A product is a physical item you can hand to someone.

A service is something you do for someone.

An accountant will do something for you (submit your tax return). She’s in the service economy.

An accountant who knows the law, and correctly submits your returns (the service) is providing a good service, and an accountant who provides a good service is the only kind of accountant customers want. A good service is the expected kind of service.

There is no obligation for the accountant to smile – smiling doesn’t affect the quality of the the tax return, and the tax return is the service. A good service is a good tax return, not a good smile.

And yet it’s not hard to imagine that we’d choose a friendly accountant over a non-friendly one if both can submit a tax return. Good manners don’t affect the service, but they definitely affect the experience.

And as soon as we understand that, we can recognise that many parts of what we call good service have nothing to do with the service and are in fact parts of a good experience, and that the question is no longer if we are playing in the experience game, but rather, how are the winners playing?