Services are one of the last areas in which companies seek to innovate, Kamalini Ramdas, a London Business School professor of innovation and operations management, tells Harvard Business Review. Management tends to have a that’s how we’ve always done it attitude toward service — yet breaking those patterns can revolutionize a company, leading to greater customer satisfaction and lower costs.

Ramdas offers four steps in innovating service:

  1. Challenge assumptions about your service structure.
  2. Match customer needs by bundling or unbundling services.
  3. Refine your strategy.
  4. Find the right people to deliver the right components of your service.

Watch Ramdas’s video, “Don’t Be Afraid to Rethink Your Services,” here. 

More: Four Ways to Improve Service Without Raising Costs.

Click here to download a free whitepaper, “Five Steps to Make Field Service Profitable.”

ABOUT Marisa Wong

Avatar photoMarisa is an online content strategist with a focus on developing and launching digital editorial products. She has a journalism background (Time Inc., WSJ) and have been working in online media since 2007. She is currently managing editor at SlideShare.