It ain't what you get it's the way that you get it.

Have you noticed how really good service makes you happy? Whether it's dealing with a restaurant booking or using a mobile phone, your experience really makes a difference to whether you go back there or renew your contract.

So why don't companies and organisations take more care in how they put together that customer experience? If you were buying a razor, you'd understand that a lot of research has gone into how to design it. Making it fit your hand. Making it look good. Making it do its job properly. But when it comes to services, people just put them together. There is a tendency to offer the service without really thinking about who is going to use it and what their experience would be.

Well this attitude is becoming a thing of the past. Thanks to pioneering work at the university of applied science in Cologne http://www.international-office.fh-koeln.de/english/ Prof Dr Michael Erlhof and Dr Birgit Mager and carried on all over the world, notably in Scandinavia, many organisations are applying design principles and proper research methods to finding out what customers really want and how they want it delivered.

So far these processes in the UK have been taken up largely in the public sector and promoted by the government to improve the quality of public sector services. Some consumer organisations too have taken up the challenge.

But imagine how good your B2B services could be if you really took the trouble to not only find out what all your customers really liked and needed, but used special techniques to actually create the services with them.

That would surely make you stand out from the crowd.