Designing Service Processes to Unlock Value

The service process design landscape is changing, with many of the previous limitations disappearing on how and by whom services are delivered. Opportunities for new service design configurations are being enabled, to a large extent, by technology-driven service innovations, and tasks previously performed by the service provider may now be performed by either the customer or service provider. As a result, customers are taking a more active role in the service delivery process, not only through self-service but by providing information to the service provider to create a more personalized service experience. In addition, as the options for 'who does what' in the service processes expand, issues such as enabling customers to perform desired activities, relieving customers of undesired tasks, and determining 'who should do what' become more and more critical. Although the recent trend has been toward increasing levels of self-service, service providers are finding that 'super service' offerings, an opposite trend in which the service provider performs most of service tasks with little effort required by the customer, are also part of the expanded set of options in the emerging service process landscape. With the growing number of alternatives for designing service processes and determining who performs the various service tasks, service performance outcomes are increasingly dependent on the physical, skills, and knowledge resources of both the service provider and customer. Service Process Design for Value Co-Creation explores how the integration of service provider and customer resources co-creates value, how service processes can be designed to leverage and 'unlock' the capabilities embedded in these resources, and how the task boundary between the service provider and customer can be shifted to realize even greater value.