“ Service design is the activity of working out which of these pieces need to fit together, asking how well they meet user needs, and rebuilding them from the ground up so that they do.” – Louise Downe, Head of Design for the UK government, Cabinet Office and Digital Service
Service Design (explained)
Before: your current business challenges
You want your employees to deliver a great customer experience but something’s not clicking. Broken processes or many disparate unconnected systems are creating busy-work and are wasting time. You get bothered by problems big and small that streamlined processes would fix, but you’re not sure how to start fixing them. There are different aspects of the business you know you’re not paying attention to and customers, employees or other stakeholders are struggling.
Create a Service Design for your small business
I start by examining the current processes, interviewing employees, customers and other stakeholders. Together we draw “maps” of the value proposition, the user journey and the business model. We implement some changes, test and measure effectiveness, then roll out what’s working.
After: what makes Service Design powerful
Take the entire organization into account: manage the whole rather than letting individuals manage the pieces. Improve your company’s digital, physical and social experiences with a human-centered design approach. Deliver your service with an elegant user experience, that also streamlines the back-end: the systems, processes, business logic. Reduce complexity of system disconnects and causes of customer pain. Align the needs of customers, service providers and stakeholders.
Who uses it?
Companies like Adidas, Apple, Ford, Herman Miller, Nike, Starbucks, Target, Whirlpool all implement Service Design methodology to their business models.
“Imagine you put 11 world class soccer players on a single team. What do you think would happen if there’s no coach and no tactics? All of these players would play their own game.
Even though individually they are some of the best, as a team they probably wouldn’t win a single match. And it wouldn’t be much fun to watch for the spectators. The stadium would be empty in no time.
What we do, and what service design does, is take all the interactions in a service and help to orchestrate and harmonize them, where the end result is a happy customer and a successful business.” - Marc Fonteijn