Innovative and Sustainable Service Design

Service refers to applying competencies such as knowledge and skills through processes and performances to benefit others (Vargo & Lusch, 2008). Service design is a planning activity (Zomerdijk & Voss, 2010) for organising business resources such as people, props and processes (Malone et al., 2003) to improve both the employee experience (Bertolotti et al., 2018, July) and the customer experience (Reason et al., 2015). The excellent video “A Tale of Two Coffee Shops” by Accenture explains the value of service design through Marc Fonteijn’s words: “When you have two coffee shops right next to each other, each selling the exact same coffee for the exact same price, Service Design is the reason you go into one coffee shop and not the other.” Service design creates an intangible value produced by the interaction of two or more actors. It is impossible to store services (Penin, 2018). Still, these are delivered and consumed through touchpoints (Stickdorn et al., 2012) such as digital advertisements, website checkout flow, infographics, product catalogues, customer service representatives and online or in-person help centres. These points of contact make the services tangible (Clatworthy, 2011). Services can be private, such as having a massage, but also public, such as health care services or schooling provided by the state in many countries.