Service Relationships: Why Value Co-creation is a First Date, and How to Get a Second
Look, I've spent way too many years helping organizations build service management platforms, and I keep seeing the same thing kill digital transformations over and over again. Technology teams treat their work like a vending machine. You put in a ticket, the machine processes it, and out pops a solution. Done. Next.
But here is the thing: ITIL (Version 5) is basically screaming at us that this doesn't work anymore. We're supposed to be doing Digital Product and Service Management now, which sounds like consultant-speak, but stick with me because there is actually something real here.
They call it "value co-creation." I know, I know. It sounds like something from a corporate retreat where everyone has to do trust falls. But I am going to explain it the way it finally clicked for me: a service relationship is exactly like a first date.
And if you spend the entire evening talking about your impressive internal features, your high technical performance, and your complex architecture? You're not getting a second date.
The Wedding Photographer Gets It
I used to obsess over what value actually is. Turns out it is not a thing you can box up and ship. Value is subjective. It is the perceived benefits, usefulness, and importance of something to a specific person. Which means it lives entirely in the eyes of whoever is receiving the service.
Take a wedding photographer. They show up with a $5,000 camera, professional lenses, and years of expertise. Those are resources. The output is a digital file or a printed album.
But that is not the value.
The value is the outcome: the couple being able to relive their most precious memories and share them with family for decades. If the photographer takes technically perfect, high-resolution photos but misses the shot of the first kiss? Value is zero. It doesn't matter how sharp the focus was.
I see this constantly in ServiceNow implementations. We celebrate our uptime percentages and ticket resolution speeds as if they are the whole story. Meanwhile, the person at the other end doesn't care about your server. They care about finishing their monthly report on time so they can leave work and make it to their kid's school play.
That is the outcome. That is what actually matters.
And here is the kicker: co-creation means both sides have work to do. The new ITIL emphasizes that the photographer needs to know where to stand, but the couple has to show up, smile, and communicate which moments matter most. If they don't cooperate, the service fails. Same in tech. If the business won't share its real goals, your expensive software is worthless.
Who Are You Actually Dating? (And Why It Matters More Than You Think)
ITIL (Version 5) breaks the service consumer into three distinct roles, and once you see it, you can't unsee it: the Sponsor, the Customer, and the User.
In small companies, sure, these might be the same person. But in large organizations? Treating them as one is how you build things nobody uses.
- The Sponsor is the person with the wallet. They authorized the budget. They care about ROI, strategic alignment, and overall costs. Think of them like the parent paying for university tuition. They might never sit in a classroom, but they definitely care about the grades and the cost per semester.
- The Customer defines the requirements. They're in the planning meetings, telling you what the application needs to do. They take responsibility for the outcomes.
- The User is actually using the damn thing every day. They don't care about budgets or contract negotiations. They want it fast, intuitive, and reliable. That is it.
I once worked with a team that launched a new expense tracking tool. The sponsor loved it because it saved money. The customer was happy because the data was beautifully organized. Users hated it because uploading a single receipt took ten minutes. Eventually, users just stopped using it correctly, data became garbage, and the whole thing collapsed.
You can't just date the Sponsor's wallet. You have to make sure the User actually enjoys the experience, too.
The Messy Kitchen (Or: How Much Chaos Should You Show?)
One of the concepts that actually helped me in real life is the "Band of Visibility."
Imagine you're hosting a dinner party. Your guests see the beautifully set table and your warm hospitality. They don't see the pile of dirty pots in the kitchen, the frantic moment you realize you forgot an ingredient, or that you nearly burned the appetizer. That is "behind the scenes."
For basic services, like your internet subscription, the band of visibility is narrow. You don't care how they route data through cables. You just want Netflix to load.
But in a partnership? That band needs to get wider. You might invite your partner into the kitchen to help design the menu.
The mistake I see technology leaders make is trying to hide the kitchen entirely, even when they're supposed to be partners with the business. If your stakeholders don't see how hard your team works to keep ancient systems running, they'll never understand why a new feature takes three weeks instead of three days.
On the flip side, showing too much chaos causes panic. I learned this the hard way when I explained our entire technical debt situation to a C-level exec who then immediately wanted to know why we couldn't just "fix it all."
The art is knowing how much of the messy kitchen to show. Enough to build trust, not enough to create fear. The new ITIL gives us the framework to manage this transparency.
The Service Journey (Which Never Actually Ends)
Service isn't a project anymore. It's not "we launched it in Q3, done." It's a continuous journey with seven stages, and honestly, most teams completely ignore the ones that matter most.
- Explore: Does this relationship even make sense?
- Engage: Can we actually work together?
- Offer: What specifically will we do?
- Agree: Do we both agree on the rules?
- Onboard: How do we get started without a mess?
- Co-create: How do we create value every day?
- Reflect: Was it worth it, and how do we improve?
Most teams spend all their energy on Offer and Agree. They focus on requirements docs and contracts. But in 2026, the organizations that are actually winning have mastered Engage and Reflect.
If you're not reflecting on whether value was actually achieved, you're just repeating the same mistakes forever. I've seen teams run the same failed playbook three times in a row because nobody ever stopped to ask, "Did that actually work?" This is a core part of the transition to ITIL (Version 5).
Every Relationship Has Baggage
Services come with costs and risks. That is the baggage. Your job is to remove more baggage than you add, or the relationship isn't worth it.
Car sharing is a perfect example:
- Baggage removed: No car insurance, no expensive repairs, no monthly parking spot. You're protected from the risk of your engine dying.
- Baggage added: You pay per trip, you walk to where the car is parked, and there is a risk that no car is available when you have an emergency.
As a service provider, you're supposed to manage service-specific risks on behalf of the consumer. If you just pass all the technical risks back to your users, you're not providing a service. You're providing a headache with a login screen.
Stop Being a Vending Machine
Here is what I want you to take away from this:
If you're a business leader or stakeholder, technology isn't a black box. It is a human activity. If your IT department feels unresponsive, your service relationship is probably stuck in the wrong stage. Maybe you're still in Explore when you need to be in Co-create. You have a role to play here, too.
If you're in technology, and I'm talking to myself here as much as anyone, it is time to come out of the server room. You're not just a technician anymore. You're a relationship manager. Your value isn't in your uptime statistics. It is in your empathy and your ability to understand what outcomes your customers are desperate to achieve.
Value co-creation isn't a box you tick on a form. It's a living thing that requires transparency, constant communication, and actually listening.
So take a hard look at your current service relationships. Are you a vending machine that spits out parts? Or are you a partner?
Because in 2026, the partners are the ones who get the second date.
