Chapter 9
Service
How You Support and Amplify the Value of Your Offerings
Service innovations ensure and enhance the utility, performance, and apparent value of an offering. They make a product easier to try, use, and enjoy; they reveal features and functionality customers might otherwise overlook; and they fix problems and smooth rough patches in the customer journey. Done well, they elevate even bland and average products into compelling experiences that customers come back for again and again.
Common examples of Service innovations include product use enhancements, maintenance plans, customer support, information and education, warranties, and guarantees. While human beings are still often at the heart here, this type of innovation is increasingly delivered through electronic interfaces, remote communications, automated technologies, and other surprisingly impersonal means. Service can be the most striking and prominent part of the customer experience, or an invisible safety net that customers sense but never see.
If your primary offering is itself a service, its features and functionality will be classified as Product Performance (despite the word “product”). Service innovations comprise the additional support and enhancements you provide around your core offerings.
How to spot potential Service innovations:
Do customers rave about their interactions with the company—particularly ...
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