The service concept can be used as a driver for long-term service development. By defi ning the concept, service designers can compare it to alternatives, proposed or already provided by other service suppliers, to help operations managers identify the implications of change.
Whether the changes are deliberate changes to the concept or an evolutionary approach with modifi cations to process or procedures, changes to service concepts have implications for all parts of the organisation. Our research has found that ‘there is substantial evidence to suggest that signifi cant changes to service concepts expose the weaknesses in the organisa-tion, its ability to co-ordinate all the various constituencies and its capacity to communicate effectively both internally and externally’. 9
Such a ‘concept audit’ can be achieved by using a simple profi ling tool. Case Example 3.4 describes a change of concept in the Natural History Museum in London, which is profi led in Figure 3.3 .
whereby an employee who had worked for three years could take over the franchise for the shop paying 10%
of turnover plus a shop rental charge.
In 2006, nine years after opening the fi rst shop in Kanda in Tokyo, Mr Konishi had 291 shops with a total turnover of about 3.8 billion yen (about £29m). He then sold the business. By 2010 QBNET was running nearly 400 shops including premises in Singapore, Hong Kong and Thailand.
Old concept
Source : Adapted from Clark, Graham, Robert Johnston and Michael Shulver (2000), ‘Exploiting the Service Concept for Service Design and Development’ in Fitzsimmons, James and Mona Fitzsimmons (eds), New Service Design , Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, California.
From the mid 1930s to the early 1990s the Geological Mu-seum, in Cromwell Road, London, consisted largely of taxo-nomic displays of rocks, gems and minerals and was a place for quiet study of ‘rocks in boxes’ by specialist geologists.
This contrasted sharply with the noisy, lively and enthusi-astic atmosphere of its neighbour, the Natural History Mu-seum. In the 1970s the Natural History Museum had begun a programme of exhibition renewal, using advanced and in-novative methods of display to interest and entertain visitors, to support its mission ‘to maintain and develop its collec-tions and use them to promote the discovery, understand-ing, responsible use and enjoyment of the natural world’.
The resultant Life Galleries are very popular and have won awards for excellence in design. In 1985 the Geological Mu-seum merged with the Natural History MuMu-seum and took a new name, the Earth Galleries, with a duty to communicate the natural world to the general public in a way that it could understand.
Putting that mission into operation was not going to be easy. A survey of museum-goers found that they were less than enthusiastic about geology as a subject. It was per-ceived as dry, dull and having little to do with everyday life – in short, it was just about rocks. The perception was that the only reason you would visit something called the Geological Museum was because you had to pass an exam in geology.
The museum took up this challenge, as Dr Giles Clarke, Head of Department of Exhibitions and Educa-tion, explains:
Surely volcanoes are interesting, fascinating things, and earthquakes are really signifi cant, fascinating and important. Gems are beautiful, especially in jewellery, and fossils, they are interesting too. So, there is a whole range of topics there that don’t immediately come to mind when people say geology, but neverthe-less are perceived as being fascinating. What we can then do is take the breadth of the subject that we want to display and talk about in the galleries, and to shuffl e it around so that the high-profi le ones come early, and so they will be an attraction to visitors to come in to the subject, and we can use those as a leader to collect people and move them around the exhibitions.
Value, hitherto defi ned as access to a superlative reference collection of gems and minerals, was now to be refl ected more in the degree to which the museum educated, enthused and entertained the public in the earth sciences. The target consumer was now a 15-year-old intellect who would already have had signifi cant exposure to television and fi lm of volcanoes, earthquakes, mining and so on. If the museum was to ‘promote the discovery, understanding, responsible use and enjoyment of the natural world’ to this consumer group, then it could not rely on the collection alone. Such consumers would need to be helped by staging devices that moved them from the world they knew into the unfamiliar world of geology and inspire engagement with the subject. The exhibits would also have to educate consumers gradually, and gently guide them through the museum’s narrative.
The museum would also have to cater for groups, in particular children, who would be more inclined to sample ‘chunks’ of galleries rather than the whole, so the galleries had to be structured to accommodate short attention spans. Mini-exhibits or galleries, each with a complete story, were created, but the logic of the story was integrated with the overall museum theme. Some displays became interactive, encouraging
Case Example 3.4
The Earth Galleries at the Natural History Museum, LondonSource: Natural History Museum Picture Library
A key point here is that of alignment. It is rare that a change to the customer experience or service outcomes can be made in isolation. Changes in one element will have consequences in others. Sometimes these represent opportunity, sometimes the potential for confl ict. The use of the service concept and a profi ling tool allows the people involved in the design or redesign of a service to understand what is required and to assess and therefore manage the implications of change.
Capability mapping
One enhancement of the profi ling tool is the identifi cation not only of the old concept and the new requirement, as in Figure 3.3 , but also the capability of the existing service (see Fig-ure 3.4 ), i.e. its current potential. This capability envelope can be used by organisations that perhaps do not have a specifi c new or revised service in mind but can use capability mapping to explore what opportunities there might be for using operational potential.
Case Example 3.5 explains how one organisation used the capability envelope to identify the areas where the company could develop new opportunities.
TECLAN provided a one-stop shop for language translation. The company used 35 in-house translators for most Euro-pean languages, Japanese and Chinese.
Translation to and from other languages was subcontracted to a network of some 3,000 translators. Though the company would handle just about any translation work, over time it had developed a dis-tinctive competence in translating techni-cal documentation, particularly computer software. The majority of software trans-lation was the ‘localisation’ of software written in English – the conversion of hy-pertextual help-fi les. However, TECLAN often encountered help-fi les that lacked
suffi cient fl exibility, and in localising they had to resort to developing completely new help-fi le structures.
Thus it developed a new competence in help-fi le authoring and rudimentary programming.
By themselves these new competencies were not particularly distinctive, but coupled with the company’s translation capability they provided the potential for a highly competitive resource-set. TECLAN’s service
Case Example 3.5
TECLAN Translation AgencySource: Pearson Education Ltd/Naki Kouyioumtzis
visitors to experiment with geological processes through hands-on engagement with both hard and soft exhibits, such as minerals, molten surfaces and water, for example. To support the social and family groups in which the public visited the museum, facilities such as restaurants, shops and restrooms had to be devel-oped to be at least as good as those at a theme park.
When the Earth Galleries had been transformed geologists still had access to a world-class reference col-lection, although in very different surroundings. However, the material was now used to enthuse and educate a much wider audience about the secrets of the earth.
Summary
3.4
What is a service concept?
● A service concept is a shared and articulated understanding of the nature of the service
provided and received, which should capture information about the organising idea, the service provided and the service received – the experience and outcomes.
● A service concept is more emotional than a business model, deeper than a brand, more complex than a good idea and more solid than a vision.
How can managers use the service concept?
● It can be used to help defi ne and communicate the nature of the business.
● It can be used to create organisational alignment by developing a shared understanding and making it explicit.
concept profi le is mapped in Figure 3.4 . The profi le shows where the company started from and the shaded portion represents the new operations potential that TECLAN developed. The dotted line indicates an ideal-ised service concept for a new service that exploits the newly developed potential. This also highlights the gaps between current capability and that required for the new service concept. The main areas requiring attention and development were in quality performance and the company’s ability to manage relationships with its new class of customers. Although translators had developed the ability to manage relationships with clients’ own technicians, TECLAN’s account managers lacked the technical knowledge to market and sell the new capabilities.
Source : This illustration is taken from Clark, Graham, Robert Johnston and Michael Shulver (2000), ‘Exploiting the Service Concept for Service Design and Development’ in Fitzsimmons, James and Mona Fitzsimmons (eds), New Service Design , Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, California.
Figure 3.4 Capability mapping at TECLAN
EXPERIENCE
Fast turnaround Cheep and cheerful Mass service General translators Skilled staff
One-stop shop Fast response
‘PRODUCTS’
BENEFITS
Document translation
EMOTIONS
Distant
Long-term projects Blue chip, specialist Professional service
Specialist technical translators Multi-skilled staff
Specialist translation and advice High-quality conformance
Consultancy support
Close relationship/involved Current
Capability Requirement