“humans Inside” as the Key Characteristic of Service Systems

This paper presents a definition of service systems that is simple, comprehensive, actionable, and, most of all, differentiates service from product systems. We propose as the defining characteristic of a service system the significant presence of human beings, either as individuals or as organizations, as part of the service system during the time of use. We hypothesize that the main implication of our proposed definition is that service systems are perceived as having human characteristics, treated (partially) as human beings, and expected to exhibit human-like behaviors. We also show how adding the notion of user intensity creates an interesting categorization of product and service systems.