LOOKING AHEAD

Looking ahead, we believe that the design of the best service strategies will reflect elements of the strategic service vision framework, whether by this name or some other. In the future, this philosophy will spread to a larger number of organizations, including those creating packages of products and services designed to deliver results. We expect that it will be applied to an increasing extent to the strategies and management of not-for-profit and government organizations as well.

IKEA, the purveyor of a lifestyle centered around home furnishings, illustrates how elements of a strategic service vision fit together to produce remarkable results. To some, this exposition may sound like an ad for IKEA. Rather, we intend to convey the idea that a strategic service vision has many moving parts and evolves over time. (For example, IKEA's practice of shipping and handling all furniture in knocked-down form was not formalized until 1951, when an employee took a table apart in order to get it into the back of his automobile.) This helps explain why few service organizations stand out in their respective industries. Do organizations like IKEA make mistakes? Of course. Do we agree with everything they do? No. But by means of strategic service vision thinking, whether it goes by that name or not, its managers have been able to bring many elements of strategy into alignment.

Organizations achieve a strategic service vision through an operating strategy that comprises a chain of relationships, which we have termed a service profit chain. Is that strategy still applicable more than 20 years after we first presented it? Does it hold promise for future service leaders? These are our next concerns.