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Blink 3 of 8 - The 5 AM Club
by Robin Sharma
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Good Services summary
Lou Downe
Decoding the Mystery of What Makes a Good Service
16 mins
Brief summary
Good Services by Lou Downe offers essential guidelines for designing effective services. It emphasizes understanding user needs and creating services that improve user experiences, ultimately fostering trust and satisfaction in both public and private sectors.
Table of Contents
Good Services
Summary of 6 key ideas
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Key idea 1 of 6
What is a service, anyway?
Let’s begin with the basics. What is a service? It’s pretty simple really – services are things that help us do something. Something as simple as buying an ice cream. Something as complex as planning a wedding. They’re the interface through which we experience the world.
Services work best when they’re designed for the channel they’re used in. Take the 1906 Sears catalog – it was smaller than standard magazines so it would end up on top of the reading stack. On the flip side, brick-and-mortar stores with half-hearted online shops show what happens when services aren’t properly adapted.
These days services tend to be atomised into discrete components. Think about buying a house – the process is broken down into steps. Here’s the thing to remember: only the user decides what the service actually is. If you provide property surveys, you might think of that as your service, but your users see it as just one step in their bigger journey toward purchasing a home.
So, what makes a service good? First off, a good service is designed. Sounds obvious, right? But many services are just a mix of technological limits, political decisions, and personal preferences. Look at call centers – you call for advice but they set seven-minute limits which end up being more like five with identity checks. That’s hardly a service designed to give quality advice. And poor design comes with a hefty price tag: in the UK, up to 60 percent of government service costs go to fixing service failures!
Secondly, good service design starts and ends with your user – they’re the ones who truly define what your service is, not your org chart or business unit. This isn’t just feel-good philosophy; it’s practical business sense. When services are built around genuine user needs rather than internal structures, they create less friction, require fewer resources to maintain, and generate more loyalty. Services that work for users don’t just make people happier – they fundamentally benefit organizations through reduced costs, longer lifespans, and greater positive impact on both bottom lines and society.
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What is Good Services about?
Good Services (2019) defines what makes a service truly effective and provides essential principles for designing services that work well for users. It demystifies the difference between good and bad services, and analyzes the common elements that determine whether services succeed or fail to meet user needs. Suitable for both practitioners and non-practitioners, it serves as the definitive new resource for anyone interested in better service delivery.
Who should read Good Services?
- Business leaders
- UX designers
- Product managers
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