It’s taken a while (like ten years) but the idea of running software applications from the Web has finally caught on. In the early days (late 1990s) the term was “ASP” or application service provider. Today the term most likely to be seen is “SaaS” or software as a service. There are obvious benefits to running your applications from the Web, not the least of which are being able to access the app from anywhere, easy updates to the code, and the ability to monitor exactly how individuals are using the application (none of this is possible when the app is running from your desktop computer).

So, it occurred to me when we talk about service design, that we should borrow this SaaS acronym and slightly modify it for our purposes. Organizations must look at service as a system as opposed to a single department or function. Once people start to think of service as an integral part of their entire business system (or eco-system), then the idea of consciously designing services becomes very obvious.

Speaking in Tongues - Four Dreams
by roujo

I heard a re-broadcast of an interview with Robert Prosky who passed away last week at the age of 78. Prosky was well-known character actor, both on stage and screen and is probably best recognized by TV viewers for his on-going role in "Hill Street Blues." What he said in the the last minute of the interview from 1998 struck me as a great metaphor for the service experience…

Prosky said, "There is also a joy in a stage production - there is a unique event that’s built each evening between the audience and the actor. It’s not just the actor - it’s built together and it’s unique to that event. Joe Chaikin , who writes on theatre said that, ‘One of the beauties of theatre is the shared mortality in the space.’ And that’s why it’s precious - it’s because it lasts an instant. And that’s the essence of the actor’s work - to create the moment; the now. And the now only exists for an instant."

Just as a stage actor and the audience co-exist in the moment to create a live theatre experience that is unique to that particular evening, so does the service provider and the customer. Whether it is a transaction from human-to-human at a ticket counter, or human-to-machine at an ATM, or team-to-team on a year-long project - each are creating their own unique "now" or series of "nows." Even though the "script" might be the same night after night, each performance is actually quite different on subtle levels made so by both the actor(s) and the audience.

In the theatre of your business, is your audience engaged?

Angry fan
by Crashmaster007

Friend and colleague David Cooper of Foxman Group has a great insight on the difference between going to see live sports and live music. "At a concert, you have 20,000 people, all of whom are having a great time. Everybody walks out happy. But at a sporting event, the whole idea is that half of those people are going to go home very ticked off because their team lost."

This is one of those insights that you take for granted, until you really start to think about. People pay lots of money and spend lots of time, only to be made miserable. (Same holds true with gambling, but in that case at least the customer has hope that they will go home richer. )

Of course, that loss stings even more after paying for the ticket, sitting in traffic, paying $12 to park and another $7 for a flat Bud Lite…