Module 7 – Service logic in the public sector

As far as my knowledge, Sweden is seen to have a quite well functioning health care. With this blog I want to share a really bad experience I had when my niece (7 years old) had been in a bicycle accident and needed medical care. She had been cycling into a cement block which lead to a big wound in the forehead (she wore a helmet but it cracked!) and some loose teeth. We went to our nearest hospital and was directly taken care of. We was directly shown into a room and a doctor came and examined her. This hospital are not specialized in children though, and since this had been a head trauma they sent us with ambulance to the biggest and most famous children’s hospitals in Sweden. The ambulance staff was also very professional and friendly and we felt we were in good hands. The ambulance trip was very fast with blue lights on but then the strangest things happened. Well at the children’s hospital, a nurse (!) looked at her wound in the forehead, talked to her a bit and then said to us “here, she shall take these two painkillers (Alvedon and Ipren) and then you go and have a sit in the waiting room”. Me and my sister looked at each other and said – “OK, but shall not a doctor take a look at her? Don´t we need to X-ray her head?” The nurse gave us an angry eye and said it´s no danger but we should just keep her under attention so she don´t start to throw up, start to be delirious and are not allowed to go to sleep(!)… Me and my sister didn´t believe our ears, we had just arrived with an ambulance driving in high speed and with sirens on… But we sat down in the waiting room, what else could we do?...

Hours passed by without anyone examining nor checking up on my niece. I don´t know how many times we told the personnel that we were really worried, shouldn´t a doctor take at least a quick look at her?... What was happening, they hadn´t forgot us? The only thing we was met by when we asked these questions was really really rude, snotty personnel giving us the evil eye.  I could not believe this! Here we were, at the best children’s hospital in Sweden, and we were treated like this?! They if someone, should be the experts in handling worried parents and relatives! I also told them this. As a mockery they had a sign on the wall saying “Any violence or threats are being reported to the police”….

Let´s give an example. We came in with the ambulance around 16.00 o´clock and around 20.00 o´clock my niece said she was hungry. Since she had had a head trauma, we asked the personnel if she was allowed to eat. Yes, no problem, just tell us if she throw up. We were told there was a “Pressbyrån” nearby but after five minutes my sister came back and said that it was closed. We turned to the personnel and asked what we should do, were there anything open nearby? The vending machine they had in another waiting room was out of order.  My niece had eaten around lunchtime that day to she was really hungry. And since we came in with ambulance we didn´t have a car with us. The personal said that it was nothing they could do, they didn´t have anything to offer. I was totally amazed… We were so lucky that the father to another patient in the waiting room offered himself to buy some food for my niece since he was going to buy their food…

At 22.00 o´clock my niece said she was really tired so we asked the personal if she were  allowed to sleep. Yes, no problem. After half an hour I noticed that the head wound was bleeding again, though the bandage. Again, I asked one of the nurses in the reception which was new on the shift. She came with me to have a look. Since my niece just had fell to sleep, she was heavy asleep and didn´t react when the nurse tried to wake her up. I then saw that she got worried and very quickly came back with a tool measuring the pulse. My niece was ok but that for me was a proof that they were not in control of us nor the situation…. Scary…  

Ten (10) hours later it was our turn to met the doctor which was nicer than the other people we had met during the evening, but to summarize this was one of the worst experiences I have ever had. I had quite high expectations in beforehand since this was the best children’s hospital in Sweden so it took a lot to change this to a bad experience. But this was so bad, it was a nightmare…

The hospital seemed to have lack of coordination, were missing resources and last but not least – the personal working there was no good…  In a hospital it´s crucial to have:

1)       the right people in the right place (it´s just a fact, some people shall not work with people…) 

2)       the staff should be educated how to meet worried parents/relatives that are in chock – how the personal are meeting you are of great importance! Of course I understand that the personal are under a lot of press and it´s not their fault that they are lacking resources but what they can control is their attitude – how they meet people.

For me, this hospital were not efficient, nor professional. Our customer experience could have been so different if we had been met in another way and with another attitude.

According to Per Echeverri, all customer interactions that customer experience are not harmonious[1] and value is formed in interaction. It can lead to that value is co-created or co-destroyed. In this case I think that we definitely ended up in “Reductive co-formation of value”. We had a good start with interactions at the first hospital and with the ambulance personal, but decreased during the process. The interactions ended up being a value co reducer. They seemed to have missed value co creation totally.

This was how we got met at the most famous children hospital in Sweden… For me, this creates a big uncertainty about the future. Sweden, seen as a rich country with a well functioning medical care – what is  happening? Which direction are we moving towards?

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[1] Per Echeverri, Video: Value co-creation and value co-destruction in service encounters,hhk3.kau.se/uce/  

Module 6 – Service infusions in Heavy Commercial Vehicle Industry

 The company I work in is a traditional production company and manufacturer of heavy commercial vehicles and historically the industry has been seen as classic “goods industry”.

The industry as such are changing though. Customers that historically only bought a vehicle, is now demanding more and more services packages and service solutions connected to their actual vehicle purchase. This has driven the industry towards that companies move from only delivering Product value -  to adding Service value - and further against more “Solutions” (seamless system). In our company we actually say that we aren´t only delivering a vehicle – we offer a transport solution.

When listening to Julia Jonasson from Volvo, I think they have managed to describe where they are on their journey against being a full scale transport provider in a very good way in the “Service Journey” picture. If I should rate our company, I would say that we, just as Volvo, somewhere between “Maintenance services” and “Professional services”.  

 

 

 

To do this journey,  going from a traditional product oriented company to a service oriented company, leads to some challenges.

One thing I think can be a challenge in our company is when we try to drive a development that is a service related issue instead of a “hardcore” product related issue. I think it can be quite tricky to get engineers and technicians in our company to understand and strive for investments connected to this service development, this is probably due to that they are used to hardcore product questions which can be quite measureable, service investments can be harder to measure… This is also something Nina Löfberg talks about in her video.

Another challenge is, when introducing new services, there might be a resistance from the sales force. It´s always convenient to sell what you have always sold, and maybe they see it tricky and difficult to start selling this new service and therefore don´t promote the service that much. It´s therefore really important that we as a company make sure that we “roll out” these new services in a good way = educate the sales persons in a good way to make them feel safe and secure with selling the new service.  

It could also be that they don´t even see the benefit for the customer since they are product oriented. This means service sales can be missed if developed by a service oriented employee and then taken over by a product oriented employee.

A fundamental thought according to Nina Löfberg is to change the mindset of the employees from product orientation to service orientation! I agree on that. J

Module 5 – Customer Experience in the Heavy Commercial Vehicle Industry

Customer Experience in the Heavy Commercial Vehicle Industry

What do I know about customers experiences? And how can it be improved?

If we look at the operators purchasing the vehicles as customers, we know that for example uptime and TCO (Total Cost Operation) are things that are really important for them. We also know that customers that historically only bought a vehicle, is now demanding more and more services packages and service solutions for example financing, service- and maintenance contracts etc. connected to their actual vehicle purchase. The message is clear – the customers want complete solutions.
To be able to offer these customized offers, we enter into a partnership with the customer and work together to find the best solution that enables the customer to achieve profitability. Doing so also creates profitable business for us as a company. This is a really good example of Value co-creation. It is a win-win situation.

To enable a good customer experience in connection to uptime and TCO, we also need to be very quick  when it comes to quality assurance. If there is a quality issue we need to solve the problem quickly. These less positive things can be turned into positive things if handled in a good way. As always, it´s really important that we meet (or surpasses) the customer expectations.

To measure how satisfied customers are, we have a survey called “CSI – Customer Satisfaction Index”. In that survey, our customers are given the opportunity to rate us as a company in different areas, for example product quality, repair, maintenance, after sales etc. We then use the customer satisfaction input from this  “customer experience barometer” for further development.

We do see a need to understand the customers business even more. Knowing the customer and the customers customer is a key for successful business. Through good knowledge of our customers’ business operations, we can focus on their profitability by delivering optimal transport solutions that maximise customer revenue while minimising costs. To do that we need to work more and more as cross functional teams (internally) and also work more together with our distributors, our customers, the PTA´s in the cities as well as the operators.

Module 4 – Resource integration in the heavy commercial vehicle industry

 
Resource integration in the heavy commercial vehicle industry

Resource integration is the central concept in the service logic – the customers creates value through integrating resources. As suppliers of heavy commercial vehicles, services and transport solutions, I would say that we, together with our customers, use and are also depending on resource integration.

According to the service logic, a resource is something that actors can draw on for support and these resources can be either operant or operand (Maria Åkesson, video, “Resource integration”). We as vehicle manufacturer deliver our vehicles to the customers. Examples of operant resources are our company´s employees (engineers, sales force etc.) and the customers employees (for example traffic planners, drivers, mechanics, etc.) Examples of operand resources are the vehicles, different sales support/IT systems, our factory, etc.

Maria Åkesson also says in her video: “Resources are not – they become”. We as suppliers are the experts of developing and building heavy commercial vehicles but our vehicles are of no use without someone knowing how to operate them. Our customers are the experts of operating the vehicles – they integrate their resources by knowing how to operate the vehicles in their specific operation/traffic.

As already mentioned in an earlier blog post, the industry for commercial vehicles has changed. Customers that traditionally have bought only a vehicle are now demanding more and more services packages and more and more complex service solutions connected to their actual vehicle purchase. This leads to new challenges and new ways of working. “Value co-creation” is getting more and more important. Our company enter into partnerships with the customers and work together to find the best solution that enables the customer to achieve profitability. Doing so also creates profitable business for us as a company, it´s a win-win situation.

Module 3 – Service Logic in my industry

This week´s assignment:
Blog reflection: In your second blog reflection, we want you to continue to reflect upon your industry. What is the ‘value in-exchange’ in your industry and what would be the ‘value in-use’. How does value co-creation in your industry go about? For your help and inspiration, relate to the concepts introduced in the videos and the literature. You could name the blog post “Value co-creation in the XXX industry”, or any other title you deem appropriate.

 

Value co-creation in the heavy commercial vehicle industry

Let´s start with the two definitions according to Christian Grönroos:

“Value in exchange”: is determined by the price paid by the user at the time of purchase. It is embedded in the resource (product, core service, information) and exist at a singular point in time.  

“Value-in-use” : the value emerging for or created by a customer (user) as a utility during usage. It unfolds during usage and evolves over time as the usage process continues.

If we look at creation of “Value in exchange” in the heavy commercial vehicle industry, this is done by us as heavy vehicle suppliers during the whole “sales to delivery process” (“suppliers sphere”, including research & development, purchase, manufacturing, delivery etc.).  The actual “Value in exchange” happens when the company sell a vehicle/service/transport solution to the customer.

The “Value-in-use” creations (“customer sphere”) will happen when the customers are using the vehicles/services provided by the heavy vehicles suppliers to fulfil the different transport missions (transport of goods or people).
Here “Value-in-use” evolves over time and it´s important for the suppliers to have a very well functioning after sales service business (after sales network, spare parts availability etc.), this to be able to keep satisfying the customers after the actual sale is done.

When it comes to “Value co-creation”, this is getting more and more important.
The industry for commercial vehicles has changed. Customers that traditionally have bought only a vehicle  are now demanding more and more services packages and service solutions connected to their actual vehicle purchase. We talk more and more about service- and transport solutions instead of products.

There is a need of knowing the customer and the customers customer to be able to deliver the right product- and service offers.

In our company we enter into a partnership with the customer and work together to find the best solution that enables the customer to achieve profitability. Doing so also creates profitable business for us as a company.