Views from no 1

Raving about your iPod? Desperate for your iPad? Feeling you have just too much iPud? The sexy product lives. The question is: why can't service be as sexy? Let us leave aside the oldest profession here – after all the feminists would argue that one of the worst things about prostitution is that it reduces the person to a product or sex machine. But rather than inducing feminist rage, the iPad is encouraging a lot of woman chortles - the iPad is already being dubbed iTampon.

Why is it that for all the talk of service becoming pre-eminent in the reasons why people stay loyal, it is still products that create these acres of column inches or web videos? Stephen Fry's review on the BBC for Newsnight showed him at his eloquent best, playing the role of Apple advocate and all the more credible for his independent status as cultural guru and chief of the twittering clan. The jewel-like but friendly design of Apple products creates (as no doubt it is meant to) a strong emotional connection with the product.

The surprise is that service which has to be a transaction between humans and therefore offers a chance for connection everytime does not seem to generate that mass explosion of 'must have' fandom. Service seems to lack the critical social and emotional mass to generate the sort of fuss and fanfares of an Apple launch. Why not?

One way of looking at Apple iProducts is to think of them as a gateway to service represented by the collection of apps on it. At its simplest, finding an app that tells the time is a service. The product is therefore a concretisation of service, makes it something you can hold in your hand and a way of sharing experiences with other users. By contrast, phoning First Direct remains a one on one transaction and not one that you can necessarily share with others – for one you do not know who fellow customers are whereas the Apple user is out there waving their iWhatsit, shouting at it on the bus or silently earphone-connected. Service delivery is unheard, unseen and between only two consenting parties.

Is there a way round this that might make service a more open shared experience that can generate public excitement and debate? One idea is sparked for me by how little use people make of their customer satisfaction data. If the views of others are made generally known, then that creates a point of reference for an experience – and what is a product but such a point of reference and a way of anchoring an emotional experience? Publish that data and get a discussion between fans and foes, advocates and detractors. If you do not do it, then some one else will.

Colin Adamson

Colin writes this column for socapie members, His views are not those of socapie or its Board.