those managers, staff and customers. 1 The service concept is an attempt to create a clear,
agreed, shared and articulated defi nition of the nature of the service provided and received, in
order to ensure that the essence of the service is delivered. Note that when we use the word
‘service’ in this book we are using it as a shortened version of the term ‘service concept’.
It should also be noted that marketers may use terminology similar to the service concept
to describe the service promise or service proposition, i.e. the service provided. We use
the term ‘service concept’ to pull together the provider’s view (service provided) and the
customer’s view (service received or required) to help provide a shared and agreed base for
the design, delivery and development of a service.
In this chapter we will explain how the service concept can be articulated and show how
it can be used to drive understanding and also innovate new services.
3.2 What is a service concept?
When asked his secret of success, Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of the IKEA chain of furniture
stores, replied ‘We are a concept company.’ He went on to share his vision and explain the
concept: ‘Our vision is to contribute to a better everyday life for the majority of people. We do
this by offering a wide range of home furnishing items of good design and function, at prices
so low that the majority of people can afford to buy them.’ This concept has captured the
imaginations of both IKEA’s employees and customers. People buy IKEA products because
they are well made, stylish and inexpensive. They also buy into the idea of self-selection, selfservice,
self-delivery and self-build.
The service concept is an important way of capturing the nature of a service so that customers
know what they are getting and staff understand what they are providing. The service
concept can also be used to help develop new services. For example, Yngve Bergqvist, president
of Icehotel, created a new concept in hotels. Having few visitors in the very cold winter months
he got the idea of creating a hotel made out of ice, as described in Case Example 3.1 . Some
years ago, First Direct implemented a new concept in banking. At a time when banks were
(unwelcoming) places with lavish banking halls, long queues and a ‘you-should-be-grateful’
style of service, First Direct created a bank to suit the customer. It is open 24 hours a day and
accessible by phone or the internet. The phone service is not staffed by traditional bank clerks
but by people who are interested in helping people. First Direct is a bank with personality. Its
staff are witty and warm, straightforward, informed and informing, and certainly not ordinary.
(We will develop the use of the service concept to create new services in Section 3.3 .)
Jukkas AB is a company offering a wide range of activities,
such as white-water rafting, fi shing, reindeer and
dog-sledding tours, cross-country skiing, snowmobile
safaris and guided tours. It is based in Jukkasjårvi, a
small village in Swedish Lapland, which lies 200 kilometres
north of the Arctic Circle by the River Torne.
The problem was that visitors were few and far between
in the long, dark winter months when the temperature
drops to _40 °C. Manager, Yngve Bergqvist,
now president of Icehotel, saw this as an opportunity.
In the winter of 1989 he invited a group of Japanese ice
artists to come to Jukkasjårvi to carve sculptures from
Case Example 3.1 The lcehotel
Chapter 3 Developing and using the service concept 47
Service Operations Management: Improving Service Delivery, Fourth Edition, by Robert Johnston, Graham Clark, and Michael Shulver. Published by Prentice Hall.
Copyright © 2012 by Pearson Education, Inc.
ISBN 1-323-17409-5
The service concept is something very important to service organisations, but is often
not articulated, shared or understood. It is something that is more emotional than a business
model, deeper than a brand, more complex than a good idea and more solid than a
vision. It is also something that can unite employees and customers and create a business
advantage.
A service concept is a shared and articulated understanding of the nature of the service
provided and received, which should capture information about:
●
The organising idea –
the essence of the service bought, or used, by the customer.
●
The service provided –
the service process and its outputs which have been designed, created
and enacted by the operation using its many input resources, including the customer.
●
The service received:
The customer experience
– the customer’s direct and personal interpretation of, and
response to, their interaction with and participation in the service process, and its outputs,
involving their journey through a series of touch points/steps.
The service outcomes
– the results for the customer of the service process and their
experience including ‘products’, benefi ts, emotions, judgements and intentions (see
Chapter 1 ).
The detailed service concept may be based upon an explicit statement made by the
organisation or it may be inferred from marketing information – either direct marketing
by the organisation or indirect marketing through experience and word-of-mouth. In
Figure 3 .1 we provide an example of a service concept and some of its key elements for a
UK theme park (see Chapter 11 for more details of this organisation) and Figure 3.2 provides
one for an internal IT support provider.
the crystal clear ice that forms from the pure waters of the River Torne. He then built a 60-square-metre
cylinder-shaped igloo, made out of clear ice blocks, to protect the sculptures. Visitors fl ocked to see the
exhibits in his ‘ice gallery’. One day when his hotel was full he was pressed by a good friend to fi nd accommodation
for ten colleagues. Yngve could only offer them space in his ‘ice gallery’ with sleeping bags on
reindeer skins. In the morning the guests enthused about the ‘warm and intense experience’. The Icehotel
was born.
In winter the Icehotel covers approximately 5,000 square metres and is built out of 30,000 tonnes of snow
and 4,000 tonnes of ice. The hotel has a reception, around 40 rooms and 25 suites. It has its own Iceart exhibition,
Icebar and Icechurch. Since the hotel melts every spring the number of rooms, as well as the exhibits,
varies from year to year!
The temperature in the bedrooms is a relatively warm _5 °C. Guests sleep on a bed of warm insulating
reindeer hides in an ultra-warm sleeping bag. In the morning they can enjoy an early morning sauna followed
by breakfast. Toilets are located in a small heated building adjacent to the Icehotel. In the evening the guests
drink in the Icebar from Iceglasses sculpted from the pure ice of the River Torne. During the day guests eat
in the restaurant 100 metres away and take part in the adventure activities such as dog sledding and snowmobile
safaris.
Each year a new Icehotel is constructed by around 30 local artists and builders before the arrival of the fi rst
guests in mid December. Snow cannon are used to blast snow on to a frame of arched steel sections, and ice
pillars are added for extra support. The walls are made from huge, clear blocks of ice, weighing almost two
tonnes, cut from the frozen river with special saws and moved by front-loading tractors. Work on the interior
starts in early December, when sculptors cut and work the ice to create windows, doors, pillars, beds, lamps
and ice sculptures. Guest ice artists are invited each year to design the ice décor in some of the rooms.
When April comes the roof of the Icehotel begins to drip. The hotel is closed and it slowly melts back into
the river from where it came.
Source: This illustration is based on material on the Icehotel website, www.icehotel.com , and discussions with managers.
48 Part 2 Frame
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Copyright © 2012 by Pearson Education, Inc.
ISBN 1-323-17409-5
Figure 3.1 Alton Towers’ service concept
Organisation
Organising idea
A great day out with friends or family at a UK theme park that provides an
inclusive package of over 100 rides and attractions to suit all ages and
tastes with thrills, fun, fantasy, fast food and magnificent gardens.
Service concept
(summary)
• Car parking
• Transport to entrance
• Ticketing
• Security
• Clean and tidy park
• Uniformed and helpful staff
• Fair queuing systems
• White knuckle rides
• Shows and attractions
• Children’s rides
• Well-kept gardens
• Food outlets
• Toilets
• Street entertainers
Service provided
Customer experience:
• Easy parking
• Good signage
• Exhilarating rides
• Enjoyable attractions
• Full day out
• Fun time
• Never a dull moment
• Lots of rides
• Lots of food available
• Helpful staff
• Clean toilets
Outcomes:
• Good food
• 18 rides used
• 3 attractions experienced
• Fun day out with the family
• Thrills
• Terrifying rides
• Exhausting
• Car parking is extra
• Good value for money
• Want to go again
• Will recommend to friends
Service received
A great day out at a theme park
Alton Towers
Figure 3.2 IT Infrastructure Support Group’s service concept
Organisation
Organising idea
Helpful and dependable helpdesk service, professionally managed, and reliable IT infrastructure
(storage, servers, network, internet) and expert advice to end users and business leaders at low
total cost in accordance with set standards and policies.
Service concept
(summary)
End users
• Hardware and software support
• Training services
• Helpdesk available 8x7
• Phone/email support for non-critical
problems 8.00 to 6.00
• Walk-in facility from 9.00 to 5.30
• At desk service available 9.00 to 5.30
Service provided
Customer experience:
End users
• Personalised, capable helpdesk
• Informed about issues
• Fast recovery from failures
• Good communications during failures
• Confident, assured and professional
Business leaders
• No surprises
• Professional technical advice
• Genuine concern and understanding of
business needs
Outcomes:
End users
• IT problems sorted
• No service disruptions
• All critical services available > 99.995%
• Highly satisfied users and high perceived user
value
Business leaders
• Planned infrastructure availability and expansion
• Low cost of infrastructure and within budget
• Effective advice on increasing employee productivity
• Low cost of service
• Efficient resource utilisation
• High employee productivity
• IT standards and policies implemented
Service received
Helpful and dependable IT support for internal users
IT Infrastructure Support Group
• On call support by phone/email for critical
problems 24x7
• Reliable infrastructure
• Responsive and effective call resolution
Business leaders
• Monthly management meetings
• Monthly utilisation and satisfaction metrics
• Services within budget and value for money
Chapter 3 Developing and using the service concept 49
Service Operations Management: Improving Service Delivery, Fourth Edition, by Robert Johnston, Graham Clark, and Michael Shulver. Published by Prentice Hall.
Copyright © 2012 by Pearson Education, Inc.
ISBN 1-323-17409-5
A service concept should provide suffi cient detail to make it clear what the organisation is
selling/providing and what the customer is buying/receiving. Thus the service concept represents
the nature of the service offering, which guides operations staff and managers to know
what to deliver and how to deliver it and helps marketing know what to offer to the customers
or users.
3.2.1 The organising idea
The ‘organising idea’ provides a powerful way of reminding the service provider what the
customer is really buying, and therefore provides focus for resource allocation and service
design. It acts as a ‘magnifying glass’ helping the organisation focus on what is important. For
example, a store selling paint, tools and other items for home improvements may be organised
around ‘providing the cheapest hardware in town’ or ‘enabling the customer to carry out
high-quality home improvements’. The fi rst idea would require an operation focused on ‘no
frills’, effi ciency and economy, whereas the second idea might require investment in skilled
sales staff to provide guidance for customers as to how best to carry out their do-it-yourself
(DIY) projects.
There may be more than one ‘organising idea’ for a service provider. We worked with a house
builder and identifi ed that although the output for each customer was a completed house, the
outcome could be very different from the customer’s viewpoint. Here are the two examples:
● The investor : This customer is interested in a property that they can rent out for the
short or medium term and sell in the longer term. The property needs to be of acceptable
quality in a good location. This customer is not emotionally involved in the construction
process.
● Building the dream : This customer sees the house as part of their identity. It clearly needs
to be of good quality in the right location and this customer is emotionally involved in the
process and wants to be present at key stages in the construction process. The customer
also wants to be involved in the decision-making as the project progresses.
Understanding the differences between customer groups is key to success. Not surprisingly,
the builder saw the second customer group as interfering and made no accommodation
for them. We will return to this theme later in the chapter but it is important to understand
that the organisation’s culture is at the heart of the issue here. If an organisation has been
successful (survived) for any length of time the mindsets become quite rigid. So the builder
believed that customers should not be involved in the construction. Getting the builder to
accept a different ‘organising idea’ was a signifi cant challenge in organisational culture terms.
We will return to this in Chapter 16 , but it is important to note that however much we accept
a change in theory, there has to be an emotional commitment for this to work.
3.2.2 The customer experience
Service academics and service practitioners are focusing more attention on the customer
experience. We have devoted Chapter 7 to discussing this in more detail. We know that
customers will often judge the quality of the outcome by the quality of the experience
they receive, not least because they may have limited or no understanding of the processes
involved in delivering the service. The patient will normally have no understanding of the
detail of hip surgery, but they will certainly be able to evaluate the quality of care and attention
they receive in the process. Many patients report frustration with the lack of information
they receive in the course of treatment. This may not be that medical staff don’t care,
but more likely that they don’t understand that information which they require to do their
job (manage their internal process) is also of interest to the patient. They see a ‘body in a
bed’ that needs treatment, not a human being with fears and anxieties that a little information
would ease.
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Copyright © 2012 by Pearson Education, Inc.
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3.2.3 The service outcomes
The key point here is to recognise the subtle difference between outcomes for customers versus
outputs from the service process. Using examples from Chapter 2 , the output from surgery
is the replaced hip, whereas the desired outcome for the patient will be a working hip
providing the benefi t of greater mobility. The output from an educational process may be a
student who has satisfi ed the requirements of the examiners but the desired outcome for that
student will be greater employability.
This may seem obvious, but as we hinted earlier there is a tendency to continue what some
academics refer to as ‘provider push’. Providers keep delivering what has worked in the past, and
what they are good at! The conference centre we mentioned earlier started losing business to its
competitors who provided simpler meals. Their costs were lower and so they could compete at
marginally lower prices which were enough to get the business in this highly competitive market.
If this company had been able to respond more rapidly, it would have been much more successful,
focusing its resources and processes in different areas. There may be signifi cant competitive
advantage in recognising how customer needs are shifting, frequently in quite subtle ways.
3.2.4 Service value
In Chapter 1 we provided some information about the customer experience and service outcomes.
The main service outcomes are ‘products’, benefi ts, emotions, judgements, including
value, and intentions. It is appropriate here to provide a little more detail about value.
An important element of the marketing mix is price. Price is the value placed on the ser vice.
This could be its monetary value, the fi nancial price, or its comparative value if the service is
bartered. The price of a service may be referred to in many different ways: the price of money
is called interest; the price of poor motoring may be, in fi nancial terms, a fi ne; while the price
for use of equipment is rent.
The cost of a service to a customer is a combination of the fi nancial price together with the
cost, or inconvenience, of making the purchase – sometimes called the sacrifi ce. For example,
the cost of buying the weekly groceries involves not only the monetary value of the goods but
also the cost of going to the shops to make their purchase – this is not only the cost of travelling
by car but also the sacrifi ce of effort and time involved, which could have been put to other
uses. The cost of poor driving is not only the fi ne, but also loss of a no-claims bonus, higher
insurance premiums and possibly injury or even death, with the mental ‘cost’ that follows.
To understand value, these costs to the consumer have to be weighed against the benefi ts
consumers perceive in the service. The benefi ts are not just the tangible benefi ts but also the intangible
feelings and emotions resulting from the experience, such as a feeling of well-being or
being recognised in a restaurant. Value, therefore, does not necessarily mean low price. Value is
the customer’s assessment of the benefi ts of the service weighed against all the costs involved.
A key role of marketers is to try to assess these issues to understand what customers value
in order to help the organisation make pricing decisions. Operations management, on the
other hand, is the art of creating and delivering value. The task for operations is to fi nd
the balance between maximising the value for customers and minimising the cost to the
organisation; that is, striking a profi table or in-budget balance between
● maximising the benefi ts to the consumer,
● minimising the fi nancial and sacrifi cial costs to the customer, and
● minimising the cost to the organisation.
The service concept is therefore a key tool that can communicate the set of benefi ts (tangible
‘products’ and psychological experiences) to the customer in order to demonstrate the
potential value of the service.
An operation delivers and creates value by playing a part in the supply chain (see Chapter
6 ): adding value to the supply chain to create its services and value to its customers. Some
Chapter 3 Developing and using the service concept 51
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Copyright © 2012 by Pearson Education, Inc.
organisations go further – indeed the more successful organisations do not just add value,
they reinvent it. 2 Many services have been reinvented over the last few years. For example,
internet banking has challenged and radically changed the value delivered by banks and received
by their customers. From a customer’s point of view, new approaches to banking, such
as those pioneered by First Direct, have provided ‘a new kind of value. In particular, it eliminated
traditional constraints of time and space’. 3 Now customers can manage their accounts
and move funds at any time of day or night, almost anywhere. Internet banking, and many
other internet services, have not only reinvented value for customers but also changed the
nature of value creation by the operation. Bank managers are now concerned with the design
and maintenance of customer-interaction technology (websites, plastic cards and computer
networks to support the machines), and in dealing with the inevitable disadvantages of automation,
such as trying to maintain a relationship with customers they rarely see.
It is important to emphasise that the ultimate judge of value is the customer. More important
still is that the real test is perceived value – whether the customers feel that they are receiving
value, based on criteria that are their own, and frequently intangible and intuitive. Here again,
the service concept is central to understanding customer requirements: facilitating marketing in
presenting the service offer in the most effective manner, and focusing the operation’s performance
measures on those areas that have most impact on the customers’ perceptions.
In Chapter 12 we will return to the issue of value, in particular the difference between customer
perceived value and organisational value. In Chapter 15 we will show how delivering
perceived value is central to creating competitive advantage.
3.2.5 The emotional dimension
A key element of the ‘service received’ is the emotional dimension. The service designer and
operations manager must understand what emotions are likely to be evoked during the customer
experience and also resulting from the service outcomes.
Home Depot is an American home improvement store. Its customer statement used to be
‘We sell you the opportunity to improve your home and therefore your self esteem’. Home
Depot understood that this emotional connection was central to their success. The customer
experience was designed around building confi dence in the mind of the customer that they
could carry out the necessary home improvement tasks, and they recognised that a better
home would mean better ‘self esteem’ as an outcome. Home Depot was the fi rst store of this
kind to invest more heavily in employing older, more experienced staff who could advise
inexperienced customers, and also to provide customer demonstrations to build confi dence
to tackle home improvement projects.
In a similar vein, a UK mobile phone provider has employed ‘gurus’ in their stores to solve
customer problems. Their role is not to sell products but to ensure that customers and potential
customers are happy with their purchases and understand how to get the best out of their phones.
3.2.6 What the service concept is not
In this section defi ning what a service concept is, it will be helpful to clarify what it is not.
● The service promise. The promise defi nes what the organisation will do for the customer –
which may not be what the customer wants. The service concept is an agreed view of the
service provided and received.
● The business proposition. The business proposition defi nes the way in which the organisation
would like to have its services perceived by all its stakeholders – customers, employees,
shareholders and lenders. This view, however, may not be shared by customers, who
may perceive the nature of the service in a different way.
● The 4 Ps . Services and products are sometimes described in terms of their constituent parts.
The marketing literature often refers to the 4 Ps of marketing (Product, Price, Promotion
52 Part 2 Frame
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Copyright © 2012 by Pearson Education, Inc.
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and Place), sometimes expanded to the 8 Ps, which encompass some of the elements of
the service concept – Product, Process, Place, Physical evidence, People, and Productivity
and quality – plus additional marketing elements: Price and Promotion. 4 Deconstructing
a service in this way is helpful in that it allows us to identify the various elements of
a concept, check them against customers’ needs (see Chapter 4 ), design and deliver those
elements and measure performance against them ( Chapters 7 – 11 ). However, this ‘bits
and pieces’ approach belies the complexity of many services and also ignores the fact that
customers’ perceptions of service are more intangible. For example, a day out at Disney’s
Magic Kingdom is more likely to be defi ned by its designers and its visitors as a ‘magical
experience’ rather than six rides and a burger in a clean park. 5
● Business model. A business model describes how an organisation achieves its fi nancial
goal. A ‘no-frills’ airline’s model is based on low cost: minimising airport charges, fuel
costs, employee costs, food costs etc., providing very limited service, using a point-to-point
operation and appealing to large volumes of cost-conscious passengers. This certainly
helps describe the value part of the service concept and some of the operations too, but it
misses out on the more emotional level of the customer experience.
● Vision . An organisation’s vision is usually concerned with where the organisation hopes
to be at some time in the future. The service concept is usually concerned with the present;
what the organisation does now and what its customers think it does today. However, the
service concept can be used to provide some details about a vision to help managers bring
it about by developing new services.
● Mission . The service concept is not usually the same as a mission statement. Organisations’
mission statements cover many notions from ‘vision statements’ to ‘company philosophy’.
Like vision statements, mission statements may be concerned with the future
rather than today’s reality. On the other hand, if they defi ne the organisation’s philosophy
it is possible that they tend to be more concerned with organisational values rather than
the detail of the service that is provided and received.
● An idea. An idea is an initial, often unformed, notion of a service. A service concept is a
more complete picture, which includes details about the service provided and the experience
and outcomes for the customer.
● Brand. The service concept is more closely related to the notion of brand. However, brand
has many meanings, including: brand name – the name, design symbol or any other feature
that identifi es a service (or a product); 6 presented brand – how the organisation presents
itself and its promise through its marketing efforts; external brand – how the organisation
is presented through word-of-mouth communication and the media, for example; and
brand meaning – the customers’ perception of the organisation and its services. While
these four perspectives may be different, a service concept is a shared view and is articulated
in much more detail (suffi cient for both marketers to know what they are selling and
operations to know what they have to deliver and how it has to be delivered). Thus the
service concept is usually more detailed and concrete than a brand.
3.3 How can managers use the service concept?
At a strategic level the service concept can be used to defi ne and communicate the nature of
the business, to create organisational alignment and to develop new service concepts to drive
innovation and strategic advantage. The concept is also the starting point for the development
of an operations strategy. We will discuss this last point in more detail in Chapter 15 .
The service concept can be used operationally to help design and specify the service and assess
the operational implications of those design changes.
Chapter 3 Developing and using the service concept 53
Service Operations Management: Improving Service Delivery, Fourth Edition, by Robert Johnston, Graham Clark, and Michael Shulver. Published by Prentice Hall.
Copyright © 2012 by Pearson Education, Inc.
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3.3.1 Defi ning and communicating the nature of the business
We believe there is an opportunity for many service organisations to take control of their service
concept and make it explicit. When we ask groups of individuals, managers, staff and/or
customers to defi ne the service concept of a particular organisation, we invariably fi nd a range
of views. Even managers working in the same department often have differing views about
what their department does for the rest of the organisation (their internal service concept).
The problem is that ‘what we do around here’ and ‘what our customers expect’ are seldom
discussed, articulated or compared. Differing and unspoken perspectives and assumptions
result in inconsistent service provision and confused and annoyed customers, internal and
external. Managers need to take responsibility for making the nature of their service explicit
by ensuring a clear and appropriate ‘marketing’ message to both employees and customers
about the nature of the service concept. Only in this way will they help ensure appropriate,
and consistent, service delivery.
3.3.2 Creating organisational alignment
We would argue that the service concept can therefore act as an alignment tool that links
together different organisational functions with a common purpose and ‘standard’ against
which their actions can be checked. ‘In this respect the service concept acts as a lens and fi lter
through which internal functions may see each other’s roles and contributions to the service
delivered to the customer.’ 7 The articulation and agreement of a service concept is a means
not only of identifying the nature of the business but also of providing it with a sense of
purpose and common direction. It also provides a means of assessing the contributions and
interrelationships among the various functional groups.
We would therefore suggest that in order to share, communicate and evaluate a concept,
it needs to be written down, discussed and indeed agreed. This requires staff and managers
to reach agreement about what is being provided and why. It also provides explicit signals to
customers, existing and potential, about what the service will be like and the benefi ts they
should expect. One problem is that even when written down, the service concept does not
have an objective reality in the same way that a manufactured product has. However, it is still
an important means of articulating what an organisation does and what its customers should
expect, thus aligning its internal and external customers to the nature of its service.
3.3.3 Developing new service concepts to drive innovation and
provide strategic advantage
Developing new service concepts can drive innovation and provide strategic advantage by,
for example, opening up new markets (see Case Examples 3.1 and 3.2 ) or differentiating the
organisation from the competition (see Case Example 3.3 ). As such the service concept provides
an ideal vehicle for challenging the status quo. The mere process of writing down the key
elements of each concept for the main customer groups will encourage service managers to
look at some of the key assumptions that may be implicit in current service provision. Moving
beyond a potential new ‘organising idea’ to identify changes to processes, outcomes and
experiences allows the service operations manager to assess the viability/desirability of new
services. This can not only help managers understand their business but also challenge them
to view their business in ways that can make it stand apart from other organisations. Lord
Marshall, a past chairman of British Airways, made the point:
There are different ways to think about how to compete in a . . . service business such as
ours. One is to think that the business is merely performing a function – in our case, transporting
people from A to B, on time and at the lowest possible price. That’s the commodity
mind-set, thinking of an airline as the bus of the skies. Another way to compete is to go
beyond the function and compete on the basis of providing an experience. In our case,
54 Part 2 Frame
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Copyright © 2012 by Pearson Education, Inc.
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we want to make the process of fl ying from A to B as effortless and pleasant as possible.
Anyone can fl y airplanes but few organisations can excel in serving people. Because it’s a
competence that’s hard to build, it’s also hard for our competitors to match. 8
By thinking carefully about the market, the different customer segments and the needs of the
customers in those segments, while also having an in-depth understanding of the core competencies
of the operation, managers may be able to develop totally new and innovative concepts
that have great appeal to customers and give the organisation a signifi cant competitive edge.
Case Example 3.2 describes the development of an innovative new concept at Singapore
Zoo, which could be diffi cult for other organisations to follow. This development springs
from an understanding of current operational competencies together with a realisation of
why the zoo did not attract foreign visitors – a very large and lucrative market.
Singapore Zoo is no stranger to innovation.
In 1982 the zoo started offering a new service,
breakfast with an orang-utan called Ah Meng.
This has now developed into the Jungle Breakfast
with Wildlife. This morning attraction (held
daily from 9.00 to 10.30) begins with watching
the elephants’ morning bathing routine followed
by the chance to feed them with a selection of
fruits. Guests then go to the Ah Meng Restaurant
(named after Ah Meng who died in 2008 at
the old age of 48) for breakfast and some close
encounters with tamarinds, pythons and orangutans
in the adjacent ‘forest clearing’.
Wildlife Reserves Singapore (WRS) is a public
limited company owned by the Government
of Singapore. It is the parent company of three
award-winning attractions: Singapore Zoo,
Jurong Bird Park and the world-famous Night Safari. Fanny Lai is the Chief Executive Offi cer of WRS and
she explained what they are trying to achieve:
We try to create a memorable wildlife experience for our visitors with a focus on wildlife conservation and education.
While our vision is to be the foremost wildlife institution in the world, our mission is to inspire an appreciation
of nature through exciting and meaningful wildlife experiences. We also help to protect wildlife in their
natural habitat, especially endangered species facing extinction. Our visitors are not just looking for a great
experience with their friends and family, and value for money, many of them also want to contribute to wildlife
conservation. So we try to educate our visitors through interactivity; interpretation boards, our rangers talking
to them, the narrators on the trams . . . We even train our non-zoological staff, such as our food and beverage
staff, so they are able to have interesting discussions with our visitors about the animals and conservation.
Singapore Zoo was one of the pioneers of the open zoo concept. Here the animals are kept in spacious,
landscaped enclosures which try to re-create their natural habitat. They are separated from the visitors using
psychological restraint techniques based on the animals’ natural instincts for defi ning a territory as their
own, or by a natural fear of some elements such as water. The water moats, for example, are concealed with
vegetation or dropped below the line of vision. The result is a feeling of openness. Oppressive cages, which
typify traditional zoos, are not used.
The use of psychological restraints requires a sound knowledge of the behaviour of the animals concerned.
By providing the right habitat, privacy, stimulation, food and social structure zoo management enables the
animals to turn the spaces into their homes and, even though some could escape, they don’t. Stimulation is
Case Example 3.2 Singapore Zoo
Chapter 3 Developing and using the service concept 55
Service Operations Management: Improving Service Delivery, Fourth Edition, by Robert Johnston, Graham Clark, and Michael Shulver. Published by Prentice Hall.
Copyright © 2012 by Pearson Education, Inc.
ISBN 1-323-17409-5
provided by trying to re-create the natural stresses of the wild and bring out the animals’ natural instincts and
refl exes. For example, instead of throwing neatly chopped chunks of meat to the big cats, the keepers will
hang a large hunk of meat in a gunnysack packed with hay and smeared with blood in a tree. The cats have
to compete with each other to get the bag and to tear it apart before getting their reward. Other animals are
stimulated in other ways: polar bears and fi shing cats, for example, have to go fi shing for their food.
One major innovation has been the Night Safari. Despite having a successful world-class zoo the managers
know that it has limited appeal, in that the majority of the zoo’s visitors are local residents. For the large
numbers of tourists on short stopovers, visiting a zoo, which they could easily do at home, was not a high
priority, especially as the weather is hot during the day and many animals sleep then. For these potential
visitors the zoo offered little excitement compared to Singapore’s famous shopping malls and superb food.
The zoo needed a new concept.
Following a rapturous response to a few night tours conducted at the zoo in the late 1980s and after four
years of planning and three years of construction, Singapore’s Night Safari was opened in May 1994 at a cost
of S$63 million. The Night Safari is the world’s fi rst night-time wildlife park. The Night Safari, adjacent to the
zoo, has its own entrance and facilities, and attracts over a million visitors a year.
The Night Safari is nothing like an ordinary zoo. Visitors are ‘transported’ into a real safari experience. To
give visitors this feeling of stepping into a very different place from modern Singapore, Bornean tribal performers
perform attention-grabbing tribal dances (from 6.30 p.m. to 8.30 p.m.). They also provide blowpipe
demonstrations and fi re-eating displays. Fanny Lai added:
We have recently redesigned the Night Safari so that you suddenly walk into the Village of the Rainforest.
You immediately feel that you are entering into a different world. We have music, dancing, performers,
aimed at all of your senses; you hear the music, you see the performers, you smell the rainforest and the
food. You can have a nice dinner by candlelight in a jungle setting then you go into the Night Safari to
experience the wilderness and the animals in their ‘natural’ settings. We also provide the opportunity to
have close encounters with some of the tamer animals in our Creatures of the Night Show where we can
explain about them, their habitat and the need for conservation. Memorable experiences often come from
the small things, these small personal experiences.
All the facilities are consistent with the safari theme. The walkways from the car parks to the tram station are
constructed from wooden boards with wooden handrails. The Ulu Ulu Safari Restaurant, where you can eat
a wide selection of local favourites, such as the famous chilli crab, maintains the jungle feel with its beamed
ceilings with their rustic rattan fans. The restaurant also has an alfresco eating area where you can dine with
the sounds of cicadas, frogs and other night creatures while a herd of Ankole cattle grazes nearby. The alternative
Bongo Burger Bar provides high-quality burgers and alfresco dining close to the tribal dancers. Even
the toilets have a safari feel: they are open to the sky with sinks set in stone outcrops surrounded by jungle.
Quiet electric trams provide guided safaris for visitors around a 3.2-kilometre trail, which takes about 45
minutes to complete. The narrators on the trams educate and inform the visitors as they enjoy the ride, just as
safari guides would do. During the ride the landscape changes through eight geographical zones to provide
appropriate settings for its animals, from the rocky outcrops of the Himalayan foothills to the grassy plains of
Equatorial Africa and ending with the forests of South-east Asia. Three walking trails, totalling 2.8 kilometres,
are well marked and provide opportunities to see all of the animals at close range.
The ‘open concept’ is used to tremendous effect. Indeed, under the cover of darkness, the moats can
be very effectively camoufl aged using netting and shade. Other less dangerous animals, such as deer, are
roaming freely in large areas bounded by cattle grids. Occasionally the tram has to stop and wait for animals
to move out of its way.
The right sort of lighting was a key element in the design of the Night Safari. There was a need to provide
suffi cient light so the guests could see the animals but without detracting from the ambiance or disturbing
them. The result is lighting that resembles soft moonlight using a combination of mercury and incandescent
lights, mounted on tall poles. Only selected areas are ‘moonlit’ as the dark background adds to the atmosphere
and lighting the foreground would spoil the effect of the appearance of freedom. Flash photography is
forbidden to ensure the animals are not disturbed.
Source: This illustration is based on visits to Singapore Zoo, and discussions with staff and material from the zoo’s website, www.zoo.com.sg .
56 Part 2 Frame
Service Operations Management: Improving Service Delivery, Fourth Edition, by Robert Johnston, Graham Clark, and Michael Shulver. Published by Prentice Hall.
Copyright © 2012 by Pearson Education, Inc.
ISBN 1-323-17409-5
3.3.4 Designing and specifying the service
The role of service operations managers is to understand the organisation’s business model
and to construct a service concept based upon the organisation’s vision, mission, brand and
any new organising idea. Having agreed and articulated the service concept, operations managers
then need to design and acquire the resources (inputs) and design and develop the
processes and experiences required to deliver that concept to the organisation’s customers
(we will cover the design of experiences and process in more detail in Chapters 7 and 8 ). Case
Example 3.3 explains how a Japanese businessman designed a chain of hairdressing shops in
Japan to deliver a new service concept.
Takao Kondo, Graduate School of Global Business,
Meiji University, Japan
Traditional men’s hairdressers (barbers) in Japan provide
a haircut, a shampoo, a shave and a head and shoulder
massage. This service usually takes about 40 minutes to one
hour and the charge is usually around 4,000 to 5,000 yen
(about £35). One day Mr Kuniyoshi Konishi, a senior manager
in one of the big commercial fi rms in Japan, while having a
haircut in one of the top hotels in Tokyo, realised that the core
value of this service was the haircut which only takes about
10 minutes. He thought by just providing the core service
(the haircut), a lot cheaper and a lot quicker, one might be
able to open up a new market and attract a large number of
customers. He said ‘Busy people seek shorter service if the
quality of the outcome (haircut) is the same.’ He added ‘You
can collect the money today which you lost yesterday but
you can’t collect the time you lost yesterday.’
As a result he left his well-paid job and launched QBNET
(Q for quick and B for barber). His service concept was, at
maybe no surprise to us but quite a shock for the Japanese,
a quick and inexpensive haircut (about 1,000 yen, £10), no
shampoo, no shaving and no massage. He focused on making
things as simple, cheap and effi cient as possible. He
provided small vacuum cleaners to quickly remove hair around the neck after the cut. Disposable paper
towels were used around the neck and disposable paper combs were also provided. The interior of the
shop was simple; there was no cash register, no telephone and no toilet. There were no chairs for people
waiting but a small bar where customers could lean.
On the fi rst day of opening the shop had over 100 customers. He quickly expanded to a second and then
a third shop, developing effi cient processes as he went along. For example, when the customer arrives he
has to buy a fi xed-price ticket from a vending machine, and the time when the customer arrived is noted.
When the employee starts working on the customer he registers the number of the customer’s ticket so that
the difference between the time when the customer bought the ticket and the time started is recorded. This
is used to provide potential customers with the waiting time using lights on the outside of the shop. A green
light means there will be no waiting, a yellow light means a wait of fi ve to ten minutes, and red means over
ten minutes. The door of the shop also has a sensor to count the number of people passing through. All this
information is transmitted via the internet to the head offi ce.
To help expand his business and deal with the problem that the barber’s job was now quite routine and
standardised, he paid higher salaries than traditional barbers. He also started a Business-Partner Scheme,
Case Example 3.3 Designing a new hairdressing concept in Japan
Source: Andy Maluche/Photographers Direct
Chapter 3 Developing and using the service concept 57
Service Operations Management: Improving Service Delivery, Fourth Edition, by Robert Johnston, Graham Clark, and Michael Shulver. Published by Prentice Hall.
Copyright © 2012 by Pearson Education, Inc.
ISBN 1-323-17409-5
Part of the task of service design is also to create specifi cations for the service inputs and
processes, and operating procedures to try to ensure that staff deliver the service consistently. A
specifi cation takes the elements of the concept and identifi es the quality factors associated with
each, details the standards to be achieved in each and the organisation’s procedure (often referred
to as standard operating procedures – SOPs) to ensure conformance to the standard (operational
control). Where the organisation delivers multiple concepts, several specifi cations and
control mechanisms need to be developed. We will develop these ideas in Chapters 5 , 9 and 11 .
3.3.5 Assessing the implications of design changes
The service concept can be used as a driver for long-term service development. By defi ning
the concept, service designers can compare it to alternatives, proposed or already provided
by other service suppliers, to help operations managers identify the implications of change.
Whether the changes are deliberate changes to the concept or an evolutionary approach
with modifi cations to process or procedures, changes to service concepts have implications
for all parts of the organisation. Our research has found that ‘there is substantial evidence to
suggest that signifi cant changes to service concepts expose the weaknesses in the organisation,
its ability to co-ordinate all the various constituencies and its capacity to communicate
effectively both internally and externally’. 9
Such a ‘concept audit’ can be achieved by using a simple profi ling tool. Case Example 3.4
describes a change of concept in the Natural History Museum in London, which is profi led
in Figure 3.3 .
whereby an employee who had worked for three years could take over the franchise for the shop paying 10%
of turnover plus a shop rental charge.
In 2006, nine years after opening the fi rst shop in Kanda in Tokyo, Mr Konishi had 291 shops with a total
turnover of about 3.8 billion yen (about £29m). He then sold the business. By 2010 QBNET was running
nearly 400 shops including premises in Singapore, Hong Kong and Thailand.
Old concept
‘PRODUCTS’
BENEFITS
EMOTIONS
EXPERIENCE
Multi-levelled experience
Full service
Staged narrative
Support services
‘Star’ exhibits
Education/indulging curiosity
Entertainment
Surprise
Learning
Work support/scholarship
Serious
Enthusiasm for geology
Leisure
Single experience
No frills
Taxonomic displays
Minimalist service
Comprehensive collection
In-depth study opportunity
Professional resource
New concept
Figure 3.3 Changing the service concept of a museum of geology
Source: Adapted from Clark, Graham, Robert Johnston and Michael Shulver (2000), ‘Exploiting the Service Concept for Service
Design and Development’ in Fitzsimmons, James and Mona Fitzsimmons (eds), New Service Design, Sage Publications, Thousand
Oaks, California.
58 Part 2 Frame
Service Operations Management: Improving Service Delivery, Fourth Edition, by Robert Johnston, Graham Clark, and Michael Shulver. Published by Prentice Hall.
Copyright © 2012 by Pearson Education, Inc.
ISBN 1-323-17409-5
ISBN 1-323-17409-5
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