This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. When people think of services, they often think about offerings that are neutral or routine. These tend to be services they use regularly--for example, dry cleaning, haircutting, or gardening. However, there is a third type of service that is not often considered or well understood. The authors refer to these as "negative" services because they are related to events most people hope they will not have to deal with: toothaches, leaky roofs, or collision repairs, for example. Because the events that trigger the need for negative services are not everyday occurrences, many people are not equipped to diagnose the needs or to make informed judgments about the solutions required; furthermore, even after the service has been provided, most people are in a poor position to judge its quality or the price they paid for it. Many kinds of companies in many industries, including health care, insurance, household repair, pest control, and ambulance use, offer negative services. Companies hoping to build positions in negative services face two major challenges: how to access inexperienced customers who are not in a strong position to evaluate the service being provided and may have a poor idea of its cost; and how to organize and deploy their services to meet customer needs when demand is unpredictable.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Most consumption experiences are the routine stuff of life--filling the gas tank, buying groceries, grabbing a quick lunch. Such tasks for the most part are neither fun nor painful; they're simply things that need to get checked off the list. Indeed, the authors say, they are so neutral that people often choose the seller with little thought and forget the experience in a matter of hours. Some providers of neutral services want to keep things that way. They want to be so convenient and reliable that people continue to use them unthinkingly. For certain mature service businesses, however, the addition of fun can be an important differentiator. The authors present three case studies taken from industries not known for fun--furniture retailing, consumer banking, and the grocery business--to show how it can be turned to profitable advantage. Jordan's Furniture, Commerce Bank, and Stew Leonard's operate their basic business models at a very high standard of excellence. But they also have what it takes to make a routine experience into something positive: strong leadership, a clear vision, a discriminating filter for new employees, a focus on hiring for attitudes rather than skills, and the ability to come up with the unexpected. The authors offer some general guidelines and cautionary notes to help managers who may want to try to emulate these successful companies.

Integrates issues in service operations, organization behavior, and applications of management science models such as simulation and queuing theory. A complete analysis of the case includes understanding process flows, computing utilization levels, and using models of the stochastic arrival rate and service rates of the existing and proposed systems. In addition, considers the managerial issues involved in running an ambulatory care center. The Primary Care Clinic (PCC) is the only walk-in clinic on campus and presently works under a triage system. The Student Health Services (along with PCC) is scheduled to move to a new facility. The director of the PCC views the move as a good opportunity to review and improve on the present service delivery process and system. Three broad objectives have been identified for the new system: reduce the waiting time for seeing a healthcare provider, transform the perception of the clinic as an impersonal bureaucracy, and improve student perceptions (especially nonusers) about the performance and effectiveness of the PCC. To achieve these objectives, a new system of clinician teams (doctors and nurse practitioners) has been proposed.