Does the Customer Experience mimic the Employee Experience?

After reading The Zappos Experience: 5 Principles to Inspire, Engage, and WOW it really got my mind spinning. So much has been written and said about Zappos that I can’t say the book surprised me but it did allow me to gain a deeper understanding of the internal workings. More so, the book really generated my interest on the relationship of employee and customer experience as demonstrated in my blog post, Is Zappos the Next Toyota?

Does the customer experience have to mimic the internal company culture? Is that not what Zappos is all about? Reviewing my latest readings and blog post on organizational culture, When Efficiencies and Innovation no longer work, is Customer Centricity the answer?, I would have to say that to be true. So how would you create that fun game type culture? Of course, I turned to Gamification which has been used primarily to focus on marketing and extending the customer experience.

If have to mimic the internal structure to the external, should not Gamification apply internally. I turned to my favorite Gamification resource, Amy Jo Kim and reviewed a recent slide deck of hers that was based on 7 Core Concepts for creating Compelling Products.

1. Know your players: design for their personal & social needs
2. Build fun/pleasure/satisfaction into your core activity loop
3. Design for 3 key stages of your player lifecycle
4. Build a system that’s easy to learn and hard to master
5. Use game mechanics to “light the way” towards mastery
6. As players progress, increase the challenge & complexity
7. Embrace intrinsic motivators like power, autonomy & belonging

Beyond Gamification: 7 Core Concepts for Creating Compelling Products

View more presentations from Amy Kim

Do you think you can get Human Resources in on this? A recent podcast of mine, Games maybe your only chance to attract the best and brightest talent may give you some additional thoughts on this subject. But if you want to create the customer experience, than maybe you need to start designing the employee experience.

Can you think of a few ways this might look and apply at your company?

About Amy Jo Kim: Presentation is from Amy Jo Kim, an adjunct professor of Game Design at USC’s Digital Media school, recently named top US-based game design school. She’s also the author of Community Building on the Web (2000), a design handbook for digital communities that’s used worldwide at game studios & universities.[Email Amy].

Related information:
Is every Boardroom discussing Gamification? Is yours?
In love with your products more than your customers?
The Common Thread of Design Thinking, Service Design and Lean Marketing
Janet R. McColl-Kennedy: Co-creation of Value and S-D logic

Mass Customization is not Mass Customization

Mass Customization is doable with the right design. So many of us think in such broad terms that may lead us to believe that mass customization is that we respond to every customers whim. I think that stops us from completely understanding the concepts of co-creation and co-producing. As Joe Pine so eloquently puts it in this video, “A customer does not want a lot of choices, he just wants what he wants!” 

So, are you in the right product/market fit? You may not be if request of your customers cause you anguish and a great deal of stress. Maybe all these request are there for a reason other than the fickleness of your customers.

Given choices customers seldom choose what you want them to choose. You could even be offering choices or asking before decisions because you are too soon to sell rather than diagnose. There can be other reasons to include that your product or service stinks or is not well described to begin with.

The importance of playing in your customers playground or where your product/service is being used is so important. It might even be worth your time to even go a step further sometimes and observe the customer of your customer’s. Try to design a sales and marketing campaign form that view. Would that be going to the Gemba of the Gemba!    

Related Information:
Scaling the Customer Decision Making Process
Lean needs Marketing, more than Marketing needs Lean!
Customer Experience more powerful than the Supply Chain?
Can the customer be front stage in your organization?

Mind Maps on Leadership and Teamwork for the Lean Agile Crowd

Looking for DIY Teamwork and Leadership training? Start with these books (since they are all fables, they make for great listening) Patrick Lencioni Library (Five Temptations of a CEO; Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive; Five Dysfunctions of a Team; Death by Meeting). If you are a Lean Startup, Agile Software Development or even a Lean Enterprise this information is readily digestible by anyone in your organization and coincides with these disciplines that you will wonder where Patrick received his Lean training.

If you feel like this is an endorsement of these products, it is! I have used these mind maps as examples and referred more people to the books and materials than to any other single source. This is my collection of  mind maps created from listening or reading to the Patrick Lencioni business series of books. 

Patrick Lencioni Mind Maps

View more presentations from Business901

Related Information:
What is a great Team?
Why bother with Value Networks?
Identifying your Lean sales and marketing teams
There is no Team in Kaizen
Improve Communication – Have more meetings?

Is there a compatible future for Lean and MRP?

There seems to be an element of distaste from Lean Supply Chain people about MRP. Not being a Supply Chain expert it is really not for me to comment. But I did ask Carol Ptak and Chad Smith to address a few of those issues in the Business901 podcast, and in the podcast, Is Orlicky’s MRP relevant today? Think DDMRP. Below is an excerpt from the podcast on one of those questions:

First of all, we owe Lean a huge debt of gratitude to getting some critical elements in front of industry. One thing that I think is very important is the Lean crowd, I think, unfairly gets branded as anti‑technology. I think that that's unfair because, up until now, technology hasn't worked for Lean very well. If you look at the basic rules of MRP and how it works, it doesn't work well for Lean. If you look at the Toyota Production System, even the critical points in the Toyota Production System about technology, I think, Liker's book, I think it's point eight.

It says, "Use only thoroughly tested and proven technological methods for your people and processes." Well, up until now, there haven't been thoroughly tested or proven technological processes.

So it's forced the Lean community, it's forced the TOC community back into manual systems. And those manual systems are breaking down. They're too intensive. And for larger corporations, you really lose a lot of visibility across an enterprise. In fact, for larger companies, Joe, the idea of enterprise Lean really doesn't exist. And why? It's because we have limitations with technology.

Now, what Carol and I are doing here is we're saying, look. Let's not throw the baby out with the bath water. Let's not just throw out the promise of technology and jump all the way back to manual re‑order point systems. Let's figure out how we have to change the formal planning logic to create new rules that then foster new tools that both the formal planning crowd and the Lean crowd can embrace.

And so far, we've heard really good feedback from both sides of the fence here that says, "Yeah, this seems to solve the things that we need to see" and from the Lean side, it also seems to be right in line and actually even facilitate their objectives.

Below is a transcription of the entire conversation:

Introduction to Demand Driven MRP -

 

Carol Ptak and Chad Smith were asked to co-author the new Orlicky’s Material Requirements Planning 3/E. Carol and Chad were on previous podcasts with me, In a Supply Chain, Where is more important than How Much! and Can MRP be a Demand – Driven Tool?. They can be found at the Demand Driven Institute.

This past week I had a good time applying a few of the DDMRP concepts to sales and marketing. Exercises like this helps me stretch my thoughts a little.

Related Information:

1. What Sales and Marketing can learn from Demand Driven Manufacturing
2. Positioning your organization to learn from your customers
3. Profiling the customer by knowledge gaps
4. Dynamic Buffer: Think Self-organized Teams
5. Systemizing the transfer of knowledge at the execution level
6. Highly Visible and Collaborative Execution
7. Summary of the 6-part blog Series using DDMRP

Hansei in Lean Marketing

Lean Sales and Marketing is built upon the philosophy that there has been a subtle shift to knowledge as the way to engage, develop and retain your customer base. The sales and marketing team must act as a vehicle to cultivate ideas not only within their four walls but more importantly from their customers and markets. If this is true, how do create new knowledge? How do we learn? Most studies show that we learn best by doing and by being forced to resolve our perspective with those of others who disagree with us. This means that you have to encourage contradictions and be willing to push the envelope with your customers.

This is a strange paradox. Disagreement with your customer can hardly be seen as a positive mechanism for sales and marketing. However, it is the embracement of this understanding that will move your sales and marketing efforts to a higher level of performance.

Can you disagree with a customer? Can you purposely cause tension? You must! You must move away from the comfort zone and create a healthy tension and instability in your sales and marketing process.

The next step in the process is surprisingly easy but difficult to do. It is the process of reflection or in Japanese, hansei. There are three key components of hansei:

1. Recognize that there is a problem – a gap between expectations and achievement – and be open to negative feedback.
2. Voluntarily take responsibility and feel deep regret.
3. Commit to a specific course of action to improve.

The first step, acknowledge that there is room for improvement is not that difficult. However, putting a number to it may be a different story. When we create a performance gap we identify 2 things, one where we are at now and where do we want to go. Of course we may not get there overnight but there will be limitations. You have to determine what is realistic to achieve. A simple but effective way of looking at it is, “From what to what by when”.

The second step can simply be stated – don’t look for excuses. Take responsibility, feel a little humility and move forward. Without this, you will never fully release from the past and it may be much more difficult to bring fresh ideas to the table.

This is your action plan to move forward. However, without step 2, you will seldom be passionate about step 3. It will just be another effort and ownership will be limited. Ownership cannot be done without an emotional attachment.

The steps of Respect first, Reflection second will drive the 3^rd step of Kaizen or continuous improvement. This is the process and culture of PDCA in your marketing cycle. It is the embodiment of tension, a performance gap to send you off on a new path. This path acts as expanding spiral of co-creation of knowledge with your customer that will be truly valued. THE ABILITY TO SHARE AND CREATE KNOWLEDGE WITH YOUR CUSTOMER is the strongest marketing tool possible.

Few companies will take this path. Few companies will take the time to develop the level of respect required. Even fewer will use hansei and look at performance gaps releasing their own pre-determined reasons. Few will ever practice continuous improvement in sales and marketing.

Will you?

Fantastic Conversation on the Multiverse

Every marketer and gamer should watch this!

Joe Pine seeks to do nothing less than redefine our known universe -- a bold goal which manifested itself in The Multiverse, a 3D framework he created. By examining the fields created at the intersection of three axes (space/no space, time/no time, and matter/no matter), Joe introduces us to eight realms for creating value by innovating experiences. Physical virtuality, for example, involves designing things virtually and then making them a reality, such as the way 3D bio-printers manufacture human tissue and organs. Through Joe's eyes, we see the future and it is mind blowing!

From a San Diego TEDx, x = independently organized event In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience.

Related Information:
Demonstrating Social Media using an Elephant
Gaming can make a better world
The Common Thread of Design Thinking, Service Design and Lean Marketing
Can the customer be front stage in your organization?
Games are invading the real world

Is Continuous Improvement Continuous?

In the LinkedIn, Association for Manufacturing Excellence Group there has been a discussion started about this presentation where they suggest that a standard is more like a target condition, and that the only way to maintain gains is to keep improvement moving forward. Their thoughts, hence the slideshow is that PDCA is better served by retiring the Wedge practice of standardizing to hold the gains in place.

Retire the PDCA wedge

View more presentations from Association for Manufacturing Excellence

My question though is continuous improvement really continuous? I found as a trainer that it was important to stop and take a breath. I never used the incline and the wedge but a staircase approach sometimes even with landings. Having that dwell time for everyone to catch up and before moving on was always important not only for the team (group) but for me as a trainer to evaluate things. It was also a good time to celebrate along the way.

An example is the in the Toyota Supplier hierarchy depicted by Liker and Meier in the (The Toyota Way Fieldbook. Viewing the stages such as described in the blog post, The 7 step Lean Process of Marketing to Toyota we would see a natural progression through the stages of the supplier. A supplier starts working with Toyota at the stage of developing Mutual Understanding. They base this on the key elements of Trust, Mutual prosperity, Respect for People and Genchi gembutsu (actual part, actual place). It ultimately ends in Kaizen (Continuous Improvement) and Learning through PDCA. I am leaving out a significant portion of development in the five other steps but it suffices to say that there is a continued progression through the stages based on an increase of knowledge and sharing between the two parties.

I adhere to the Toyota principle of setting audacious goals and striving for them. Becoming a top supplier as depicted in the Supplier hierarchy is one. I try to do this with showing a large PDCA as my overall vision and incorporating the staircase. The individual steps of the staircase are just an individual mini-pdca. We could go into a greater discussion of Hoshin, Lean Culture and transformation but I like to keep things pretty simple. So, I simply view PDCA or continuous improvement as the culture of Lean. Is my reasoning in line with the "new thoughts" or am I stuck in the mud with a wedge holding me in place?

I encourage you to join the conversation at this LinkedIn group: Association for Manufacturing Excellence Group!

Related Information:
Marketing with PDCA.
Why the Lean SALES PDCA Cycle was Created!
Lean needs Marketing, more than Marketing needs Lean!
Scaling the Customer Decision Making Process

Scaling the Customer Decision Making Process

In yesterday’s blog post, I made a statement that I find a striking resemblance in the Toyota Supplier hierarchy (on left) depicted by Liker and Meier (The Toyota Way Fieldbook) and the Economic Pyramid model (on right) of Pines and Gilmore (The Experience Economy). It deserves a better description.

If we were to view the stages such as described in the blog post, The 7 step Lean Process of Marketing to Toyota we would see a natural progression through the stages of the supplier. A supplier starts working with Toyota at the stage of developing Mutual Understanding. They base this on the key elements of Trust, Mutual prosperity, Respect for People and Genchi gembutsu (actual part, actual place). It ultimately ends in Kaizen (Continuous Improvement) and Learning through PDCA. I am leaving out a significant portion of development in the five other steps but it suffices to say that there is a continued progression through the stages based on an increase of knowledge and sharing between the two parties.

In the The Experience Economy: Work Is Theater & Every Business a Stage, Pine and Gilmore discussed the Progressions of Economic Value and corresponding to a level of Progression of Value Intelligence which I have combined in the above diagram. They so masterfully compared it with the statements:

• If you charge for stuff (noise), then you are in the commodity business.
• If you charge for tangible (data) things, then you are in the goods business.
• If you charge for the activities (service) you execute, then you are in the service business.
• If you charge for the time (experience) customers spend with you, then you are in the experience business.
• If you charge for the demonstrated outcome (wisdom) the customer achieves, then and only then are you in the transformation business

When you hear discussion in Lean Marketing about mirroring the Customer Decision process it is sometimes difficult to see how it will scale to larger companies. These examples are the basis for such activity. It is sales and marketing responsibility to define them and to close the knowledge gaps that exist from one stage to the next. These gaps are readily apparent between each stage and typically well-defined. Review the blog posts, The 7 step Lean Process of Marketing to Toyota and Profiling the customer by knowledge gaps.

How to close the gaps is not readily defined in most companies. Sales and Marketing have seldom viewed their efforts from a perspective of knowledge gaps and with the ultimate goal of developing open innovation and co-creation platforms. As the New Economy unfolds whether Economy is prefaced by Experience, Transformation, User-Centric or Customer Centric, sales and  marketing’s role will be defined by their ability to learn and share knowledge with the customer.

Related Information:
Why the Lean SALES PDCA Cycle was Created!
The Service-dominant Logic of Marketing: Dialog, Debate, And Directions
If all of us need to be marketers, what’s the framework?
7 Principles of Universal Design & Beyond
The Common Thread of Design Thinking, Service Design and Lean Marketing

Political Campaigning – Strategy Update

In a recent Blog post What political campaigns can teach business, I discussed how using a similar strategy could be one of the most productive methods of creating immediate business. One of the most important processes of getting anything done is always clarity and keeping your organization updated. Turning strategy into tactics into action requires empowerment armed with that clarity. Look how David Plouffe’s campaign manager of President Obama’s 2008 presents a slideshow on the state of the race and the resources needed to win battleground states.

Plouffe’s does an outstanding job of a strategic overview, mapping the process, breaking it down to its simplest structure. His appeal to the emotional side is excellent and a lesson in motivating your constituents to get out the vote and raise more money.

How do your managers address your virtual audience? Would this work to motivate a sales force? Your distributor network? Your referral network?

Related Information:
Is your marketing firm having this conversation with you?
The New Names of Marketing are still PDCA
Will Product Managers embrace Open Innovation?
What political campaigns can teach business
Lean Six Sigma for Government

Summary of the 6-part blog Series using DDMRP

This is part of my blog series on using the principles of Demand Drive MRP and its five primary components and applying it to marketing. This particular blog is the summary of the series.

These five components work together to dampen, if not eliminate, the unnecessary nervousness of traditional MRP systems and the resulting bullwhip effect in complex and challenging environments. In using this approach, planners will no longer have to try to respond to every single message for every single part that is off by even one day. This approach provides real information about those parts that are truly at risk of negatively affecting the planned availability of inventory. Demand-driven MRP sorts the significant few items that require attention from the magnificent many parts that are currently being managed. Under the demand-driven MRP approach, fewer planners can make better decisions more quickly. This means that companies will be better able to leverage their working and human capital as well as the significant investments they have made in information technology.

The above is from the Orlicky’s Material Requirements Planning 3/E. written by my recent podcast (Is Orlicky’s MRP relevant today? Think DDMRP) guest Carol Ptak and Chad Smith of the Demand Driven Institute.

This exercise of taking the 5 components of DDMRP provides an interesting and innate view of the Lean Marketing perspective. I think specifically it assists in explanation of how to scale the Lean Marketing principles. So often in this world of one to one marketing or marketing singularity we forget to view the enterprise foundational need for marketing to our core customer base. There is so much talk about innovation and early adaptors and they certainly have a role in your marketing structure. However, the core customer group of an established customer is that 68% majority found in the middle of the diffusion curve.

Other companies that keep venturing to the extremities of the curve will continue to compete on price and availability. The organizations that align themselves with similar cultures if so desired will give themselves the opportunity to establish that structure that we identified in Profiling the customer by knowledge gaps. Surprisingly when we go to scale, these factor are seldom different. Establishing your presence through increase knowledge transfer will allow you to dig deeper within the structure of any company. It may take you longer to dig the hole but every shovelful will make it that much more for your competition to overcome.

Effective knowledge transfer seldom occurs without effective collaboration and in today’s world having the right tools in place plays a vital role. Dr. Graham Hill addressed this issue in a blog post, CIO view: Ten principles for effective collaboration where he said:

Companies should start to develop their collaboration capabilities before purchasing collaboration technology. This will ensure that the technology really fits the style of collaboration that has already been developed. The pace of business is getting faster and faster. Today’s competitors may not even have existed a few years ago. Improving effective collaboration is one of the few insurance policies that companies have in these hyper-competitive times.

I encourage you to read Dr. Hill’s entire post. It provides an excellent groundwork for the role of tools in collaboration.

The other blog posts in this series on DDMRP:

1. Is Orlicky’s MRP relevant today? Think DDMRP
2. What Sales and Marketing can learn from Demand Driven Manufacturing
3. Positioning your organization to learn from your customers
4. Profiling the customer by knowledge gaps
5. Dynamic Buffer: Think Self-organized Teams
6. Systemizing the transfer of knowledge at the execution level
7. Highly Visible and Collaborative Execution

Demonstrating Social Media using an Elephant

Great lesson on using social media. It is not about the tools but more about the connection. We have all heard this before but the Antwerp Zoo give us the perfect lesson through the birth of a baby elephant. 

They do it so well that at the end of the video, you hardly remember a single social media tool used.

Related Information:
The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion
In love with your products more than your customers?
Is every Boardroom discussing Gamification? Is yours?
Games maybe your only chance to attract the best and brightest talent

Preview of Political Campaign Marketing Podcast

At the end of the interview for my upcoming podcast with Derek Pillie, a fifteen veteran of the political campaign trail, we went over a few additional thoughts.

Related Information:
Political Campaigning – Strategy Update
What political campaigns can teach business
Lean Six Sigma for Government

Systems2win will exhibit at the Dallas AME Conference

Systems2win will exhibit at the AME, Association of Manufacturing Excellence, Dallas 2011 International Lean conference to be held October 24-28, 2011. Systems2win is a supplier of Lean and Six Sigma software tools and will be highlighting their Value Stream Mapping, A3 Management tools and their Standard Work template.

Dean Ziegler, founder and owner of Systems2win says, “Along with the Value Stream Mapping, A3 and Standard Work Management templates, we will also be highlighting our recent Multi-Language Excel templates. Now with a simple click of a button, every Systems2win Excel template can switch between English and another language." Dean also added, "Our software actually provides a learning platform that strengthens your Lean experience. It is not an additional step in the process; it is part of your Lean journey.”

Systems2win booth will display their collection of Lean and Six Sigma software that are bundled in the following groups:

• Lean Tools
• Value Stream Mapping
• Kaizen and Project Tools
• Six Sigma Tools
• Free Training Tools

Also, in the booth will be yours truly providing a High Level Overview of the product! Stop by and say hello if you are there!

These bundles have been created to provide an organized structure in supporting the above process. In these bundles, the Lean Management tools of Hoshin Kanri, Standard Work, A3, Fishbone, SMED, 5S, Setup Reduction, Balance Scorecard and more are supported. In addition, the training tools provide not just introductory Lean material but a comprehensive Lean and Excel learning tools that are embedded in the templates providing you help and assistance on exactly what you need, when you need it. They are also designed so that a training course can be developed separate from the templates. An overview of the tools:

About Systems2win: Systems2win provides business process improvement tools and training to companies all over the globe. People are provided with easy-to-use fill-in-the-blanks Excel templates that come with self-help online training to improve the speed and reduce the cost of every step of your project. Systems2win templates were originally developed during 14 years of manufacturing systems consulting by the founder of Systems2win, Dean Ziegler, CPIM. The Systems2win templates and online training has been field proven, and continue to be continuously improved by hundreds of Systems2win clients.

Related information:
Why the Lean SALES PDCA Cycle was Created!
Lean needs Marketing, more than Marketing needs Lean!
Will Lean always internalize the customer?
Customer Experience more powerful than the Supply Chain?

Get Clients NOW! Workshop – Special Offer

On October 10th, I will be starting my rendition of the Get Clients NOW!^TM -28 Day program. This started as a basic referral, networking type program and with the influence of Social Media, I had introduced a special session on how use social media to extend the conversation. My Achieving Expert Status and Marketing your Black Belt has been an outgrowth of this program.

The bottom line is that if you want immediate business you must institute an action plan to maximizing the creation and leveraging of your touch-points with prospects and customers. The truth of the matter is that the principles that are contained in this program are the same basic principles that is still make marketing successful today. Some of the tools have changed but that is covered rather easily in the session. The basic ideas are

1. Planning out a program that you can implement immediately.
2. Recognize Short-term improvements needed and develop actions to correct.
3. Review Long-term improvements and develop actions to correct.
4. Simplifying (not just automating) what works and ridding yourself of what doesn’t work.

Get Clients NOW! program

View more presentations from Business901

This program is not just a coaching program. It is a learning program for a Professional Service firm or individual that is highly intensive and requires work on your part. The special offer for this session only is that you will receive the following at no additional charge: 

1. Get Clients Now Book
2. The GCN Six-Month Marketing Guide
3. Membership to the GCN Answer Center for 1 year
4. Lean Marketing House Book
5. Marketing with PDCA Book
6. Marketing with A3 Book

You must supply a valid email for these  to be sent.

Business901 October 10th G.C.N. Program

This link is the only thing stopping you from getting more clients!

Offer Ends Friday!

These are timeless principles that can be utilized over and over again.

Related Information:
Achieving Expert Status
Marketing your Black Belt

Answers to Sustainability

I was participating in a discussion on LinkedIn and came across an article, How to Sustain Front Line Process Improvement Activities from the Harvard Business Review and like most of us, if it says sustainability we take a look. It has to be the most difficult part of any continuous improvement process.

I found the author of the article, Brad Power handling the comments masterfully and engaging in a great dialogue with the commenters. He is actually researching sustaining attention to process management and is currently conducting research with the Lean Enterprise Institute.

Our podcast centered on Brad’s research of sustainability and his findings so far may not be unique but the structure he puts to his information is.  Also, I think you will find out as much about researching and the questions you ask as you will sustainability. At times I wondered who was being interviewed.

Podcast Powered By Podbean

Download Podcast: Click and choose options: Sustainability or go to the Business901 iTunes Store.

Brad Power is a consultant and researcher in process innovation. In his latest consulting engagement, for over a year he's been helping a healthcare insurance company reengineer its interactions with providers and members to reduce cycle times. And for the last three years he's been researching why few companies sustain their attention to process management — how they can make improvement and adaptation a habit (even fun?). He's been collaborating with the Lean Enterprise Institute on his research. You can see some of his research insights in his blog posts at The Harvard Business Review at bradfordpower.tumblr.com. He's interested in hearing stories of companies which embarked on a process improvement program and either kept going, or didn't, and why.

Related Information:
Learn more about the Xerox Design for Lean Six Sigma
Design for Lean Six Sigma, The Xerox Way
Sustaining Lean in Manufacturing
Does Lean Marketing deliver what the customer wants?

Customer Experience more powerful than the Supply Chain?

During the past few months I have been spending time understanding the Service Design concept. The history according to Wikpedia:

The earliest contributions on service design (Shostack 1982; Shostack 1984), the activity of designing service was considered as part of the domain of marketing and management disciplines. This design process, according to Shostack, can be documented and codified using a “service blueprint” to map the sequence of events in a service and its essential functions in an objective and explicit manner.

In 1991, service design was first introduced as a design discipline by Prof. Dr. Michael Erlhoff at Köln International School of Design (KISD), and Prof. Birgit Mager has played an integral role for developing the study of service design at KISD in later days. In 2010, 23 service design professionals published the first comprehensive textbook This is Service Design Thinking: Basics - Tools - Cases , edited by Marc Stickdorn and Jakob Schneider.

Wikpedia goes on the give a brief description of Service Design:

Together with the most traditional methods used for product design, service design requires methods and tools to control new elements of the design process, such as the time and the interaction between actors. An overview of the methodologies for designing services is proposed by (Morelli 2006), who proposes three main directions:

1. Identification of the actors involved in the definition of the service, using appropriate analytical tools
2. Definition of possible service scenarios, verifying use cases, sequences of actions and actors’ role, in order to define the requirements for the service and its logical and organizational structure
3. Representation of the service, using techniques that illustrate all the components of the service, including physical elements, interactions, logical links and temporal sequences

Where Service Design has made an impact in my thinking though is its obvious connection to two areas. One in the ability to involve customers through co-creation or open innovation and the other as it relates to The Experience Economy popularized by the book of that name by Pine and Gilmore.

In the 90’s business processes was all the buzz and Lean, Six Sigma led the way. They have continued gaining popularity but and this is a big “but” may soon lose out to the methodologies of Service Design and Design Thinking.

Why? Lean and Six Sigma cannot move away from that supply chain mentality. They are continuously bogged down in the internal world of product delivery. They continue to think the more efficient you become the better company you become. They relate everything to customer value but seldom is that referenced to an external customer.

What’s different about Service Design? In the Service Design context they put the customer experience at the center of the organization. Many product companies have been using this concept with Apple being the shining example. Design is the differentiating factor.

When viewing the customer experience perspective from The Service-Dominant Logic of Marketing framework that states, value is not created till your product/service is put into use creates a different spin. It obsoletes the supply chain and operational excellence as the primary reason your product is purchased. Many efficiency experts are simply at a loss to explain this and struggle to comprehend this concept.

I am not saying improvement of a process is not a good thing. But to do it without improving the customer experience will provide little value and may even prove to be “invaluable”. More information on this can be obtained in a recent blog post: Will Lean always internalize the customer?

Related Information:
The Service-dominant Logic of Marketing: Dialog, Debate, And Directions
If all of us need to be marketers, what’s the framework?
7 Principles of Universal Design & Beyond
The Common Thread of Design Thinking, Service Design and Lean Marketing