IKEA and CB2 on a Saturday morning: not my ideal weekend scenario, or anything close to it. But I hear asking your out-of-town guests to sleep on the floor is widely frowned upon outside of Korea.
The IKEA service philosophy as I experienced it recently: Let's help ourselves together. It's a side-by-side, research activity where the associate has access to a layer of "behind the scenes" information that you peruse through together. A very patient IKEA sales associate walked me through dozens of foam mattress, spring mattress, mattress frame, mattress base and bed base scenarios. The expectation was never set that she knew more than me, only that she knew how to get to information that was different than what I could get my hands on. Therefore, without the promise of expert service, I wasn't ever really set up for disappointment.
CB2 was different. At the cash wrap, after walking us through several shipping options, the associate asked us if he could show us something. He flipped his screen around and showed us a nicely designed couch and told us that he had bought it at a CB2 sample sale for a steep discount. He was so happy with himself, it was hard not to feel some of it rub off on me. We agreed it was a steal and signed up for sample sale email alerts. Then, when the transaction was over, he shook our hands and said "Congratulations!" Congratulations indeed. Simple words that took us from guilty consumers to proud owners.
Service experiences are tricky. Too much, and it feels disingenuous (and often, a little gross). Too little, and you're wondering, where did everybody go? Too consistent and you feel like you're talking to a robot or someone who must really hate their Groundhog Day-type job. And when we as consumers know so much (or at the very least, know where to look for answers) what is the value of service, truly?
I believe service design is a largely unexplored opportunity space, often designed after most of the broad strokes of an experience or strategy are already set. That's too bad, since it's often the most memorable part of an experience, in both good ways and bad. There's so much design to be had: the environment and tools that influence and shape the tone of the service, as well as hiring process, incentives, knowledge-sharing and the foundational service model, all of which can be as or more impactful than the style of architecture or the marketing and communications within the store.
Service can be overly designed and prescribed. It can also be left to "just happen" on its own. The inspriational design challenge I see is designing just enough for service to feel like "it just happened." Can you think of a service that felt like that?
This is inspiring. Designing for service is so complex. We are designing for rich interactions in a hospital, where "service" isn't the most important thing on the employees' minds... though it may be what is most important, and even most healing, to patients. How do you design for authentic, honest service when employees are only thinking about safety?
Posted by: hillary | July 09, 2009 at 08:20 PM