My Week as a Room-Service Waiter at the Ritz

The Nature of Services

An Operational Classification of Services

Designing Service Organizations

Structuring the Service Encounter: Service-System Design Matrix

Strategic uses of the matrix

Service Blueprinting and Fail-Safing

Three Contrasting Service Designs

The production-line approach

The self-service approach

The personal-attention approach

Managing Customer-Introduced Variability

Applying Behavioral Science to Service Encounters

Service Guarantees as Design Drivers

Conclusion

Case: Pizza USA: An Exercise in Translating Customer Requirements into Process Design Requirements

Case: Contact Centers Should Take a Lesson from Local Businesses