Service Design

PGDM T4
Dr. Aby Abraham
A service design process has several parts
• the interactive part where the customers interact with
the contact personnel, systems(way of doing business)
and the physical component(tangible resources). They
fall above the line of visibility, observable to customers
and correspond to questions of CS survey
• Support functions that enable the firm to provide
quality in the interactive part: (1)management support
that look after the resource needed by the frontline
staff for proper service delivery, set examples of
quality culture, motivate employees (2) support
functions like accounting, logistics that help the
frontline employee to guarantee their service timely
and accurately (3) technology/knowledge support
includes investment in knowledge base, technical and
physical resource
How to design structure of the interaction process

2
Designing the interaction process

Require cooperation of Operations and

Marketing
• Service Operations Manager’s
perspective: focus on flow, stock, cost
and bottleneck
• Service Marketing Manager’s
perspective: changes in operations may
have an impact on consumer behaviour

XLRI 3
SERVICE BLUEPRINTS

Blueprints provide a means of communication

between operations and marketing and can
highlight potential problems on paper before
they occur.
essentially a flowchart that shows lines visibility
•The components of the service performance
•Identifies the service personnel
•Point of interaction between the customer and
service provider
XLRI 4
Service Mapping/Blueprinting
• A tool for simultaneously depicting the service process, the points of
customer contact, and the evidence of service from the customer’s
point of view.

Process

Service Points of Contact

Mappin
g Evidence
Application of Service Blueprints
• New Service Development
• concept development
• market testing
• Supporting a “Zero Defects” Culture
• managing reliability
• identifying empowerment issues
• Service Recovery Strategies
• identifying service problems
• conducting root cause analysis
• modifying processes
Service Blueprint Components
Building a service blueprint

1. Identify the process to be blueprinted

2. Identify the customers
3. Map the process from the customer’s point of view
4. Map contact employee action onstage and backstage
5. Link customer and contact persons activities to the needed support
functions
6. Add evidence of service at each customer action step

XLRI 8
Express Mail Delivery Service Truck
Truck
Packaging Packaging
Forms Forms

EVIDENCE
CONTACT PERSON CUSTOME PHYSICAL
Hand-held Hand-held
Computer Computer
Uniform Uniform

Customer Customer Receive

Calls Gives Package
Package
(Back Stage) (On Stage) R

Driver
Picks Deliver
Up Pkg. Package

Customer
Service
Order

Airport Fly to
Dispatch
Receives Sort Unload Load
Driver Fly to
& Loads Center & On
Destinatio Sort Truck
SUPPORT

Load on
PROCESS

Airplane
n

Sort
Packages
Overnight Hotel Stay
Bill

EVIDENCE
SUPPORT PROCESS(Back Stage) (On Stage) CUSTOMER PHYSICAL
Desk
Hotel Cart for Desk Elevators Cart for Room Menu Delivery Food Lobby
Exterior Bags Registration Hallways Bags Amenities Tray Hotel
Parking Papers Room Bath Food Exterior
Lobby Appearance Parking
Key
Arrive Give Bags Call Check out
Go to Receive Sleep Receive
at to Check in Room Eat and
Room Bags Shower Food
Hotel Bellperson Service Leave
CONTACT PERSON

Greet and
Process Deliver Deliver Process
Take
Registration Bags Food Check Out
Bags

Take
Take Bags Food
to Room Order

Registration Prepare Registration

System Food System
Building a Service Blueprint

Step
Step11 Step
Step22 Step
Step33 Step
Step44 Step
Step55 Step
Step66
Map Map Add
Identify
Identifythe
the Identify
Identifythe
the Mapthe
the Map Link
Link Add
process to customer process contact
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evidence
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from employee ofofservice
be
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Example of Service Blueprinting – Shoe Shinning

Standard Brush Apply Collect

execution time Buff
shoes polish payment
2 minutes
30 30 45 15
secs secs secs secs
Total acceptable
execution time
Wrong
5 minutes
color wax
Clean Fail
shoes point Materials
Seen by
(e.g., polish, cloth)
customer 45
secs

Line of Not seen by

visibility customer but Select and
necessary to purchase
performance supplies
Case Study – Note the following
• No unnecessary case facts – Include only it is required to substantiate a
point or argument.
• Don’t take a ‘silo’ approach.
• Identify problem. – Analyse to ‘trouble shoot’
• Come up with alternatives – Analyse case details to understand situation
and also develop various alternatives.
• Select best option – Substantiate with data or evidence backed logical
arguments.
• Predict Probable outcome – Point out check points and measures, if any.
• Conclusion
 Service Blueprinting Steps

1. Identify processes

2. Isolate fail points

3. Establish a time frame

4. Analyze profitability
Blueprints Can Be Used By:
• Service Marketers • Human Resources
– creating realistic customer – empowering the human element
expectations • job descriptions
• service system design
• selection criteria
• promotion
• appraisal systems

• System Technology
• Operations Management
– providing necessary tools:
– rendering the service as promised
• system specifications
• managing fail points
• training systems • personal preference databases
• quality control
• Customer actions: Steps, activities, interactions that customers
perform in the process of evaluating, purchasing the service
• Onstage employee actions: steps and activities that the contact
employee perform that are visible to the customers
• Backstage employee actions: actions that take place at the backstage
to support the onstage actions
• Support processes: internal services that take place to support the
contact employees

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USE OF A SERVICE BLUEPRINT
• Elicit scripts from employees and customers
– order events in sequence of occurrence, identify direction in
which processes flow
• Identify the time it takes to move from one process to the
next- determine the time frame for execution of each step
• Identify the costs involved with each process step
• Identify the amount of inventory build-up at each step
• Identify the bottlenecks (potential fail points) in the
system
• Given the costs of inputs needed for the system to
operate, analyze the profitability of the system

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Designing the process

• Blueprint ensure that service process run smoothly and all contact points are well
thought out but further steps are required to ensure that the delivered service
meet the customer needs
• Manager does not know what level of effort will be necessary to decrease
dissatisfied customers with the delivery process
• Quality function deployment translate customers statements into actionable
design specifications (House of Quality)

18
Practice Exercise – Blue Print Assignment 1
• Blue Print of Starbucks or your home kitchen– Location of your choice
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VL9G4KvgaQQ
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gF0JY7HQsHo
• Use internet resources for details and data.
Practice Exercise – Blue Print Assignment 2
• Timed Blue Print of any activity at Starbucks or your kitchen with
details - time taken at each step.