In 1760, the Industrial Revolution starts in England. This revolution changed most of the manufacturing processes. It’s the start of the production by machines in factories. But why does it matter for Service Design? This is so because with it, factory products start to now be produced at a large scale. Some authors — like the guys behind the company CustomerGauge, or Karl Pawlewicz from Olark — say that this scale led to the need to create the first customer service teams.

The notion of scale is also important for Service Design. Service designers often work in complex systems on a big scale where a person who can map the system and the interactions with humans is important. If the scale remains small, service designers are needed less as business owners will always be in direct contact with their customers and won’t need someone who brings them back in touch with their customers to explain why these customers are pissed off.

This article is part of the book "A Tiny History of Service Design, " a tiny two-hour read that goes through the historical events that created what Service Design is today.