Posted November 28, 2011

What does service design mean to your organization? Does the responsibility of serving your customers rest solely in your marketing and audience services departments?

It’s not uncommon to read articles and blog posts highlighting the importance of delivering exceptional customer service, nor is it rare to read about an increasing interest in producing participatory work that allows the customer to act as “co-curator.” But to create a lasting impact we need to combine these ideas and consider how every aspect of our work may (or may not) affect our customers. Attention to the customer experience must be paid by all departments in order to ensure delivery of top quality experiences and services because this service delivery is critical to nurturing the customer relationship, building value and ensuring sustainability. In their paper, “The Politics and Theatre of Service Design,” Lara Penn and Cameron Tonkinwise state, “service designs must guide the recipient in how to make appropriate demands of the service; but they must also guide the provider in how to meet those varied demands in flexible ways.” We need to fully understand the type of experience our customers want—beginning with the initial encounter and continuing after the experience has ended—and identify ways in which we can cater to those desires as a means to fulfill mission.

Arts and Cultural Management: From Service Design to Success was developed by National Arts Strategies with IESE Business School to help senior cultural executives address how their organizations design offerings with a goal of creating lasting impact, establishing value and operationalizing the idea that everything we do must in some way relate to how we serve our customers. Over the course of the program’s three days, 30 international arts and culture leaders will come together to discover how the integration of marketing, operations and people decisions can result in a five-star experience. They will develop the skills to analyze how their organizations utilize resources and learn to make strategic changes that will help provide more valuable experiences.

We invite chief operating officers, senior executives and others responsible for implementing organizational change to learn more about this new program and apply today »

Explore all NAS Uncategorized »

Related themes

Discuss this post