Bravo! You completed your first week 👏! In the first week, you learned a few basic principles of good Service Design. You learned that good services are always evolving, that they go beyond marketing and that they even go beyond your business.

After reading the basics, you might think: “Hey! But my service really rocks! People love it.” You might even think: “So why should I keep on following this course?” Let me share a fantastic statistic that will change your mind about this.

The data

In 2005, the smart minds behind Bain & Company conducted a research about this exact feeling 🤓. They surveyed companies to understand if their customers were happy with them. And after they asked the companies, they asked the customers of these companies if they agreed. Here is what the researchers from Bain & Company found:

80% of companies believe they provide a superior experience but only 8% of customers agree with these companies.

Ouch. Yep. That hurts. This 72% so-called delivery gap between what companies think they deliver and what people experience is proof that Service Design is needed. So, maybe your service sucks a bit 😔. But hey, that’s okay, most services suck a little. And this chapter is here to start changing that 🚀.

Services are frustrating

“Frustrating” is one of the words that best describes most of the services we use everyday. Our bank frustrates us, going to the hospital is a frustrating experience, finding a new flat is a frustrating experience as well. This frustration is present in companies of all sizes. Your huge bank makes you feel you are worthless but the waiting experience at your local shop is also quite terrible. Frustration in services is everywhere. This is what the statistic from Bain & Company tells us. It’s also what our experiences with businesses tells us.

Since we know that most services are frustrating, one of the first steps for someone like you, someone interested in making their service better, is to remove a lot of this frustration. And that’s what this chapter is all about 🙌.

What you’ll learn this week

This week you’ll discover some tips and principles that will help your customers feel less frustrated when they use your service 😀. You’ll understand

• How you can better handle errors,

• How you can make the waiting time less horrible,

• How you can use smarter pricing to make people happy, and

• How you can make your service more personal to your users.

Indeed, this topic is so important that it is the biggest one in this course 🤯. It has about 2 hours of videos for you to watch. So, buckle up and let’s start with the first principle which is “Don’t Solve Every Problem You Are Asked to Solve.”