This book focuses on complex services, that is, services embodying the knowledge and capabilities of professionals, sought because of the client’s lack of knowledge or skills in specialized fields. This book is also concerned with the many organizations, such as hospitals and banks, that provide services requiring a mixture of professional and other services to produce the results that customers or clients need. Professionals, semi-professionals, and technical workers laboring in all spheres of human endeavor, from law to medicine, accounting to engineering, social work to architecture, who are involved or are interested in taking part in managing their businesses, small or large, will find this book an invaluable tool in achieving success. This third edition comes with an augmented value proposition: as you read and try to understand and experiment with the material, you are invited at various points to view video clips, lasting between 15 and 25 minutes, that will clarify, complement, illustrate, or go further than what you are reading.

Different types of organizations provide services that require multiple, complex services to produce results. Oftentimes, those complex services morph into a maze of system processes that crisscross, impeding the smooth operation of processes and value creation. So how can you manage multiple services efficiently and effectively? This book outlines the strategy and execution needed to meet your goals. Numerous examples, exercises, and tools are included to help explain and clarify. The revised fourth edition includes a new focus on the impact of artificial intelligence in complex services, as well as links to video clips and podcasts. Professionals, semi-professionals, and technical workers in all areas, from law to medicine, accounting to engineering, social work to architecture, will find this book an invaluable tool in achieving success.

As the title makes clear, this book is about the design and delivery of service experiences. This includes the design of installations, facilities, technologies and scripts used in the staging of such experiences. It introduces the reader to many fundamental notions in service operations, from positioning to execution, with much attention paid to human experiences such as those of customers and service workers; be they performing simple repetitive tasks or complex mental tasks. The subject is treated in an user-friendly manner with a storytelling context, focusing initially on every day services (coffee shops, fast food, supermarkets) and then moving on to complex services (lawyers, physicians, engineers, accountants). Contrary to popular hype, not all service experiences are meant to be memorable. If all you need is a cup of coffee and this is done quickly, effortlessly, and painlessly, that's good. If there's a little plus along the way, that's better: you'll make a mental note that this is a good place to stop next time you are in the area. In an age of exponential technological change, service delivery processes are changing quickly and service industries are being creatively destroyed. You want to be the disruptor, willing to disrupt a large part of your actual income streams. The ability to maintain differentiation rests largely on an in-depth understanding of the service experience and operational excellence. The future belongs to the fastest learner. Intuition is only part of the story.

For the past decade, process validation issues ranked within the top six of Food and Drug Administration (FDA) form 483 observation findings issued each year. This poses a substantial problem for the medical device industry and is the reason why the authors wanted to write this book. The authors will share their collective knowledge: to help organizations improve patient safety and increase profitability while maintaining a state of compliance with regulations and standards. This book was written to assist quality technicians, engineers, managers, and others that need to plan, conduct, and monitor validation activities. To that end, the intent of this book is to provide the quality professional working in virtually any industry a quick, convenient, and comprehensive guide to properly conducting process validations that meet regulatory and certification requirements. It provides an introduction and background to the requirements necessary to perform process validations that will comply with regulatory and certification body requirements.

Designing Service Processes to Unlock Value explores how service processes can be designed to leverage the expanding range of opportunities for service providers and customers to co-create value. The service process design landscape is changing, with many of the previous limitations disappearing on how and by whom services are delivered. Opportunities for new service design configurations are being supported, to a large extent, by technology-enabled innovations; many tasks previously performed by the service provider may now be performed by either the customer or the service provider. As a result, customers are playing a more active role in the service process, not only through self-service but also by providing information to the service provider to create a more personalized service experience. Designing Service Processes to Unlock Value explores how service processes can be designed to leverage the expanding range of opportunities for service providers and customers to co-create value. Readers will learn about frameworks for value co-creation and models for designing all types of service processes, as well as the unique challenges of designing knowledge-intensive services. And with the growing number of alternatives for designing service processes and determining who performs the various service tasks, service performance outcomes are increasingly dependent on the knowledge, skills, and abilities—that is, capabilities—of both service providers and customers. Thus, the book concludes with approaches to unlock these capabilities–and further boost value co-creation.

As the title makes clear, this book is about the design and delivery of service experiences. This includes the design of installations, facilities, technologies and scripts used in the staging of such experiences. It introduces the reader to many fundamental notions in service operations, from positioning to execution, with much attention paid to human experiences such as those of customers and service workers; be they performing simple repetitive tasks or complex mental tasks. The subject is treated in an user-friendly manner with a storytelling context, focusing initially on every day services (coffee shops, fast food, supermarkets) and then moving on to complex services (lawyers, physicians, engineers, accountants). Contrary to popular hype, not all service experiences are meant to be memorable. If all you need is a cup of coffee and this is done quickly, effortlessly, and painlessly, that’s good. If there’s a little plus along the way, that’s better: you’ll make a mental note that this is a good place to stop next time you are in the area. In an age of exponential technological change, service delivery processes are changing quickly and service industries are being creatively destroyed. You want to be the disruptor, willing to disrupt a large part of your actual income streams. The ability to maintain differentiation rests largely on an in-depth understanding of the service experience and operational excellence. The future belongs to the fastest learner. Intuition is only part of the story.

The quest for value drives customer behavior in the services marketplace. This book focuses on complex service processes, and is written for professionals, quasi-professionals, and technical workers laboring in all spheres, from law to medicine, and accounting to engineering. It draws its theory and examples from these professional services and many more, with hands-on end-of-chapter exercises on all topics. A framework is presented for understanding how a set of shared fundamental beliefs drives the best-in-class professional service organizations in their learning, which is the source of sustained competitive advantage. Products and processes can be imitated or copied, but learning faster than your competition cannot. Processes create the benefits customers want by delivering the service, or by making this delivery possible in one way or another. The notions, methods, and tools presented in this book present readers with a perspective on their work they most likely never envisaged, and which will lead to a marked improvement in their effectiveness.