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/)
When you describe the situation it seems natural that they should have delivered ski poles. I just wonder how their thoughts went around this? A child`s need of ski poles ofcourse differs with age. Please blog about the end of this service story, how did it end?
SvaraRaderaThanks for your comment. I never got any ski poles. They suggested to try a different store but it was in a different location.
RaderaInteresting story! One thought that struck me is that the scenario you describe is pretty common. The mistake many organisations make is not getting to know their customer well enough, which in turn leads to a value proposition that doesn't match what the customer needs. I've seen two recurring themes in my organisation: not even trying, and viewing the customer trough the lens of the organisation (as Gustafson & Johanson would put it). The latter could of course be done using personas or some other method. If you were in their shoes, what would you have done differently?
SvaraRaderaI agree with you Björn. I heard some story about baby schampoo and how the company found out how important it was for the parents that the children liked the bottle. Then the kids wanted to take a bath and wash their hair just because of the design of the bottle. No protest, no fighting, just happiness.
RaderaRegarding my ski poles if I had worked there, I would have tried to find a pair from a different store and told my customer to come back x number of hours later. And I would have been a much happier customer.
I'll try to describe what happened to you in the Service Dominant terminology: apparently the company did not fully incorporate the idea of satisfying the customer, valuating the goods in use (value in use). Rather they regarded the delivery to be fulfilled when leaving the goods (ski sets) at the customers door (value in exchange) - and closed the shop after this being done.
SvaraRaderaInteresting story. It's like Mikael writes, the rental store were all about delivering without any idea about the customers needs. Did you get any information as a customer before that you could track your options? Or was it all about height, wight and shoe size?
SvaraRaderaI really like to work with Customer Journey mapping as well. Its really a great tool! And what i think is very impotent while using it, which sometimes is forgotten, is to not forget about all the sub-services that are not regular and maybe just present every 10 or 20 times someone are using the service. If you are able to locate this and eliminate potential pain points I guess the customer experience would increase a lot.
SvaraRadera