Product and service design Essay Example

align="justify">Introduction

Service refers to an act, something that is done to or for a customer. Service design egging with the choice of a service strategy, which determines the nature and focus of the service, and the target market.

This requires an assessment by top management of the potential market and profitability of a particular service and an assessment of the organization ability to provide the service. Once decisions on the focus of the service and the target market have been made, the customer requirements and expectations of the target market must be determined. Two key issues in service design are the degree of variation in service requirements and the degree of customer contact and customer involvement in the delivery yester. These have an impact on the degree to which service can be standardized or must be customized.

The lower the degree of customer contact and service requirement variability, the more standardized the service can be. Service design with no contact and little or no processing variability is very much like product design. Conversely, high variability and high customer contact generally mean the service must be highly customized. A related consideration in service design is the opportunity for selling : the greater the degree of customer contact, the greater the opportunities for selling. Characteristics of well designed service system There are a number of characteristics of well-designed service system.

They can serve as guidelines in developing a service system. They include the following:

• Being consistent with the organization mission. (example when the focus is on speed of delivery, each step in the process should help foster speed)
• Being user friendly(this means that the customer can interact
  

with it easily - that is it has good signage, understandable forms, logical steps in the process and service workers available to answer questions)

Being Easy to Sustain

• Being cost effective(there is minimum waste of time and resources in delivering the service)
• Having value that is obvious to customers.
• Having effective linkages between back of the house operations.
• Having a single, unifying theme, such as convenience or speed.
• Having design features and checks design Service design presents some special challenges that are less likely to be encountered in product design in part because service design also involves design of the delivery system.

Among the challenges are the following: 

There are variable requirements.

This creates a need for a robust design that will accommodate a range of input and perhaps a range of output.

Services can be difficult to describe. By their very nature, verbal descriptions can be somewhat imprecise.

Customer contact is usually much higher in services.

Service design must take into account the service-customer encounter. There can be a relatively large number of variables to deal with in the service-customer encounter.

Guidelines for Successful Service Design

1. Define the service package in detail. A service blueprint may be helpful for this
2. Focus on the operation on from the customer perspective.
3. Consider how customer expectations and perceptions are managed during and after the service.
4. Consider the image that the service package will present both a customers and prospective customers.
5. Recognize that designer familiarity with the system may give them a quite different perspective than that of the customer,
   

and take steps to overcome this.

Establish procedures to handle to handle both predictable and unpredictable events. 9. Establish systems to monitor, maintain and improve service. Phases in the service design process

Conceptualize - (I) idea generation (it) assessment of customer wants/ needs (iii) assessment of demand potential

• Identify service package components needed
• Determine performance specifications
• Translate performance specifications into design specifications
• Translate design specification into delivery specifications
• Difference between Product design and Service Design

Products are generally tangible; services are generally intangible. Consequently service design often focuses more on intangible factors (e. G. Peace of mind, ambiance) than does product design.