Designing

Service Processes
Chapter 8
 Learning Objectives
• Know difference between a service experience and a service process.
• Differentiate between flowcharting and blueprinting.
• Develop blueprint for service process with all typical design elements in
place.
• Appreciate importance of consumers perceptions and emotions in
designing service processes.
• Explain necessity for service process redesign.
• Understand how service process redesign can help to improve service
quality and productivity.
• Understand levels of customer participation in service processes.
• Understand factors that lead customers to accept or reject new self-
service technologies (SSTs).
• Know how to manage customers’ reluctance to change behaviors in
service processes, wrt the adoption of SSTs.
Well done is better than well
said.
Loading… Benjamin Franklin,

one of the Founding Fathers of the United States,

1706–1790
 Service Process
Customer’s perspective - services are experiences.

Organization’s perspective - services are processes

that have to be designed and managed to create the desired
customer experience.

• Processes the architecture of services.

• Processes describing the method and sequence in which service

operating systems work.

• Poor processes make it difficult for front-line employees to do their

jobs well, thus, resulting in low productivity, and increasing the
risk of service failures.
 [Link]
Designing and Documenting
Service Processes - Flowcharting
• A technique for displaying nature and sequence of different steps
involved when a customer “flows” through the service process.
• Describes an existing process in a fairly simple form.
• An easy way to quickly understand the total customer service
experience.
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EX: People Processing - Stay at Hotel
Simple flowchart for delivery of Hotel service
 Designing and Documenting
Service Processes - Blueprinting
• Map customer, employee and service system interactions
• Show full customer journey from service initiation to final delivery of
desired benefit
• Show key customer actions, such as how customers and employees
interact (the line of interaction), front-stage actions by service employees
and how backstage activities and systems support these.
• Show interrelationships among employee roles, operational processes,
supplies, IT and customer interactions
• Help bring together marketing, operations and HRM within a firm.
→ Consequently, develop better service processes, designing fail points
and excessive customer waits out of processes and setting service
standards and targets for service delivery teams.
 Developing a Service Blueprint
• Identify all key activities involved in creating and delivering service
• Specify linkages between activities
• First, develop a simple flowchart documenting process from customer’s
perspective
• Next, add more details (design characteristics of a service blueprint)
Blueprint for a fast food service
Restaurant
 Designing Characteristics of a Service Blueprint
• Front-stage activities map overall customer experience
• Physical evidence of front-stage activities involves what customer can see
and use to assess service quality
• Line of visibility distinguishes between what customers experience
(frontstage) and activities of employees and support processes
(backstage)
• Backstage activities that must be performed to support a particular front-
stage activity
• Support processes and supplies
• Potential fail points are instances where there is a risk of things going
wrong, resulting in diminished service quality
• Identifying customer waits
• Service standards and targets should be established for each activity to
reflect customer expectations
 Stages in Service Processes
Most service processes can be divided into 3 main steps
• Pre-process stage - the preliminaries occur
E.g. making a reservation, parking the car, getting seated, and being
presented with the menu
• In-process stage - main purpose of service encounter is accomplished
E.g. enjoying the food and drinks in a restaurant
• Post-process stage - activities necessary for closing of encounter happens
E.g. getting the check and paying for dinner
Example of the Restaurant Drama, divided into three “acts”:
• Act I – Prologue and Introduction Scenes
• Act II – Delivery of the Core Product
• Act III – The Drama Concludes
 Key Components of Blueprint Example
➔ Definition of standards for each front-stage activity
➔ Principal customer actions
➔ Physical and other evidence for front-stage activities
➔ Line of interaction
➔ Loading…
Front-stage actions by customer-contact personnel
➔ Line of visibility
➔ Back-stage processes by customer-contact
personnel
➔ Support processes involving other service personnel
 Fail-proofing
Tools commonly used for fail-proofing:

➔ Total Quality Management (TQM) methods in

manufacturing is the application of poka-yokes or
fail-safe methods to prevent errors in the
manufacturing processes.
➔ Designing poka-yokes is partly art and partly a
science venture

A three-step approach for effectively using poka-

yokes includes
Difference between flowcharting and
blueprinting
The first step in designing or analyzing any process is
documenting or describing it.
Flowcharting and blueprinting are two key tools used for
documenting and redesigning existing service processes and
for designing new ones.
A flowchart describes an existing process, often in a fairly
simple form. Specifically, flowcharting is a technique for
displaying the nature and sequence of the different steps
involved when a customer “flows” through the service
process.
Difference between flowcharting and
blueprinting
Blueprinting is a more complex form of flowcharting and
specifies in detail how a service process is constructed,
including what is visible to the customer and all that goes on
in the back-office.
Service blueprints map customer, employee, and service
system interactions. Importantly, they show the full customer
journey from service initiation to final delivery of the desired
benefit.
Blueprints show the key customer actions, how customers
and employees from different departments interact (called
the line of interaction), the front stage actions by those service
employees, and how these are supported by backstage
activities and systems. By showing interrelationships among
 Consumer Perceptions And Emotions
In Service Process Design
Sriram Dasu and Richard Chase highlighted key principles about
sequencing service encounters
• Start strong – create a good first impression
• Build an improving trend – build up quality
• Create a peak – create a sensational step
• Get bad experiences over with early – unpleasant experiences
should be dealt with early in the experience process, not at the
end
• Segment pleasure, combine pain – divide pleasurable and
unpleasant experiences and combine them
• Finish strong – ending on a high note is an important aspect of
every service encounter
 Customer Participation In Service
Processes
• Customer participation refers to the actions and resources
supplied by customers during service production, including
mental, physical, and even emotional inputs
Levels of customer participation
• Low Participation Level – employees and systems do all the
work. Ex: visiting a movie theater, taking a bus etc.
• Moderate Participation Level – customers’ inputs are required
to assist the firm. Ex: visiting a stylist, filing tax returns etc.
• High Participation Level – customers work actively with the
provider to co-produce the service. Ex: marriage counseling,
educational services etc.
 Customers As Service Co-creators
• Value is created when the customer and service providers
interact during production, consumption and delivery of the
service.
• Service firms need to look at how customers themselves can
contribute effectively to value creation.
• Firms need to educate and train customers.
• Firms should focus on preventing customer failures.
 Self-Service Technologies (SSTs)
• Ultimate form of involvement in service production – customers
undertake an act on their own, using facilities/systems
provided by service supplier
• SSTs allow customers to produce a service without direct
employee involvement
• Examples include automated banking terminals, self-checkout
terminals at supermarkets, as well as information-based
services such as banking, research, even education
• Companies can divert customers from using more expensive
alternatives such as face-to-face contact with employees
Blueprint Of A Self-Service Internet-
delivered Banking Process
 Customer Benefits And Adoption Of
SSTs
• Multiple attitudes drive customer intentions to use a specific
SST
• Overall attitudes toward related service technologies
• Attitudes toward the specific service firm and its employees
• The overall perceived benefits, convenience, costs, and ease of
use customers see in using SST
• Advantages of using SSTs
• Greater convenience, including time saving, faster service,
flexibility of timing, and location
• Greater control over service delivery
• Lower prices and fees involved
 Customer Disadvantages And Barriers
In Adoption Of SSTs
• Get frustrated by poorly designed technologies
E.g. difficulty navigating a website or completing online forms
• Get frustrated when they themselves make a mistake
E.g. forgetting a password, provide wrong information
• Customers may still blame service provider for not providing a
simpler and more user-friendly system
• Lack of efficient service recovery systems
• Customer may be forced to phone in, email or make a personal
visit to solve problems
 Customer Benefits And Adoption Of
SSTs
• Multiple attitudes drive customer intentions to use a specific
SST
• Overall attitudes toward related service technologies
• Attitudes toward the specific service firm and its employees
• The overall perceived benefits, convenience, costs, and ease of
use customers see in using SST
• Advantages of using SSTs
• Greater convenience, including time saving, faster service,
flexibility of timing, and location
• Greater control over service delivery
• Lower prices and fees involved