Conference article

Many companies investigate new business opportunities in a turn from product to service design. As service offerings expand over time and space; such notions as ‘customer journey’ or ‘service blueprint’ have been suggested to grasp and design the nature of the emergent services. However; we find that there is room for improvement on two levels. First; customer journeys and service blueprint tools could benefit from an empathic customer understanding; that is the design of customer-specific services. Secondly; the existing customer journey and service blueprint tools are less concerned with the cyclic nature of services; by which we mean the dynamics of a customer relationship and its development over time. We report findings from collaborative workshops; in which we challenged two companies to try a new concept and tool we call ‘The service Ouroboros’. We suggest it as a more appropriate way to design various customers’ service cycles.

service design; service cycles; touchpoint; service ecology; customer journey; empathic design; personas