This document discusses using insights from the performing arts to design better customer service. It outlines five key design insights from the performing arts: story, roles, staging, performance, and improvisation. These concepts can help structure customer interactions and allow for adaptive responses. The performing arts engage emotions through live interaction, and customer service should also strive to create emotionally engaging experiences. Designing customer service as an art can help respect customers with dignified interactions and engage them through emotional empathy.

1. A Performing Arts
Perspective on Designing
Services for the Customer
Experience
Raymond P. Fisk
Texas State University
Ray.Fisk@txstate.edu

2. Cast of Characters
• Steve Grove, Clemson University, USA
• Joby John, University of Louisiana, Lafayette,
USA
• Mike Dorsch, Clemson University, USA
• Aidan Daly, National University of Ireland,
Galway, Ireland
• Steve Baron, University of Liverpool, UK
• Kim Cassidy, Nottingham Trent University, UK
• Rick Harris, Aquinas College, UK

3. Playbill
Act 1: Why the Arts?
Act 2: Design Insights from
the Performing Arts
Act 3: Creating the Art of
Serving Customers

4. Act 1: Why the Arts?

5. Why the Arts?
• The arts are very ancient skills.
– The arts emerged as human skills long before
science, engineering, and management.
• The arts are rooted in the complexities
of the human experience!
• The arts are deeply rooted in our
emotional needs.
• The arts are also deeply rooted in our
need for aesthetics.

6. What is Art?
• Two Meanings:
• Forms of creative activity:
– including architecture, dance, design, drawing, film,
language, literature, music, opera, painting, photography,
poetry, sculpture, storytelling and theater.
• A skill acquired through practice.
– The art of conversation.
– The art of friendship.
• In short, the arts can be thought of as creative skills.

7. Applying the Performing Arts to
Serving Customers
• The performing arts concern human interaction.
• The performing arts represent ancient simulation
systems for stimulating pleasure (and coping with
pain).
• We have studied and applied concepts and
techniques from the performing arts to services
(Daly et al. 2008; Fisk, Grove and John 2008; Grove
and Fisk 1983, 1992, 2001; John, Grove and Fisk
2006).
• Most organizations do not treat providing service as
an art, but there are a few global services that do,
e.g., Apple, Disney and Starbucks.

8. Performing Arts Are Services
• Performing arts (comedy, dance, music,
opera, storytelling, and theater) are services.
– They are more than just metaphors for service!
• The performing arts and services both
require:
– 1) Mastering the demands of real time
performance and
– 2) the dynamics of creating for the
audience/customer experience.

9. Act 2: Design Insights from the
Performing Arts

10. Five Key Design Insights from the
Performing Arts
• Structural
– Story – The narrative thread.
– Roles – Everyone plays a particular role.
– Staging – Decisions about the front and
backstage.
• Dynamic
– Performance – Putting the service in motion.
– Improvisation – Adaptive responses.

11. Story in the Performing Arts
• Storytelling is the oldest performing art. The
other performing arts are only more complex
ways of telling stories.
– Storytelling - Verbal narratives with emotional impact.
– Theater - Visual narratives with emotional impact.
– Music - Rhythmic narratives with emotional impact.
• Stories create emotional meaning!
• Stories provide the through line or
thread.
• All services are three act plays!

12. Roles
• In the performing arts, everyone has a role to
play:
• Audience – The most essential role.
• Actors -
– Protagonist – Antagonist
– Leading and supporting roles
• Backstage Staff – Often outnumber the
frontstage actors.

13. Staging
• Complex performances are staged by actors
for an audience.
• A key decision is what to reveal on the
frontstage or conceal on the backstage.
– Frontstage – The heart of the show.
– Backstage – To create a successful
performance, the backstage staff works hard
to make the work of the frontstage actors
look easy.

14. Performance
• The dynamics of live performance are the true
test of great service design.
• Great performances require:
– Scripting – To plan out the sequencing of the
performance.
– Rehearsal – Careful repetitive practice to make
sure that everyone is very ready.
– Emotionally engaging experience.

15. Improvisation
• Improvisation IS
– Loosely scripted performance delivered in real time in
response to situational factors.
– The hardest part of service design.
• Successful improvisation requires:
– Skill in performing the necessary tasks.
– Understanding how to modify the real time performance
of the task.
• Improvisation is NOT
– Random expression.
– Just adaptability or creativity.

16. Act 3: Creating the Art of
Serving Customers

17. Future of Service Design
• We have a choice between service and disservice!
• Even good services often contain incoherent service
fragments.
• Technology should serve customers, not enslave
them.
• Service design problems are much too complex for
narrow solutions.
• The art of serving customers is just as important as
the science of serving customers.

18. Finding the Rules of Performing
Arts Design
• Rule of Threes - beginning, middle,
and end.
• Rule of Exclusion - The notes you
don't play are as important as
those you do.
• Rule of Turns – Humans take turns
with each other.

19. Art of Serving Customers
• A creative skill that serves customers through:
– Respecting the dignity of human interaction.
– Engaging customers with emotional empathy and
emotional labor.
– Employing story, roles, staging, performance and
improvisation to create valuable service
experiences for customers.

20. Conclusion
• Multidisciplinary perspectives on service design are
needed.
• The arts should be included in service design.
– Involve people with arts training and skills in the planning and
design process.
– Involve people with arts training and skills in training frontline
service personnel.
• The performing arts are especially adept at engaging
emotions during customer–employee interactions.
• Let’s Make Serving Customers a Fine Art!

21. Questions