, operations and supply chain management, and is reflected in and further facilitated by ICT developments. Customers have always been involved in some degree in the process of value delivery and such involvement is increasing to include complex co-creation of value. Such interactions are challenging when they involve individual customers, however, this becomes ever more challenging when the ‘customer’ is another organisation or when there are multiple ‘customers’. Within this chapter we will consider some of the key drivers for a multi-organisational approach to service delivery; examine the ways in which the parties involved in service co-creation have expanded to include multiple service providers and customers; and finally, identify some of the challenges created by a multi-organisational approach to service delivery.
Valerie Purchase, John Mills, Glenn Parry
Chapter 9. Through Life Costing
Abstract
When an innovation is launched in such a market, reliable information about the life cost of the novel product is naturally lacking. This has proven to be a key obstacle to venture capital funded cleantech companies with innovations that are conceptually proven and that deliver significant improvements to conventional alternatives, but that lack enough reference installations to provide reliable data on life costs. One way out of this dilemma that is increasingly discussed among practitioners is servitization, i.e., the notion that the owner of the innovation should be an agency that is specialised in using and maintaining the product, letting the end customer become a buyer of the product’s service (such as heat) rather than the product itself.
Linda Newnes, A. R. Mileham, W. M. Cheung, Y. M. Goh
Chapter 10. The Practitioner View
Abstract
On paper, plans are most often technically “correct”. But a large percentage of implementations fail—due to delay, missed targets or lack of sustainability. The most common pitfall is neglect of the “soft” side of change. All implementation projects imply change, and successful change requires leadership. What separates leaders from managers is the ability to engage and excite stakeholders, to lead by example and to drive the change agenda. In my opinion most people will be part of change if they understand the need for change, have the adequate competences to perform in their new role and have the right incentives. Therefore leaders that are able to communicate the need for change, provide for adequate training and aligned incentives will be most successful. In addition, leaders that engage and motivate their employees through role modelling and personal involvement will not only succeed in implementation – they will thrive.
Ian Smart, Stuart Bestwick, Neil Jarrett, Richard O’Conner, John Gurnett
Chapter 11. Are You Being Served?
Abstract
This book came about as the growing community of practitioners and academics were progressing the area of services to new levels of understanding. Servitization was first introduced as the trend in which corporations offer fuller market packages or bundles of customer-focused combinations of goods, services, support, self-service and knowledge. As production becomes increasingly commoditised in the eyes of the end user, companies have pursued value downstream through greater customer involvement and interaction. This change in business focus, and indeed strategy, has presented new challenges and opportunities to all involved with it.
Mairi Macintyre, Glenn Parry, Jannis Angelis
Metadata
Title
Service Design and Delivery
Editors
Mairi Macintyre
Glenn Parry
Jannis Angelis
Copyright Year
2011
Publisher
Springer US
Electronic ISBN
978-1-4419-8321-3
Print ISBN
978-1-4419-8320-6
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-8321-3

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