The document discusses reasons why services fail and the consequences of failures. It suggests that services fail when they do not meet customer expectations or are too complex. When services fail, it can cost organizations money and damage customer relationships. The document proposes several ways to address service failures such as establishing service recovery processes, analyzing usage data to identify problems, empowering users and staff to solve issues, and designing services with failure scenarios in mind. Overall, the key ideas are that service failures are costly so they must be anticipated and systems put in place to respond effectively.

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Service Failure
Sarah Drummond
@rufflemuffin
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Dear British Airways...

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A service failure, simply defined, is
service performance that fails to meet
a customer's expectations.
A good service is one that enables a
user to complete the outcome they set
out to do

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“I spend most of my working day typing and
inputting services plans, filing, etc., all admin
tasks.”
The British Association of Social Workers and Social Workers Union

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Administration costs us people
We have created systems that don’t solve problems.
They create more work, cost us more to run and take us
away from the frontline

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What’s the cost of this?

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U.S. companies lose
more than $62 billion
annually due to poor
customer service.
Newvoicemedia.com

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As a group, Millennials
are willing to spend the
most (21% additional!)
for great customer care.
American Express 2017 Customer Service Barometer

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It is anywhere from 5 to
25 times more
expensive to acquire a
new customer than it is
to keep a current one.
Harvard Business Review

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Thousands of invitations to cervical
cancer screening not being sent on
time and 87 women being told they
were no longer to receive screening,
as well as patients put at risk by
delays in removing doctors who
should no longer be practising;
Telegraph (2018)

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"This saga is one of the worst
and most expensive
contracting fiascos in the
history of the public sector.”
Richard Bacon, Public Accounts Committee (2013)

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Why services fail
What happens when they do
What do we need to do about this

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Why services fail

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We fail when brands sell us an
expectation of meeting our user
needs, but often the experience
doesn’t match the promise

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We fail when there are dead ends,
and you are made to go in circles

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We fail when we make the service
seem really easy to use, but the
hidden complexity becomes
exposed

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We fail when there is no flex in
the system, and we over automate

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Drummers would not say, “Come back
home,” but rather:
“Make your feet come back the way they went,
make your legs come back the way they went,
plant your feet and your legs below,
in the village which belongs to us.”
- James Carrington, 1914

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We fail when we don’t meet
targets. How we measure and
define success has an impact on
how we interpret failure

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Our contractual agreements have an impact on
how we determine failure.
Payment By Results
“Encourages the classic PbR problem of
cherry picking — in this case the temptation to
target resources at less vulnerable and more
accessible communities.”
- Russell Webster

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What happens when services fail

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Service recovery processes kick
in, and the organisation seeks to
deal with the demand

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Some organisations don’t have
the capacity to support the
recovery.
Service failures create new markets,
sometimes those markets replace
the original one

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Sometimes the consequences of
failure are not immediate or
visible to you. Diversify design to
consider all the use cases.

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When there is a systematic failure
we seek to find an individual to
blame

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We are living in the
age of inquiry

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So what can we do about it?

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Create processes and standards
to mitigate and deal with failure

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Shisa Kanko

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Never Events are serious
incidents that are entirely
preventable because guidance
or safety recommendations
providing strong systemic
protective barriers are
available at a national level,
and should have been
implemented by all healthcare
providers.

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Find where there is data, what it
means and how you can use it to
fix what’s broken

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"The issue of inconsiderate parking ... can have a
significant impact on those with disabilities,
parents using pushchairs and just be a general
nuisance to pedestrians.
"MyPolice has helped highlight this problem to
us and as a result we are working together with
Perth and Kinross local authority to proactively
tackle the issue.”
Sergeant, Amanda Nicolson

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“When customers share their story,
they’re not just sharing pain points.
They’re actually teaching you how to
make your product, service, and
business better.”
Kristin Smaby, “Being Human is Good Business

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“To provide you with a response, we
need to conduct an investigation
into the issues that you had raised”
Jessops in response to Harriet Lowther ‘Big Thank you Project’ (2010)

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“I have experienced no problems
with Jessops and was writing to
thank you for the excellent service
which everyone at Jessops
provides…once again, Thank You”
Harriet in response to Jessops, Harriet Lowther ‘Big Thank you Project’ (2010)

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Empower users and staff to solve
problems, we’re pretty smart when
we sort things out as human beings

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75% of customers
believe it takes too long
to reach a live agent.
Harris Interactive

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Design the service recovery
journey in as much detail as you
design the user journey

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There is an industry
dedicated to disaster
planning for systemic
failures

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Inevitably things will fail, we must
prepare ourselves for this

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‘Normal Accidents’
Such accidents are unavoidable and
cannot be designed around.[1]
- The system is complex
- The system is tightly coupled
- The system has catastrophic
potential

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The user experience is
everyone’s business

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Every organisation is a
collection of micro
design decisions, made
on a daily basis that form
our user experience

96. Improving satisfaction
in the returns process

97. “Some places are
14 days: if they
have 30 then that
would make me
more likely to
return.”

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We have
unconsciously
designed complex,
broken and hard to
run and use services

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If our system is to work we have
to all consciously design
together

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We accepted that things
were the way they are
because ‘they’ve always
been that way’ and we can’t
see that they are broken

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We accepted that things
were the way they are
because ‘they’ve always
been that way’ and we can’t
see that they are broken

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We’re expecting people to
recognise, diagnose, re-design
and fix broken services when
they are not designers

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We have no consistent standards
for services of what good looks
like

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“Plan, design,
develop, produce,
deliver and support
goods and services
to meet customer
needs and
expectations.”
ISO 9001

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We need standards to show what
good service design looks like.
(The what)
Not just (the how ) of delivering
them

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Louise Downe, Director of design and standards, Government Digital Service
blog.louisedowne.com

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Service design is a weak link
sport, you’re only as good as
your worst player
We all need a basic design literacy

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Thanks for listening to my
moans!
@rufflemuffin
@wearesnook
wearesnook.com