Macintyre, Parry & Anglis (2011) Service design and Delivery

I have read the book Service design and Delivery by Macintyre, Parry and Anglis (2011). The book uses an expertise of comparing the development of a product and a service and also illustrates methods how companies can transform themselves into a service organization. 

Design can not only be implemented to products, also for services design plays a vital role. Service design can be a customer experience at e.g. the hospital, the cinema or why not a visit to a bank. 

The authors point out the importance of understanding services and customer response.  Macintyre et al. (2011) point out that when a company starts analyzing an existing service or creating a new one, they need to ask themselves two fundamental sets of questions:

1.     Limbic: What emotional (limbic) response is the company trying to stimulate in clients and in their work teams?

- How are they going to do this?

2.     Neocortical: What service are they trying to provide? What business is the company in (are we providing after care products support, rental services, retail services etc.)?

- How are we going to provide this?

Key emotional drivers can for example be luxurious, unique, reliable, safe and secure, trustworthy, caring etc. Key drivers in a company offering for example private health care could be that their customers feel that the company listens to them and tries to help them. These emotions play an important role since it can have an big impact on the decisions that customers make. To be able to give and create value we need to understand these emotions.

The limbic and neocortical response for Aktia is relevant when we try to develop or analyze their service. What Limbic response in Aktia trying to stimulate in their customers and in theirwork teams? Do they want to provide safety, friendliness or what are they actually focusing on? These are considered as important implications for service design and delivery. Depending on the emotional response for a service, we have a different kind of advantage. For Aktia I would say that they have a competitive advantage of being able to change, i.e. flexibility. Aktia has plenty of Swedish speaking customers and by customization and providing service in Swedish the company can reach these emotions in their customers. I am sure this is one on Aktia’s great competitive advantages. For a business to be able to design and deliver a successful service, both limbic and neocortical aspects need to be taken into consideration.

I found a part of the book interesting but there were some parts of the book that were hard to understand. On the other hand, it seems to be the issue in many books stuffed with theory. I am still glad I found something from the book that we could use for our project in Kunstenniemi.

References: 
Macintyre M., Parry G. & Angelis J. (2011) Service Design and Delivery, Springer Sciece + Business media, New York. 

/Bella