Why Design Services?

One of the best reasons for designing services is that services, more easily than most physical products, can be designed to be environmentally good. Making fewer things, especially fewer useless things, is good for the planet. What if, rather than everyone owning a car (especially in crowded urban environments), we shared cars, using them only when necessary? That's the premise of car sharing services such as Zipcar (Figure 8.6), where subscribers to the service check out cars for a period of time, returning them to shared parking lots, where others can then check them out.

Figure 8.6. Zipcars allow people to share cars. In urban environments, where owning a car is often burdensome, Zipcars provide an alternative.

Another practical reason for designing services well is simply that good service makes good business. Certainly a poor service can survive if there is no or little competition. Would the Department of Motor Vehicles be such a horrible service if drivers could get their licenses elsewhere? People have shown that they will pay extra for unusual and unusually well-executed services. Even a slightly better service will cause people to seek it out and pay for it. Airlines, for instance, have taken advantage of this with business-and first-class service (Figure 8.7). Budget airlines like JetBlue have noticed that fliers will seek them out if the experience of flying with them is much better than that of flying with most of their competitors. All other things (price, convenience, and so on) being equal, their service has become their differentiator in the marketplace.

Figure 8.7. Virgin Airlines spends a considerable amount of time and effort on service design, and it shows. The airline's posh amenities for even coach-class travelers have other airlines scrambling to catch up.