Prof. Chriss Voss and Leonieke Zomerdijk are the authors of this publication from London Business School. The report is based on around 100 case studies of well-known (experiential) service companies (i.e. Virgin Atlantic, Disney World, Royal Caribbean) that have been collected over a period of four years.

The study focuses on the special characteristics of services and especially experiential services. In this context, the “customer journey” is the common perspective or metaphor shared by design and consultancy firms and experiential service providers.

In order to design new services they divide the service into five areas that directly or indirectly contribute to a customer’s experience. These areas are (1) physical environment, (2) service employees, (3) service delivery process, (4) fellow customers and (5) back office support. These areas are outlined shortly.

Chapter 3 “The Process of Innovation” is particularly interesting because methods, tools and other common practices like simulation, prototyping and experimentation are introduced. This chapter gives some good ideas for practitioners where to start to develop new and innovative services.

The report is completed with a summary of some other observations in the case studies, namely business model innovation, the role of competition as a driver of innovation and how experiential service innovations were protected from copying by competitors.

All in all a well-grounded report that provides a good overview over most important areas of experiential service design.

The full report can be downloaded here.

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