Читать книгу Service Design - Ben Reason - Страница 40

Performance, as we understand the word from music or theater, means the style or the way in which the service is delivered. This performance makes up the immediate experiences that service users have, and it is what people often refer to when they describe the service as “good.” What they mean is that they liked the way they were treated or the way the service provider performed their tasks. Generally, this is in reference to service staff, such as the front-desk clerk in a hotel or a call center employee.

It is useful to take this concept of performance and expand it from the individual to the overall performance of the entire service organization. If we use a musical metaphor to compare the service to an orchestra or a rock band, we can think of quality of performance in terms of how well all the musicians came together to deliver the music. Music is an interesting metaphor in this regard, because in a band or an orchestra, each musician must play to the best of his or her abilities, yet at the same time play in harmony and keep time with the others. Things can quickly go awry if each musician simultaneously tries to play as a soloist.

We can go a step further to include the qualities that the venue or the support staff brought to the experience. Was the lighting good, and was the sound engineering supporting the experience? This kind of performance is where a service can have its own style—think of an airline such as Virgin, which have gone to great lengths to make the experience of a very rigid flight process different from their competitors by styling the manner, dress, and actions of their inflight team, their digital and print communication, and a host of other touchpoints.

This “experience” aspect of performance is the delivery of the service to the service user on the “front stage.” The idea of a music ensemble, harmonious across all aspects of the performance, is critical to services and a concept we will return to when we start examining how to align the complexity of touchpoints that make up service experiences.