Service Design: Principles, Process, and Recovery Strategies

This report provides a detailed overview of service design principles and practices. It covers the innovative creation of service designs to facilitate both service delivery by staff and service reception by customers, while minimizing errors. The report explores the importance of service blueprinting, including its role in clarifying processes, defining customer and employee roles, and improving service delivery. It also examines the establishment of service standards and performance targets, focusing on the significance of first impressions and the measurement of service attributes. Furthermore, the report delves into service failure and recovery strategies, emphasizing the need for prompt and effective responses to customer dissatisfaction. It discusses methods for managing service recovery, fixing problems, and cultivating customer relationships through relationship marketing and service guarantees. Finally, it highlights strategies for encouraging customer complaints and redesigning service delivery processes to prevent future failures.

Service design
Companies create service design innovatively so that it will be easy to offer the service by the
service people and easy to receive service by service customers. And also, to minimize service
delivery mistakes that could lead to service failure.
It also helps in training of service people. Service people can see the blueprint and learn easily.
When the staffs look at it they know what they have to perform. It allows work process to be
easy.
It removes oversimplification
It removes incompleteness of service.
It minimizes the subjectivity of service.
It also removes the wrong interpretation of the blueprint.
Important things to consider – at what point do we involve customers.
All the customers and employees know their involvement. It allows customers and service
people to know what to do and what not to do in the service cape and service deliver service
production becomes smooth.
It also allows to understand proper usage of technology in service production and service
delivery and who uses it.
Important principles of innovative service design
User centered
Designing service blueprint
Putting down on a document whole process of serv ice delivery is a blueprint of a service. It
shows the process, it shows the point of contact between the customer and service people and
it show what Is supposed to be done for it be that the service has taken place.
Steps in designing and building blueprinting
Benefits of service blueprinting
 Provides evidence of proper interaction with the customers.
 Readiness to survive customers properly on the service scape.
 Helps everybody know what their roles are on the service scape and to perform their
roles properly.
Service Process Design -Service Standards and Performance Targets
Service standard – something that has to be done, not just the way it has ti be done but what
time, duration which it must be done, it is like a prescription. we cannot keep the customers
standing more than 5 mins before they are seated.

It is expressed as an objective that has to be achieved the company and service people. don’t
promise what we can’t fulfill rather promise what we can do.
Performance target – how many customers we serve, ho many of them are happy, how many
willingly cooperate through the service scape etc.
Evaluation measures - So that we are able to measure disparities between the standard and the
target.
Very important
Setting service standards and performance target
First impression- In the standards it can be evaluated through a survey if we are successful as a
company.
Service companies must always understand that first impression matters a lot.
So, when a customer comes onto the service scape o the first time, how the customer perceives
that many, how the customer perceives the quality of service matters a lot. If the first
impression is bad customer will never come back again. In case they come back they will still be
skeptical.
It also helps to reduce service failure.
Service Process Design
Service Standards and Performance Targets
•service attributes – elements of a services customers can access.
Responsiveness • Reliability
• Competence
• Accessibility , Courtesy- show respect do not argue
• Communication • Credibility
• Confidentiality – keep customer info confidential
• Listening to the customer
Service process indicators- Here we look at where these attributes can be used in service
processing and how timely the processing must be done in applying the standard. All these
things customers can use it to measure our success or no success. service process standards -
how long and how often do we apply these attributes.
It helps us to define the goals and define quality.
Performance target – we know as human beings noting can be achieved 100% so if we can
achieve 80% or more then we have done good job.

Service failure and service recovery
Service failure is When a customer is dissatisfied with the kind of service experience that he or
she has had then service failure has occurred. when a service person has not performed his
service to the satisfaction of the customer. So, something has to be done to bring the service
back on track and that is service recovery.
It is important to pay attention to customer satisfaction, to make sure customer is happy and
satisfied. But sometimes service failure in unavoidable.
Service recovery- own up to it and apologize for whatever has gone wrong, change whatever
went wrong to become right again and then give compensation that customer so he can go
out happily and say other customer that they are good. Good word of mouth.
Managing service recovery
Fix the customer – apologize, be sorry for what happened, compensate the customer, give
reassure that it won’t happen again, fix the employee as well and this kind of thing has
happened again or retrain the employee so it does not happen again.
Fix the problem- make it right again,
Fix the customer-
a.) respond quickly to customers
Do not argue with the customer. But meet the customers expectation.
It is good to have complains as company knows what has gone wrong and correct it. Those who
complain are those who like us and want to make us better.
If companies recover immediately to service the number of customers will immediately become
satisfied
b.) provide appropriate communication
speak to them respectfully and politely
c.) treat customers fairly
outcome fairness-
procedural fairness – bend the rules in a little way tat will make the customers happy.
Compensate them fast.
interactional fairness – be polite, honest
d.) Cultivate Relationships with Customer
Relationship marketing – friendly with customers, to build customer loyalty.
Customer relationship marketing
Offer service guarantee –
2. Fix the problem- own up to the problem and agree that it happened
Look at the service delivery process to see if there is a fault in the flow of the service. If that
fault has occurred or is likely to occur then service delivery process should be redesigned.

Strategies to fix problem – encourage customers to bring complaints.