15 Attributes of Good Services

I recently read Lou Downe's Good Services, How to Design Services That Work

While there's a lot of great detail and examples in the book, I simply want to share the 15 attribures that make a good service is a list. Just by reading through these one-by-one, you can take inventory of a service you manage, or are building, and see how it stacks up.

A good service:

  1. Is easy to find
  2. Clearly explains its purpose
  3. Sets the expectation a user has of it
  4. Enables a user to complete the outcome they set out to do
  5. Works in a way that's familiar
  6. Requires no prior knowledge to use
  7. Is agnostic to organizational structures
  8. As few steps as possible to complete
  9. Is consistent throughout
  10. Should have no dead ends
  11. Is usable be everyone, equally
  12. Encourages the right behaviors from users and staff
  13. Should respond to change quickly
  14. Clearly explains why a decision has been made
  15. Makes it easy to get human assistance