If you are involved with almost any form of service delivery, you should read the article "Four Ways to Reinvent Service Delivery" from the Harvard Business Review. The author's concentrate on innovations in health care and finance, but the discussion is widely applicable.
As the authors say, "The challenge is to give managers a systematic way to question basic assumptions about how a service is defined and delivered and to see the opportunity to achieve dramatically better results."
They have developed a framework to guide innovation in service delivery that identifies four dimensions on which organizations can focus:
- The structure of the provider-client interaction
- The service boundary
- The allocation of tasks
- The delivery location
If you follow Bright Pattern, you know that although our roots are in the contact center, our vision is to improve customer service management everywhere. We often cite examples such as inefficient medical office systems and how even HR departments are indeed in the service delivery business. One of the main reasons that service delivery has not previously been seen so universally is that there has never before been a good technology platform for it. As the article says, "People hate IT...(but) if communications are ineffective, digitizing them doesn't help." The authors would be glad to know that the ServicePattern platform, far from being just a "digitizing" technology, actually helps customers change the pattern of customer service.
The authors also note that, "The best service location is one that aligns the provider's and the customer's information and communication needs." We couldn't agree more. What do you think?