At the Bad Services Corporation we have 15 principles of Bad Service Design.
Principle #4: A bad service does not set expectations a user has of it
If you want to implement this principle, make sure you don’t tell users about anything that is going to happen in the service they are about to use
Think of your service like a dark tunnel, with no torch, where you ask your service user to get to the other side with no help or map
Don’t give a timeline of when to expect anything or understand the process of how your service works, the best bad service takes much longer than a user thought it would
Never confirm any outcomes for the user before they use the service, or when they are using it
Don’t tell them any costs that might be incurred in the service, better still, surprise them with hidden costs once you’ve got them locked in
Don’t tell them what to bring into your service if you require some kind of I.D or documents to use your service, let them turn up, or their agent, and surprise them
Of course, the Bad Services Corporation is a spoof company built by the School of Good Services. You really should make your services easy to find. But we found leaning into some satire a good way to expose the patterns of Bad Services.