Why your organization needs Service Design
We can all agree that we live in an uncertain world. New digital technologies such as AI, VR and machine learning have caused the world to change rapidly and recently, with the pandemic the pace of change has become faster and more dramatic than ever before.
Human needs and behaviour are changing constantly, thus, societies and the world around us are changing. There are new ways of living and working (remote and hybrid), and the traditional management approach does not work anymore. With all that said, organizations must be able to adjust and move quickly to respond to all these changes and meet their customers’ and employees' needs and expectations. I believe one of the ways businesses can do this is with Service Design.
Service Design can help your organization innovate, respond to uncertainties, and create solutions that add value to your business that customers will appreciate. Let me explain why.
The current state
During my career, I have worked with well-known global IT organizations. Even though one of their primary goals is to create a seamless experience for their customers, I noticed that they mainly focus on designing user-friendly digital products that fulfill user needs and desires. Of course, this is very important, but the product experience is just a part of the total experience. To ensure the whole experience is smooth and seamless, organizations should invest some of their effort in Service Design.
“Service Design is the activity of orchestrating people, infrastructure, communication and material components of a service to create value for all stakeholders involved. ”
— Service Design Network
I believe Service Design is about making the world a better place. It’s about the exchange of value between customers and businesses. And it’s about creating solutions that are impactful and beneficial for customers, businesses and societies.
Product is just a part of the total experience
Imagine you are at home checking out one of the best furniture e-commerce VR mobile applications. You find a beautiful sofa that you want to buy. You can even try the sofa in your living room via Virtual Reality technology. You decide to buy it. You make your purchase and schedule the delivery. That concludes the product portion of the interaction but not necessarily the customer experience. Think about it
While waiting to receive your new sofa, it’s possible that a few hiccups could occur. The delivery could be rescheduled or even cancelled. The packaging could be broken or hard to open. There could be problems with assembling the sofa, connecting with the support team is hard and they are not helpful. We all have had similar types of experiences and they can all affect the overall experience. So, what’s the answer?
Service Design
One of the main tasks of a Service Designer is to discover and predict all of the possible service situations that could happen and to then design a seamless experience for multiple touchpoints, channels and all of the potential participants in the service scenarios i.e., end-users, sales workers, furniture makers, warehouse workers, delivery drivers, etc.
To formulate a seamless experience Service Designers perform ethnographic research; hold multiple co-design workshops; and study the needs, motivations, behaviours, culture and context. Armed with this insight they are then able to create an end-to-end, seamless experience across all touchpoints and for all participants.
Why I Believe Service Design is a great asset for your organization
1. Shifting from Product to Service
In recent decades, companies have been shifting from being product-focused to service focused. For example, in the past customers would buy a one-time Adobe Photoshop package that contained a set of CDs, different manuals and instructions. They would then put a CD in their computer’s drive, follow the instructions and install the software. If they had any problems, it was very challenging to find a solution or connect with a support person. For customers and businesses like Adobe, this is what was called a one-time linear relationship.
Today, customers simply download the Adobe Cloud version of the software and pay a monthly or annual fee (i.e., software-as-a-service). This gives them easy access to the latest features and support. This is what is called a constant relationship between customers and the business.
2. Finding Invisibles
Services are complex and intangible and there are numerous underlying resources and processes that are invisible. Typically, nobody has “designed” services. Instead, they are added over time through multiple interactions between different participants. Let’s take the furniture buying experience as an example. There are several logistic aspects, third-party partners, delivery systems, support team processes, packaging teams, policies and rules that are invisible, yet they could have a huge impact on the experience.
Another one of the main tasks for the Service Designer is to make the invisible data, resources and processes visible and to orchestrate them to optimize the service or create a new service experience.
3. Empowering human
“People are at the heart of the services. Services consist of relationships between customers and service providers, as well as a relationship between people inside and outside of the service’s organization.”
— Polaine et al, 2013
Often organizations forget that experience is the key to having a successful business. Service Design applies methods that create a deep understanding of customers, service providers, employees, the culture and the context of the service. The Service Designer does ethnographic research and holds co-design workshops which focus not only on customers but on all parties involved to create a holistic understanding of the service
4. Break down the silos
Large organizations create departments, and each department focuses on small parts of the service experience. Anything that happens beyond their silo is usually ignored. In other words, each department is focused only on its values— they have forgotten to consider the entire service.
Steen et al. (2010) demonstrated that co-design with Service Design can create effective communication and collaborative environments between different departments of an organization. Therefore, Service Design has the potential to break down the silos and improve the collaboration between different departments
5. Reducing costs
Service Design provides a holistic view of the service ecosystem. In other words, via Service Design, all the dependencies such as frontstage, backstage, resources, data, processes, interactions and relationships are visible. This helps reduce expenses, enhance decision making and boost efficiency by saving time and improving the process and service developments.
In summary, our world is changing rapidly and utilizing service design can strengthen your organization’s ability to respond to uncertainties, ever-changing human needs and evolving business objectives. It will allow your business to gain a holistic perspective of its ecosystem, break silos, improve collaboration and connect innovation, research, marketing, management and design (Lewrick et al, 2018). Most importantly, by leveraging Service Design your organization can ensure the delivery of value and achieve greater customer loyalty, and revenue and enhance its business.
I hope this article has proven useful to you. Please don't hesitate to connect. I would love to hear your thoughts and comments.
References:
Steen, M., Manschot, M. & De Koning, N., 2011. Benefits of Co-design in Service Design Projects. International Journal of Design, 5(2), pp.53–60
Polaine, A., Løvlie, L. & Reason, B., 2013. Service design: from insight to implementation, New York: Rosenfeld Media.
Lewrick, M., Link, P., Leifer, L., 2018. The Design Thinking Playbook: Mindful Digital Transformation of Teams, Products, Services, Businesses and Ecosystems. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Roto, V., Lee, J.-J., Lai-Chong Law, E., & Zimmerman, J. (2021). The overlaps and boundaries between service design and User Experience Design. Designing Interactive Systems Conference 2021. https://doi.org/10.1145/3461778.3462058