Johan Nylander (2007) Förenkla! så räddar du kunderna, organisationen och dig själv från krångel

The book I chose to read is a book about how to make everything more simple in a firm and growing market and in that way help your customers and make them happy, fill there need of simplicity to make their life easier and make them happy. Fun facts that are written in the book that might be new to some one are for example that 80% of all applications on a normal mobile phone are not being used, another one is that in USA only 15% of all returned electronic products are being returned to the store because they are broken, the rest because they simply cant use them. 

I see a lot of improvement to be made in the world so a good start is making things more simple, and that is what this books main message is, simplify it!

The book praises 7 principles focusing mainly on making things easier:

1. Leave the laboratory - engineers must stop making products for other engineers
2. Reduce - strangle the functional neurosis
3. Use common sense - it should "only work"
4. Cooperate - common standards for all
5. Speak clearly - to get peoples attention
6. Start from within - simplify your organisation
7. Simplify your workday - no one likes a stressed out person

The sixth principle is a really important one since you have to start somewhere and you cant really help your customer if you cant help yourself.

Pretty interesting fact on a study that was made, not surprising but as I said interesting that we always fall for a good salesman. The study showed that if you could choose between two cameras, the two cameras have the same price but one of them has a few more features, then you will choose the one with more features. Another study showed that if you get to choose yourself what features your camera should have out of 25 available features, most of the people who got to choose wanted everything but ended up whit an average pick of 19,6 features even though they knew some features would lead to problems. The last study showed that when they actually were given a camera with less features and a camera with more features they chose the camera with less features because they got frustrated and confused when using the camera with more features.

This gave me a good insight on how to make Aktia more simple and user friendly without making their customer or business suffer. A major factor in service design is the gap between the oldest customers and the youngest, since the youngsters desire more features and technical communication while the older people desire more simplicity and easier access to for example banks and their websites, buildings or phone calls.

That is where we will need to make the most improvements I think.

The book I read has been a lot of help for me, it has opened my eyes to a lot of things and hopefully will help me complete my/our task in Kunstenniemi with helping Aktia with whatever "secret mission" they have in store for us :)

   

Today's workshop

So, the workshop today went well. Unfortunately we had one team member missing. After visiting Aktia, the others from the group joined us and we talked about customization and how retail banking will look in the future. This was presented to the other groups at noon.

After a lunchbreak we were only three left; Johannes, Rasmus and me. We decided to take a look at what really needs to be done before Kunstenniemi and what information we need for the project. The following was decided:

• At least one post in the blog about your own topic 

• Blogging (at least one) concerning relevant material (find books, articles, videos etc. and post the links here on the blog. This makes it easy for us to find them when we need them in the project). 

When you do these tasks, remember the key words: SERVICE DESIGN, FUTURE, RETAIL BANKING. 

The deadline for both tasks are Friday the 12th!

I think we are getting there... :)

The group got some contact information today. As the teamleader Rasmus will take care of this and contact Marc next week and ask some questions that might help with the project.

We also had a discussion around the communication in the group, since it has not been working perfectly. We will try to improve the communication, i.e. information if we cannot participate in a meeting etc, if we have problems with a task and so on. It is most important that we communicate within the group :)

Have a great weekend everybody!

/Bella

5.4. meeting at Novia

Further research topics before Kunstenniemi!

Workshop 05.04.2013

Max and Johannes from group Fresh and Jasmine and Mikael from Royalmess is visiting Aktia today at 10.00. The rest from the group (Rasmus and me) are working together and discussing the future of banking services year 2025.

We just got some instructions to do a PEST analysis around the topic customization. 

A short presentation will be given at 11.25 :)

/Bella 

Service Marketing / Integrating Customer Focus Across the Firm, Valeria A. Zeithaml, Mary Jo Bitner, Dwayne D. Gremler

This book provides a complete explanation and description how a company can improve the services it is delivering to customers. It starts with setting the focus on customers and how to understand them and goes further with concepts of delivering and managing services. I will shortly describe a few of the more innovative and case-important concepts explained in the book and add some page number that everybody can read deeper into the topic if wanted.

The main focus when talking about services is normally the customers. Finding his needs, demands and problems and delivering an individual, appropriate solution. This book takes it a little bit further by broadening the focus and including the employee of the service providing company.  It points out that delivering a service to a customer is an employee-to-customer interaction and not between the company and the customer. Because of this the authors also challenges the companies to have a service culture in their organization culture. They suggest that it should be natural to deliver good services to customers as well as to internals. (Page 348ff) 

Due to the fact that Aktia wants to increase the number of customers in the next years, regarding to the annual report, I want to present the concept of customer relationship the authors are providing. The different phases of a CR are strangers, acquaintances, friends and partners. In the first phase the most import is to get the customer aware of the company by special offers and competitive advantages, during being acquaintances the company should put much effort in satisfying the customer therefor knowledge of the individual customer is already needed. During the friends phase trust should develop and the final stage of partners includes all the previous parts and demands individualistic solutions.(Page 177ff)

Our main task is to invent an innovative service for the Aktia bank, so I want to explain the process the book is suggesting for service innovation and development as long it stays in the front end planning because we cannot go on to the implementation. The first step to do so is a review of the company’s strategy, because a service will not work out with if it does not fit with it. After this the strategy of the service itself has to be defined, whether it is to attract new customers or hold old in the company. Then the Idea Generating starts with quite free ideas which go further during the Service Concept Development to more concreter with where the documentation is very important because of the intangible nature of a service. The last step in the front end planning is the Business Analysis where the profitability and cost planning takes place. To follow these steps is in my opinion quite important because otherwise a lot of time would be spent during the generating of ideas which could be useless afterwards.(Page 257ff)

I hope these blog will contribute to everybody’s work, and if you have any questions concerning it, just comment on the blog ;)



Johannes // Spring is coming!!!!

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 

Max

I´m the last group member of team fresh that hasn't presented himself so I think it’s time to give a short presentation of myself.

 
My name is Max Nurmi. I’m a first year student of business economics at Novia University of Applied Sciences. In Novia I am involved with Café Novia and manage the wholesale ordering and other stuff for the business.

 
I´m looking forward to I’m looking forward to advancing in this course and I think it will be a valuable experience for the future of my studies and I also think the camp kuusteniemi will be a fun time.