Service design simulation using fine grained agents

ABSTRACTService design deals with methods to organize people, organizations, infrastructure, communication and resources such that macro outcome parameters of the service are achieved while also ensuring excellent individual customer experience. Services are complex, dynamic processes engaging service deliverer and customer over several interactions over multiple touchpoints. Thus designing a service well requires an understanding of the impact of the dynamics of service delivery on service outcome parameters and customer experiences. We discuss a fine-grained agent based simulation approach to service design which will allow services to be simulated in-silico. Fine-grained agent models allow us to understand the macro effect of a service design and the persona level user experiences over multiple customer touchpoints. To model the user experience we use a need based behavior model, influenced by advances in Maslow's need based hierarchy. We demonstrate these ideas on an example from the air travel domain.