Moment Mapping

Moment Mapping is a term used to describe how managers can learn to see the customer experience from the customer's point of view. Moment mapping involves recording or collecting information about each interaction a customer goes through n a typical process. This information can then be used to drive process improvement.

The following video is really helpful to understand the power of moment mapping. A Norwich Union Insurance manager describes how the company used a customer experience moment mapping technique (provided by a consultant) to experience their own service as if they were a customer. From the experience, they learned how to simplify their claims process, cut costs, increase profitability and increase customer satisfaction levels.

Service Process Mapping/Service Blueprinting/Swim-lane Diagramming

Service process mapping is also sometimes called service blueprinting or swim-lane diagramming. Services are intangible processes involving emotions and experiences across a series of touchpoints. Service managers make these intangible experiences, processes, and feelings tangible so they can be managed and shared. Ways of making these intangible things tangible include: through stories, technologies, the service concept, and through process diagrams.

One of the main ways that the service experience can be envisaged is through process mapping.

Service Process Mapping and Service Blueprinting

The presentation below provides an overview of the purposes of service process mapping or blueprinting and its conventions. Plentiful examples of maps or blueprints can be seen here at google images.

In more recent times we have seen the development of cloud process services, such as Promapp. PROMAPP is a process management software business that helps companies build, improve and share their process knowledge from a central online repository.

Basically, Promapp drives process improvement by 'simplifying' process mapping, so that business teams can own and improve their own processes. According to their website Promapp makes process mapping: Easy to use for the whole team; it generates process maps from text; it uses a simple  process map format; it enables service providers to drill down to detail and related documents; it tracks all  changes; it is browser-based (cloud); and it is easy to implement and use. They also integrate with common quality systems like Lean Six Sigma. 

You can find Promapp online here - their website is very informative and attractive. They provide services to a large range of public and private companies including SkyCity, SkyTV, Zespri, Toyota, St John, Telstra Clear, Genesis Energy, McDonald's, Burger King, Auckland Transport and other local and international companies.

Swim-lane Diagram
A similar way to represent a process is with a swim-lane process diagram. A swim-lane is a visual diagram used to illustrate a process flow, and so it is an invaluable tool in helping organisational members visualize a whole process, of which they are probably only a small part. Flowcharts can distinguish sub-processes and responsibilities. They can be arranged either horizontally or vertically.

The swim lane diagram looks like a swimming pool, hence its name. The horizontal direction represents the sequence of events in the overall process, while the vertical divisions depict what sub-process is performing that step. Arrows between the lanes represent how information or material is passed between the sub-processes.

Swim-lane diagrams are often created with software like Microsoft Visio. This is a common application used by operations and other managers to create and communicate processes.

Below is a swim-lane diagram for a simple sales process. The task responsibilities are categorized as consumer, sales, stock, and finance. 

Reference

Bitner, M.J., Ostrom, A. & Morgan, F. (2007) Service blueprinting: A practical technique for service innovation. Center for Services Leadership, Arizona State University, Working Paper.

Service winners, losers and qualifiers

One group of concepts that can be useful are the terms service winners, service losers and service qualifiers.

To be a service qualifier is to meet the minimum requirement to compete in that service class or industry. There can be regulations around qualifying. For instance, in order to practice as a chartered accountant, one needs to be a qualified chartered accountant, and this profession has various regulations and professional standards that are required before you can set up an operation in this category of businesses. Often there are many informal and formal barriers to entry to be a qualifier in a service class.

A service loser is a service provider who fails in some way to provide an adequate standard of service in their class. This often means failing on the 'hygiene and critical' (Johnston, Clark and Shulver, 2012) quality factors. These are the quality factors that, if they are not present, dissatisfy the customer. For instance, finding mice in a children's playground at a fast food restaurant (as happened recently in Auckland at a McDonald's), or two major international aircraft disasters in the same year (as unfortunately happened to Malaysian Air in 2014). At McDonald's, the failure was in cleanliness and hygiene, and for the airline it was safety. Generally speaking, a service would only fail if they consistently did not reach an adequate standard of performance in their crucial aspects. Most businesses would recover eventually, even from such tragedies as aircraft crashes, but the losses in reputation and financial sustainability can be quite profound.

A service winner is understood as the best at service in a particular class of businesses. So, for instance, McDonald's is often seen as the service winner in fast food. What McDonald's does is often copied by other fast-food restaurants (e.g. drive through, self-service kiosks, cafes, etc.). In budget hotels, Ibis is a service winner. In airlines, Air New Zealand, Singapore Air and Emirates are all arguably service winners.  

Outcome and process quality

Useful concepts in service management are technical (outcome) and functional (process) aspects of quality. Service quality has technical and functional dimensions. Grönroos (2010) differentiates between two aspects of the service offering:  the technical quality of the service and the functional quality of the process. You can understand this through the example of hairdressing.

Technical service quality  (outcome)

Functional process quality (process)

Service can be understood as a 'bundle' of processes with both functional and technical dimensions.

Understanding what Grönroos is driving at with respect to outcome and process dimensions is

easier to understand if we see it through another example. See the airplanes below: imagine both are flying an Auckland-Melbourne route. One is an Air New Zealand flight. The other is a Jetstar flight.

Both flights have the same process outcome - they both will take you to Melbourne. However, they compete with each other for your attention around their process - or their functional quality and on price. Jetstar is known as a budget airline and so their service is more stripped down. This does not mean that their process has less quality - you get what you expect and pay for. Air New Zealand also offers economy flights, but their reputation relies a lot on excellent service and so you expect a bit more. Their pricing reflects this expectation.

Reference

Grönroos C. (2010) Service management and marketing: Customer management in service competition, Chichester: John Wiley and Sons Ltd.

Co-production of service or 'co-creation'

'Co-production of service', or 'co-creation' are key concepts in service management.

These concepts illustrated below using building bikes as an example.

Watch the two videos below, both about the building of bikes. The first is from the British Film Council and is an historical film about 'How a bicycle is made' . The film shows a manufacturing production process for bikes in 1945.  Then watch Video 2; 'The Inverted Bike Shop'.

Note how the relationship approaches between the producer and consumer are completely different. In the first video, the factory production processes of making bikes infer mass marketing approaches to sell them. The consumer needs to be persuaded to buy the product, and individuals buying the units are anonymous.

The second video shows a relationship marketing approach (see Chapter 4 of Johnston, Clark, and Shulver, 2012). The video shows how value is created in tandem with the consumer; the consumer is co-creating value with the bike shop. In Video 2 the producer develops resources to support the customer's value creation. Value is created by the consumer with the support of the producer.

One process has not replaced the other. Bikes are still mass-produced in exactly the same way as that shown in the first 1945 film; this is just more likely to happen in  China than Britain! However, Video 2, 'The Inverted Bike Shop' does indicate the way things have progressed regarding the importance of customer service in production. Co-creation of value is now a central idea in all serve innovation.

How a Bicycle is Made (1945) from British Council Film on Vimeo.

The Inverted Bike Shop from Show Love on Vimeo.