Is service innovation always good for both the customer and the company?

Last week I had some personal experience with service innovation at a skiing resort. I had rented our skis before and had them delived to our cabin. That was really nice and we saved a lot of time. But my ten year old son did not get any poles. When I called the rentalstore they said that they don´t provide poles for children for this particular delivery service. Anyone that have done downhill skiing knows that a ten year old needs ski poles. So I asked if I could come and get a pair in person to the store but then they said that they were all gone.

This really nice service turned out not to be so nice after all. I like the idea of customer journey mapping. That means that the company providing the service acually follow the customer all the way, from making a decision about the service to the end. If they had done so perhaps their service would have been different. (http://www.smartinsights.com/user-experience/customer-experience-management-cxm/mapping-customer-journey/)

Who is the customer?

It is quite obvious that the customer is central in service innovation. But sometimes it is not clear who the customer is. If value is gained only in relation with our customer it is very important to know who the customer is. Once we define who the customer is, we can focus on service innovation to make society better.

My work experience is only from the public sector. We often don´t use the word customer. We rather talk about citizens or inhabitants. Eventually it is the citizens that are the customers of public services. Even if not all the citizens use public service, all should feel some kind of satisfaction with the service available.

But who the customer is can be a bit fuzzy depending on where in the public sector you are as an officer. For example I work in an administration that serves a political body. All the officers produce papers for decision making. In everyday work that makes the politicians our customers. Based on the literature I draw the conclusion that the inclusion of citizens in both the definition of the problems and in the design of solutions for all kind of public sector is a good start for service innovation.

Accordning to Gustafsson and Johnson (2003) a service strategy is based on a triangle of maintenance, performance and innovation. If I try to apply that to my work and public transport the service maintenance is about getting the bus from A to B according to the timetable. Improve service performance is about things like the system of payment, information applications like travelplanner and wifi onboard. When it comes to service innovation it is for example travelhack for thirdpart developers or a service for combined mobility offered by the public transport company.

The Venn diagram is used by Gustafsson and Johnson to find a service advantage. Public transport competes with mainly the car but also with walking and cycling. For society as a whole walking and cycling are better since there are zero emissions. It is also better for public health. So if I then compare public transport with driving a car some interesting things appear.

Most of the time a car is faster except for longer distance trainrides or in areas with congestions. Public transport is always cheaper if people calculate with the correct cost of driving a car. Riding with public transport open up an opportunity to use traveltime for other purposes like working or reading. 

I think it could be a great idea to look at other similar businesses like airlines and try to learn about service innovation for regional public transport. I believe it is important to build a culture around the habit of travelling with public transport. And focus much more on linked activities that actually solve the problem for the citizen and at the same time be part of something bigger. Public transport is more about accessibility to workplaces, attractive areas than it is about busses and trains.