Co-creation in FM services and a road to hospitality business
https://hospitalitytechnology.wordpress.com/2012/07/09/idsnext-changing-the-face-of-service-delivery-in-the-hospitality-sector/
At the beginning of this week (29-30 August 2016) PATI team members Suvi
and me participated in the CFM Nordic conference in Copenhagen where
researchers and practitioners gathered together to find an answer to the
question “Does FM contribute to happiness in Nordic countries?”. Although,
there wasn’t a single answer for this hard question, we all heard and learned a
lot about the development of FM in the Nordics. Our team presented 3 papers in
total, all related to developing spaces, workplaces, and FM services. Here, I
won’t discuss about the space development and co-working spaces but I will
share my personal thoughts on co-creation and service development topic.
The second conference morning started with few sessions and one of them
concentrated on co-creation and service innovation. I was presenting a paper
there, introducing the ways how FM service providers could improve their
services through value co-creation. I tried to show how differently FM and
value co-creation see and understand value. In FM,
value creation is more of a top-down approach where improvements are coming from
the collaboration of client organizations and service providers. In value
co-creation, a network of stakeholders is necessary but the leading role is
given to end-users, improving products or services based on their needs. The
second presentation there was made by a researcher that looks at value
co-creation phenomenon in hospitality business. Her results showed that, even
though we think that unique service experience is the main (or most successful)
road to value creation, the main thing that users notice is the quality of
service delivery, meaning how front-line service personnel delivers the service
and what experience s/he provides. Ms. Forder (DK) also discussed the role of
the front-end service personnel and the ways that these employees can add value
and create better services because they are the ones that have the most knowledge
about their customers collected through face-to-face interaction and constant
feedback.
After our presentations,
the discussion concentrated on the ways how FM service providers can learn from
their end-users and what the suitable methods of co-creating together with the
end-user and together with own employees are. Can FM learn from the hospitality
business and try to use their service personnel as the main point of collecting
knowledge about own customers? After all, a lot of service development in
hospitality business is done because of the information that front-end
employees hold. Is that the easiest way to provide services that are really
needed? And then, how front-end staff should be trained that their mind set
would be oriented towards helping customers in any way possible?
One example
illustrated the discussion pretty well. A cleaner at the airport helped
struggling travellers to do their check-in and sent them to the right terminal
and gate. Is this an example where FM services are moving? As far as our
knowledge goes, yes, that is the direction. How should it be done properly? And
what challenges does it create to FM service providers? These questions will
need to be answered later. But the thought in my head keeps on going – what
does it mean in terms of our office environment? Does it mean that a
receptionist will become a main “people manager” of corporate employees? Or a
maintenance person will be the one that will help with IT systems? What do we,
as knowledge workers, expect from a person watering flowers in the corridor? Can
we change our perceptions and ask for help with setting up a video conferencing
system for our meeting?
Let’s see where
the future brings us. I hope for an exciting change!
Vitalija
