The sources for remarkable customer experiences are not only great products as we are often made to believe but also great services that engage customers and create additional value.

Customer experiences are enabled by thoughtfully designing the complete lifecycle of your customers and understanding their needs from the “prenatal stage” when they are not even aware of your offerings until they drift away and don’t repurchase anymore (which should obviously prevented before).

Different models exists that aid in understanding this process with various names. Most commonly these models are called the marketing cycle, sales cycle or consumer buying cycle. The following picture shows an example of such a consumer buying cycle.

Understanding the needs of customers in the single stages is just as important as understanding the needs for the product or service that a company is offering for the “Application” stage of the cycle.

One high-potential area for service innovation is the “after-sales” stage in the buying cycle, when a formal relationship with customers is already established. But then again, it depends on your customers needs to identify the area where to find the biggest potential for innovative services.

This is not just relevant for business-to-consumer markets but also for business-to-business markets where innovative services can lead to significant increases in performance or overall cost-reductions.

Some examples how manufacturing companies use after-sales services to generate revenue can be found in the report “The Service Revolution” from Deloitte, the overview table is shown below.

Why do I blog this? While everyone likes to talk about service innovation in consumer markets maybe the real potential for service innovation is in the business markets? Maybe service design has much more potential in the B2B area than in the field for creating the “next Starbucks experience”?