So What Did You Say Service Design Is? Some lessons learned from our experience at KONE Does it really make sense to build an internal service design competence? Will the effort, time and money invested bring a genuine benefit for the company? Is it a better solution building it in-house instead of buying it from a consultancy? These are all questions faced when the idea of using service design at KONE started, more D.A. Paula Bello was the first service design manager at KONE Corporation, with the responsibility for building the internal competence and team, as well as for establishing external networks. She is currently a consultant on design strategy for KONE and others and an entrepreneur in the fields of hospitality, real estate and digital services.
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than two years ago. And after going through quite a journey, I can convincingly answer: Yes. Yes. And yes. This is our journey.
The role of design at KONE KONE – founded in 1910 – has more than 47,000 employees and net sales of ¤7.3 billion in 2014. Its vision is to deliver the best people-flow experience: enabling a smooth, optimised and enjoyable flow of people and goods within a building through solutions such as elevators, escalators, automatic doors and access control. While products are the most tangible and fast-growing business of KONE, services are the most stable part of the industry and provide the largest pool of opportunities. Design at KONE has grown from within. In a span of about seven years, a competence was built and design became one of the three key strategic R&D focus areas, together with eco-efficiency and ride comfort. Our new products – heavily invested in to create a KONE ‘look & feel’, as well as to bring end-users to the core
of the development – have won several awards, including those from Red Dot, Good Design and Fennia. Our new range of products has been slowly but strongly revitalising our identity. The natural next step is to think of designing services. But how do we do that? Is it about improving our services or creating completely new ones? Actually, what does service design means for us? These are tricky questions, especially at the beginning when we were lacking the experience to answer them honestly and concretely. We still don’t have final answers yet, but the steps taken so far are not only solid but also inspiring. This article shares some of the top lessons learned during our journey. Starting a movement Theoretically, all companies want to shift towards user and customer-centricity.
