vol 7 no 3 | january 2016
Selling Service Design
32 THE PATH TO VALUE VIA SERVICE DESIGN by Paula Giles 58 EASY TO BUY – NOT EASY
TO SELL by Daniel Ewerman, Anders Landström 80 MAKING A SERVICE DESIGN MOVIE by Satu Miettinen, Mira Alhonsuo and Heikki Tikkanen
the journal of service design
18 euro
Touchpoint Volume 7 No. 3 January 2016 The Journal of Service Design ISSN 1868-6052
Pictures Unless otherwise stated, the copyrights of all images used for illustration lie with the author(s) of the respective article
Published by Service Design Network
Proofreading Tim Danaher
Publisher Birgit Mager
Printing Peecho
Editor-in-Chief Jesse Grimes
Fonts Mercury G2 Apercu
Editorial Board Robert Bau Melvin Brand Flu Stefan Moritz Jesse Grimes Birgit Mager
Service Design Network gGmbH Mülheimer Freiheit 56 D-51063 Köln Germany www.service-design-network.org
Project Management Cristine Lanzoni Hanka Meves-Fricke
Contact & Advertising Sales Cristine Lanzoni journal@service-design-network.org
Art Direction Miriam Becker Jeannette Weber
For ordering Touchpoint, please visit www.service-design-network.org
Cover Illustration/ Picture p.26 – p. 27 Irina Polubesov
F RO M T H E E D I T O R S
Selling Service Design
Service design practitioners are rarely seasoned salespeople. While they may be comfortable with all the challenges that a service design project can throw at them, they are often less sure of themselves when it comes to securing the project in the first place. Despite the growth of service design as a discipline - as evidenced by the number of practitioners, academic programmes and in-house capabilities springing up around the world - it still faces a difficult challenge: How does one sell service design? It’s a so-called wicked problem, made of intertwining questions that often have no clear answers. Who are the right people to speak to on the client side? How can potential ROI be measured and justifiably presented as part of the sales process? What can trigger an interest in service design when it is unfamiliar to the prospect? What does a project proposal consist of? And can service design projects be “pitched” in the same way as other design projects? These challenges and more are at the heart of this issue of Touchpoint. We asked the service design community to share their experiences of how to best to sell service design, and we have collected that advice to share with our readers. From Paula Giles’ encouragement to speak the language of the C-suite (page 28), to Transformator Design’s Daniel Ewerman and Anders Landström’s plea to service designers to become more “buyable” (page 54), there is a wealth of tips within the following pages to help get the commercial side of service design projects off to a successful start. I hope that the articles in the following pages help to effectively grow the market for service design, by improving the way we acquire new work. Here’s to a successful (sales year) 2016!
Jesse Grimes for the editorial board
Robert Bau is a strategist and thought leader in service innovation, branding and marketing with more than 15 years’ agency experience in shaping customer expectations and experiences. Robert is a former Professor of Service Design at SCAD and played an instrumental role in building and directing the first MFA and BFA service design programs in the U.S. Melvin Brand Flu is a partner at Livework where he is director of strategy and business design. He has over 25 years’ experience working on the cutting edge of customer, business and technical innovation in industries ranging from telecommunication and financial services, to public sector and entertainment. Stefan Moritz is an entrepreneur, corporate change-maker and customer experience champion. Leading a unit of researchers, designers, digital experts and strategists he works with global service companies, governments and public sector organisations. He is Vice President Customer Experience at Veryday, one of the world’s top-ranking design and innovation consultancies. Jesse Grimes, Editor-in-Chief for Touchpoint, has fourteen years experience as an interaction designer and consultant, specialising in service design. He has worked in London, Copenhagen, Düsseldorf and Sydney and is now based in Amsterdam with Dutch agency Informaat. Birgit Mager, publisher of Touchpoint, is professor for service design at Köln International School of Design (KISD), Cologne, Germany. She is founder and director of sedes research at KISD and is co-founder and president of the Service Design Network.
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IMPRINT
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FROM THE EDITORS
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NEWS
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KERRY ’ S TAKE
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Want to Sell Service Design? Get a Trojan Horse Kerry Bodine
14 CROSS - DISCIPLINE 14
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How Service Design Is Transforming Product Development Tim Murdoch, Steve Haigh, Warren Drummond Redesigning Uber’s Surge Pricing Robert J. Neal
22 Bank, Real Estate broker
or 7-Eleven Zach Hyman 4
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44 26 FEATURE : SELLING SERVICE DESIGN
28 Who Are You Selling To?
Minna Einiö, Laura Franck, Mariann Parts, Pauline Ranta 32 The Path To Value via
Service Design Paula Giles
44 Stop Selling Service Design
Bart Muskala, Christophe Leuckx, Maarten Aelvoet 48 Selling Service Design
in Canada Chris Ferguson, Katherine Monteith
36 Prototypas Bravas
Manuel Bollue, Jurgen Tanghe 40 Selling Service Design
Internally by Tapping Organisational Behaviour Annette Bush, Jason Hessing, Becky Reed
54 Serve Well to Keep
on Serving! Luis Alt 58 Easy to Buy –
Not Easy to Sell Daniel Ewerman, Anders Landström
C ONTENTS
80 48 62 Selling Service Design in a
Developing Country Rodrigo Gajardo, Carmen Gerea 66 From Kilowatt-hours to
Customer Experience Klara Lindner 68 The Value of Customer
and Staff Engagement Elliot Felix, Victor Nwankwo
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72 TOOLS AND METHODS 74 Software Tools for Service
Designers: How software tools can support the service design process Christiane Rau, Anna Zbiek 80 Making a Service Design
Movie Satu Miettinen, Mira Alhonsuo and Heikki Tikkanen 84 PROFILES 84 Interview with
Ulla Jones
86 INSIDE SDN 86 Service Design National
Conferences in Finland: ‘Design or Conform’ 87 Service Design National
Conferences in Taiwan: ‘Service Design for Social Impact in Asia’ 88 Second Business Meet-Up
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GLOBAL SERVICE DESIGN COMMUNITY MEETS IN NEW YORK CITY
3RD SERVICE DESIGN NATIONAL CONFERENCE IN JAPAN 2016
THE TIDE IS TURNING : CHANGE AGENTS , A TREND REPORT ON FINANCIAL SERVICES
SDN Japan will hold their third national conference on 23 January 2016 at Fujiwara Hiroshi Hall, Keio University, Yokohama, Japan. Themed around ’Evolution of Service Design in Japan’, the conference will welcome guests from around the world and introduce the latest global trends, while developing an understanding of how service design is practiced in a wide range of industries in Japan, and exploring future challenges. The conference program features a diverse lineup of guest speakers from abroad, including Jamin Hegeman (Adaptive Path/ SDN), Katrine Rau (General Electric) and Alisan Atvur (Novo Nordic), as well as presentations of case studies on service design projects by Japanese companies, and a panel discussion by the speakers.
New technologies are enabling new ways to interact with money and customers, and expectations of financial services are changing tremendously. To foster change and raise opportunities for service design in this area, the Service Design Network is proud to announce its first Special Interest Group Trend Report on Financial Services. Written by Gravitytank, with the support of many SDN members and other service design thought leaders, the report explores major trends that are changing the way we spend, save and invest money. The trend report full-issue PDF can be downloaded free of charge and the printed copy can be purchased on SDN website: www.service-design-network.org/ trendreport
Get more information at: www.japan.service-design-network. org
Back in October, the Service Design Network partnered with Parsons – The New School to host the Service Design Global Conference 2015 in lively New York City, United States. Over 500 leaders and practitioners from around the world joined the event to explore the theme of ‘A Journey to Value’. The conference offered great keynote talks and sessions. To name but a few of the highlights: Billy Seabrook from Citi Bank talking about aspects of purpose, intelligence and trust regarding customer experience and value exchange; Ryan Armbruster from United Healthcare on designing for gaps in healthcare; Christian Bason from the Danish Design Center focusing on the evolution of design; Katrine Rau and Katrina Alcorn from GE Energy on developing the Internet of Things; and Jon Campbell and Dr. Muni Karavdic on building a sustainable engine for growth within established organisations. Kerry Bodine held the closing talk reflecting across the two-day event and sharing her perspective on how service design can reach to the next level. Overall, the conference had a great buzz, a truly global spirit and a vibrant sharing and networking atmosphere. Check out all the remarkable content, including presentations, videos and pictures at: www.service-design-conference. com/content
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SERVICE DESIGN AWARD 2015
CHALLENGING URBAN ISOLATION AND LONELINESS : THE SDGC 15 DESIGN CHALLENGE
Today’s cities provide us with more opportunities than ever before to connect with one another and to engage in the activities that help us to live healthy and fulfilling lives. However, cities can also be immensely isolating places, lacking in intimacy, identity and accessibility. To address this issue, Designit and Wipro Digital came together at the Service Design Global Conference 2015 to challenge participants to develop new ideas that could empower citizens of urban environments to make more meaning ful connections with one another and their surroundings. Following an engaging kick-off workshop at SDGC15, five teams were formed and each left inspired to tackle one of three separate
target groups: the elderly, kids with working parents and new urbanites. After receiving the innovative ideas, the Design Challenge jury had a difficult task ahead of them. But, in the end, they chose Be.ROOTED, a unique service that helps alleviate the fear of moving to a new city with engaging packages that inspire users to connect with their new home. Submitted by Kendra Shillington, Founder of Shift Design and Rachel Safren, President of Vital Form, the team relied on their own experiences as transplants and dived into the emotional journey of someone in the midst of relocating. Be.ROOTED truly encourages new urbanites to proactively engage in an adventure of exploration and connection. Read more about the Design Challenge, the winning idea and the jury statement at
The Service Design Award, curated by the Service Design Network, is the premier recognition of excellence in the field of service design. The award is granted for outstanding work in the field of service design in commercial, non-profit/public and methodology categories. As the field of services design continues to mature, and as the impact of services and customer experience is increasingly recognised on a global scale, the Service Design Award showcases best practices to a worldwide audience. The prize-giving ceremony and exhibition of The Service Design Award 2015 took place on 3 October 2015, in New York City, integrated into the Service Design Global Conference 2015 program. Among the high volume of submissions from 23 countries, 13 projects were shortlisted by the jury and four of them brought home the Service Design Award! Catch a glimpse of the amazing winning projects on the following pages and find all the details at: www.service-design-award.com
Entry for the Service Design Award 2016 will be open on 1 February 2016. Any organisation or individual worldwide is invited to submit their work, which will be judged by a jury of internationally recognised professionals.
www.designit.com
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Winners of the Service Design Award 2015: ‘Prototyping for Organisational Change’ award WINNER
Thick | Fitzroy, Australia www.studiothick.com CATEGORY
Non-profit/ Public sector PROJECT
Reimagining government service for citizens CLIENT
Department of Premier and Cabinet, Victorian Government LINK
http://service-design-award.com/ award/winners-2015/designinggovernment-services-for-citizens
The project was undertaken to understand the service preferences of Victoria’s citizens as they interact with their government. Thick created two fully functioning service centres to provide an environment for user research. The centres were designed to capture a complete picture of an individual experience by weaving together data from user interview, survey data, digital analytics and physical analytics. It was one of the largest surveys of Victorians’ preferences ever undertaken with 3,052 people visiting the centres over the three months it was open. The trial has led to the launch of a new government agency, Service Victoria, to provide a whole of government approach to service delivery.
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WINNER
Hellon | Helsinki, Finland www.hellon.com CATEGORY
Commercial PROJECT
Travellab CLIENT
Finavia LINK
http://service-design-award.com/ award/winners-2015/travellab
The strategic vision and the service mission of Finavia is to turn Helsinki Airport into the leading transfer airport in Northern Europe within the Asian transit travel market. The aim was to understand which new services would have the most significant impact on improving the transfer passenger experience. During Travellab, more than 900 passengers were interviewed over 75 days of prototyping at the airport. This included testing of 12 different kinds of new service prototypes chosen out of the 200 possible improvement ideas. It was covered in over 80 English speaking news or online updates and reached 5 million Twitter users globally.
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Winners of the Service Design Award 2015: ‘Result-driven Service Design’ award WINNER
Designit | Oslo, Norway www.designit.com CATEGORY
Non-profit / Public sector PROJECT
Redesigning breast cancer diagnostics CLIENT
Oslo University Hospital, Norway LINK
http://service-design-award.com/ award/winners-2015/redesigningbreast-cancer-diagnostics
This project rethinks the way the Breast Cancer Diagnostic Centre at Oslo University Hospital handles the entire referral and diagnostic process. The result is a 90% reduction in waiting time from a patient's first visit with their general practitioner (GP) through to their final diagnosis at the hospital. This represents a dramatic improvement in efficiency, a huge improvement in quality of life for patients in a tremendously stressful period of time and, potentially, saved lives.
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Day 1 At the general practitioner
Day 2 Sorting and sending out appointments
Day 3 Examinations and preliminary answer
Day 4 Diagnosis and treatment plan
NE WS
WINNER
Hellon | Helsinki, Finland www.hellon.com CATEGORY
Commercial PROJECT
People’s Pharmacy CLIENT
Yhteistyöapteekit LINK
http://service-design-award.com/ award/winners-2015/people-spharmacy
Yhteistyöapteekit (YTA) is the largest pharmacy chain in Finland comprising over 120 pharmacies around the country. The concept has been radically new in Finland’s rather conservative pharmacy business, as it points the pharmacy chain towards new and more active role in the healthcare ecosystem. The pilot pharmacy has tripled its service sales since the opening, and four out of five of its customers are extremely likely to recommend the new services to others. The pharmacy has seen 47% growth in customer volume (Feb 2014− Mar 2015), 69 % growth in the sales of prescription drugs (Feb 2014−Apr 2015), and 86% of the customers shop there more than once. The concept enforces the role of pharmacies as health care experts, providing a lowbarrier access to health services and creating new co-operation in public health care. Touchpoint 7-3
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Want to Sell Service Design? Get a Trojan Horse
I’ve been a fan of service design since my introduction to it in grad school —and an active champion of the discipline since my initial involvement with the Service Design Network back in 2010. In fact, I’ve spent a significant amount effort over the past five years helping companies understand what service design is and how it can benefit their organisations. But it’s been a hard slog for two key reasons. People don’t know what ‘service’ is For cultural, social, and economic reasons that are beyond the scope of this article, the term ‘service’ is much more broadly used and understood across Europe than it is in the United States. When I speak with my U.S.-based clients, and even with my friends and family, they equate ‘service’ with one of two things. The first is the support organisation you call or visit when you need to resolve a problem with a company or product: ‘I had to call customer service to get the charge reversed’ or ‘I need to take my car in to the service department’. The second concept is limited to the interactions customers have with in-person employees in certain industries. When someone in the 12 Touchpoint 7-3
U.S. asks, ‘How was the service at the restaurant?’ they’re specifically asking about how friendly the wait staff was, how quickly the food came out, and perhaps how generous the waiter was with his pours of Chianti. They’re not referring to the food, drinks, décor, or cleanliness — and they’re certainly not thinking about the systems of people, processes, and technologies that enable the restaurant to serve customers every day. In short, there’s zero recognition that the entire restaurant is a service in and of itself. People are scared of ‘design’ Despite the best efforts of designers, educators, journalists, and industry analysts, the word ‘design’ still strikes fear in the hearts of business people around the globe. For many,
traumatic memories of junior-high school art class combine with distrust of anything not firmly rooted in spreadsheets or computer code — and they instantly reject any notion of design. In a meeting several weeks ago with a big tech client, I used the word ‘design’ with a group I had assumed to be familiar with design thinking concepts — but their sudden silence, blank stares, and crossed arms told me otherwise. I quickly backtracked and started talking about “understanding the real problem and prototyping solutions.” They nodded, and disaster was averted! The innovation team at a government agency I work with also met with strong resistance when introducing design methodologies to the organisation several years ago. It now uses the term ‘HCD’ when describing its approach to design projects — and cross-functional project team members go along for the ride, compliant with this new acronym and blissfully unaware that they’re practicing Human-Centered Design. The prevailing attitudes towards design in the business world are so rampant that a pair of co-authors I spoke to recently admitted that they consciously try to omit the word
K E RR Y ' S TA K E
‘design’ from their design workshops — and even tried to cut the number of references to it in their book, which (you guessed it) is about design. We can’t wait for the new guard I expect that both of these problems — misunderstanding about the nature of services and fear of design — will correct themselves over the next decade, as more design-educated (or at least design-friendly) professionals make their way into top management positions around the globe. But the service design community can’t wait that long to advance our discipline and apply our expertise to weighty problems in both industry and the public sector. We need to find a way in. Service design’s Trojan Horse: Customer Experience Several years ago, IBM conducted a study of roughly 4,000 C-level executives from around the globe. The study, titled The Customeractivated Enterprise, stated, “We identified three key themes that will help you shape your organisation’s future: open up to customer influence, pioneer digital-physical innovation, and craft engaging customer experiences.” And in its 2014 survey of 200 companies, global analyst firm Gartner found that 89% of respondents planned to compete primarily on the basis of customer experience by 2016. And to that end, 65% of the companies surveyed had already appointed the equivalent of
a chief customer officer within their organisations. Well guess what? 2016 is here, and the good news is that customer experience has proved to be a lasting strategic imperative among today’s executives. The even better news is that customer experience and service design go hand-in-hand. They’re certainly not the same thing, but in the words of Forrest Gump, they go together like peas and carrots. For service designers who want to make inroads with organisations that just don’t seem open to something as seemingly nebulous, confusing, or scary as service design, my advice is this: talk about pain points in the organisation’s current customer experience and what those issues are costing the organisation from a business perspective. Lost revenue and increased cost to serve are good starting points. Inevitably, the conversation will turn towards what exactly they’ll need to do to make improvements — and this, of course, is the perfect entrée for service design. But, following the lead of some of the designers I mentioned above, I’d encourage you ‘not’ to start immediately waving the service design flag during these sales conversations. Instead, talk about your approach in terms of the activities you’ll do and what the tangible outcomes will be. Sell your clients on your ability to take a smart, effective, and innovative approach to solving their customer experience problems. Once your client has experienced
a successful service design initiative, is comfortable with the approach, and can understand its business benefits, then it’s time to broadly market the approach as service design and turn your clients into advocates for service design both within their organisations and across the industry at large. And then, they will help to sell service design on your behalf.
Kerry Bodine is a customer experience expert and the co-author of Outside In. Her research, analysis and opinions appear frequently on sites such as Harvard Business Review, Forbes, and Fast Company. Follow Kerry on Twitter at @kerrybodine.
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How Service Design Is Transforming Product Development Cambridge Consultants is a product development house based in the UK and US. The range of projects we undertake is broad: from revolutionary ‘round’ teabags that transformed a business, through inhalers with enhanced human factors and on to air traffic control radio systems used in airports around the world. In each case, it is our ability to bring together truly multidisciplinary teams with broad industrial experiences that allows Tim Murdoch led the design, development and deployment of m-pesaTM, Vodafone’s mobile payment service. He has awards for innovation and technology and patents in objectedorientated systems and mobile payments. Steve Haigh is the Software Architect for Iridium Extreme® Push-To-Talk with a penchant for user experience and service design. He works at the intersection of wireless networks, IoT and service design. Warren Drummond worked at GDS deploying a performance platform for service and product managers; using service design principles to measure the Digital by Default transition across the UK Government.
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us to deliver. We develop novel product technologies: typically those that combine intellectual challenge with collaboration across multiple science, engineering and design disciplines. We are now seeing first-hand how product development is increasingly driven by the services that they support. The progression of product development to be driven by service design is thus a vital and much needed evolution of our industry. But one which gives us a problem: how does a technology-focused product development house evolve to be driven by service design? Service design is not just another discipline, it is transforming our business Product development demands clear requirements, manufacturing lead times and a focus on delivering the best possible product within the constraints of time,
budget and technology. This is embedded within our business as a strong ‘V’ model process where we establish a cascade of ever-more detailed requirements (the down stroke on the V) which we then fulfil and recombine to create the whole product (the up stroke on the V). During this process, the product is typically divided into functional elements interlinked by well-defined and hardto-change technical interfaces. We have found that service design challenges this process in two ways: 1. Firstly, service composition is driven by flow rather than function: user journeys and service blueprints shape the product holistically and this often exposes multiple – and often conflicting – requirements on individual functional elements. 2. Secondly, the human factor in service design means that discovery never
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Service design is a journey, not a destination stops, requiring an iterative process and flexibility in both requirements and product architecture. This leads us to adopt agile methods that don’t sit naturally within a ‘V’ model approach. A good example of the transformation of how we work is a recent project we did with Iridium, a global communications company. Their 66 low earth-orbit satellites fly 485 miles above the surface of the planet at 17,000 mph, continuously focussing on the face of the Earth to provide total coverage. We have worked with Iridium for over a decade developing handsets, modems and gateway technologies. Four years ago, we started working with them on a service that we thought was predominantly a technical challenge, but which led us to establish our first digital experience team and to begin to transform our business towards service design. Iridium Extreme® Push-To-Talk enables group communication at the push of a button: walkie-talkies over satellite to anywhere on the planet, instantly. What started as a multi-component, technology-led systems develop-
ment task rapidly became a service design problem. The provision of services for geographically disparate teams across multiple talk-group memberships that results in over-the-air provisioning demanded, first and foremost, a seamless and robust end-to-end service experience. This change of focus from technical function to service flow was perhaps the start of our journey to expand our capabilities to deliver the services. When the company decided to build on our experiences with Iridium, our first thought was that this was a ‘Cloud’ and ‘Big Data’ story where we could impress our clients with our ability to deliver large databases in the Cloud with sophisticated analytics to support their business applications. However, instead of a pure-play Cloud or Big Data expert, we chose experience in service-led innovation: someone with the war stories and first-hand experiences of service-led innovation. In this case, it was in creating m-pesaTM, Vodafone’s mobile payments service in Africa. m-pesaTM is a revolution in financial services, available to anyone with a phone capable of SMS. Launched in Touchpoint 7-3 15
2007 in Kenya, by 2013, 43% of the country’s GDP was passing through it. Safaricom was transformed surfaceto-core from a telecommunications company to one that delivered financial services. Now, over 20 million Kenyans have money on their mobile phone, almost all gaining access to financial services for the first time in their lives. The experience of delivering m-pesaTM brought us first-hand the knowledge that service-led innovation is transformative for the companies that deliver it. Strategic significance is moving rapidly from ‘device’ to ‘service’, and technology-led innovation on its own is no longer enough. Service design is a journey, not a destination Implementing service design within a company that is multi-disciplinary has its challenges: changing language and process has been the key. Many of these challenges have been addressed by the UK’s acclaimed Government Digital Service (GDS), the team responsible for establishing the digital services manual being used to transform services across govern ment. This year, we added another hire to our team, bringing expertise drawn from service transformation projects across government. In addition to the usual co-location of our crossdisciplinary teams, we now create dedicated spaces where our team and our client can work together. We use every available wall space to bring the plans out of the lab and onto the wall to become (in the rather cheesy words of GDS) ‘information radiators’ that bathe the entire team with the latest information, from user journeys and technical architectures to tasks lists and burn-down charts. Perhaps, one of the most important things we have done is take a leaf out of This is Service Design Thinking and to start to craft a company playbook: Service Design for Product Development. This not only combines our many experiences, it is a way of refining our practices and sharing them with colleagues of all disciplines throughout our business. Where next? A company such as ours lives and 16 Touchpoint 7-3
breathes by the projects that we do, each one bringing new challenges to advance our capabilities. So, we invest in projects of our own that take our thinking forwards and demonstrate our multi-disciplinary capabilities. One great example is KiCoPen, a diabetes management service anchored around an insulin pen that uses energy harvesting techniques to power an in-built Bluetooth radio that talks to the phone every time it is used.  KiCoPen reduces the burden of diabetes by making daily management of the disease easier and more accurate. The device captures the exact insulin dose delivered and transmits the information to a smartphone. Other devices gather blood glucose levels, activity and food consumption. Local and cloud-based analytics turn the data into insights which help the patient stay in control. Winner of a recent Red Dot design award, KiCoPen is a great demonstration of how multiple disciplines are required to deliver a device-enabled service: —— The idea is initiated by our Smart Systems team who realise that a simple ‘wiggle’ motion would generate enough energy to power a Bluetooth signal long enough to share information with a phone. —— Our Connected Health team spots the opportunity to address an unmet need for diabetics. —— Our Human Factors team crafts a device that combines strong industrial design with the demanding require ments of a medical device. —— Our Sensor Analytics team identifies algorithms that determine how the device is used and what this means for patient behaviour. —— Our Data Analytics team explores the potential for large data populations to improve the quality of services offered by pharmaceutical companies and physicians. —— Our Service Systems team architects an agile platform with distributed data storage, separating out ‘Personally Identifiable Information (PII)’ and yet still allowing personalised digital services. —— Our Programme Management team ensures that the project is delivered to ISO 13485, the standard required of all medically regulated devices.
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— Finally, our UX and Service Design team explore the wider need to improve the life, not just of the diabetic, but also of those that care for them. They build on the expertise from and then drive and coordinate the requirements for the many disciplines across the project.
Winner of a recent Red Dot design award, KiCoPen is a great demonstration of how multiple disciplines are required to deliver a device-enabled service.
This is a highly iterative and concurrent process. Not quite Agile. Not quite the ‘V’ model. Technical and service architects combine the strengths of both to ensure that we get not just the final best product, not just the minimum viable product, but the right product built on a service platform fit for growth. Service design is transforming our business. We have some way to go, but we already see the value that serviceled innovation creates and will continue to refine our approaches for product and service development.
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Redesigning Uber’s Surge Pricing A behavioural economics approach to service design In order to design services in a consumer-centred way, service designers often rely on reasoning through how a consumer would behave in certain situations. To do this, designers have developed tools and techniques such as personas and empathy. However, in some cases, especially those cases where Robert J. Neal is a Board Member at service design consultancy Qualia (www.qualiaagency.com) where he serves as a consultant for applied behavioural sciences in service design and user experience design. He is also a frequent speaker. You can find him on Twitter @robertjneal.
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consumers are most likely to rely on cognitive shortcuts or cognitive heuristics, those tools are not only inadequate, but can lead to the wrong outcome. An outstanding recent example of this is the introduction of ‘surge pricing’ by Uber. Uber’s model is sound from a traditional economics perspective and their user experience design to implement it is laudable in many respects. However, years later, they are still consistently rated poorly by consumers because of surge pricing. One tool that is often overlooked by designers is behavioural economics research and the wider cognitive science theories that encompass principles of behavioural economics. Without taking into account the numerous findings by cognitive scientists, designers are setting themselves up to make avoidable and sometimes very costly mistakes. In addition, behavioural economics has the added advantage, over other tools, of strong empirical research.
Uber’s surge pricing Take, for example, Uber’s surge pricing model. It is a reasonable solution to a problem with some difficult facets. The problem stems from the fact that Uber’s drivers are all contractors who work under a model that allows them to set their own hours. An Uber driver can turn on their driver’s app at any time of the day, any day of the week. However, this model results in some economic inefficiencies and some potential customer dissatisfaction. Specifically, there is no way for Uber to ensure that they have enough drivers on the road at peak hours. That is, they do not have enough supply to satisfy the demand. Consequently, customers requesting rides at peak hours are likely to be disappointed when no rides are immediately available. And, at the very least, not serving those customers results
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in Uber leaving money on the table that they might otherwise have been able to pick up. Uber needed a way to incentivise drivers to turn on the driver’s app, and thereby be available to riders, at peak hours. So Uber introduced surge pricing. Surge pricing is essentially a model that attempts to produce the minimum1 additional amount of revenue to pass on to drivers that results in the optimal (or near optimal) number of drivers in a peak area during peak times.2 This is a very reasonable solution to the problem and, despite an avalanche of consumer complaints, even Uber’s nearest competitor, Lyft, has adopted this approach. However, there are a few significant challenges and shortcoming with this approach. Some of which Uber handled well and some where they missed the mark. One critical component that Uber handled well was a notorious user interface problem that plagues everything from end user license agreements (EULAs) to delete confirmations. The problem is ‘accept fatigue’, where a user will click whatever affirmative button will allow them to continue with whatever they are doing. A study by Böhme and Köpsell showed that over 50% of users, and the number is likely much higher, do not read EULAs and merely click the agree button.3 Uber should be praised for using an interaction pattern that does a great job of providing transparency into surge pricing and ensuring that users do not merely click ‘accept’. The way they do this is by introducing friction in the ride hailing process by requiring the user to type in the surge pricing multiplier. For instance, if the current surge pricing multiplier is 2.25, the user must type in 2 2 5 to continue
hailing a ride (Figure 1). By increasing the attention the user has to give to the interaction, Uber is increasing cognitive load, which leads to a higher likelihood that the user will attend to the relevant price increase.4 If the user is attending to the price increase, they can avoid ‘sticker shock’ and opt out of the increase if they so desire. Problems to this approach and their behavioural economics solutions Despite a laudable approach to the user interface for Uber’s surge pricing, there was still a tremendous backlash resulting in an ‘F’ rating from the Better Business Bureau that resulted in waning support, even from drivers who benefit from an increased payout (Kerr, 2014 & 2015). The cause of the drivers’ dissatisfaction was primarily that their customers were dissatisfied. And as the only human faces of Uber, drivers feel the brunt of Uber’s deficiencies in customer satisfaction.
1 The minimum is charitably assumed, it might be that it attempts to produce rates below or at the maximum that customers would pay or at some other optimal point to maximise profits. Either way, for the purpose of this article, it works out the same. 2 Nicholas Diakopoulos did some analysis that shows that it works reasonably well http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/ wp/2015/04/17/how-uber-surge-pricing-really-works/ 3 Böhme, R., & Köpsell, S. (2010). Trained to accept? Proceedings of the 28th International Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - CHI '10. 4 Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow [iBooks 1.2]. p. 151, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Figure 1. An illustration of the Uber UI for accepting surge pricing. D EM AN D IS O FF TH E CHARTS! FA R E S H AV E I N C R E A S E D T O G E T M O R E U B E R S O N T H E R O A D.
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An initial and naive reaction to this situation is to point out that raising the prices would necessarily cause customer backlash and that Uber only had two choices: (1) bite the bullet and do just as they did or (2) don’t do anything and accept the fact that sometimes there would be fewer drivers than needed to satisfy demand. But research in behavioural economics provides a third option. Specifically, the key principle at work here is ‘prospect theory’. When designed for, studies show that prospect theory would allow the presentation of surge pricing such that consumers’ gut reaction to it is more positive. Daniel Kahneman, who won the Nobel Prize in 2002 for prospect theory, succinctly captures the essence of it in this sentence: “the effect of price increases [on purchase decisions] (losses relative to the reference price) is about twice as large as the effect of gains” (Kahneman, 2011, p. 697). Consider the following scenarios from Kahneman’s book Thinking, Fast and Slow: 20 Touchpoint 7-3
— Scenario A: In addition to whatever you own, you have been given $1,000. Now choose one of these options: 50% chance of winning $1,000 or get $500 for sure — Scenario B: In addition to whatever you own, you have been given $2,000.Now choose one of these options: 50% chance of losing $1,000 or lose $500 for sure (Kahneman, 2011, p. 657) It turns out that people by and large prefer the sure thing in ‘A’ and the gamble in ‘B’, even though the sure thing in both scenarios results in the same economic outcome, i.e., $1,500, and the gamble in both scenarios also results in the same outcome, i.e., 50% chance of $1,000 or $2,000. The reason for the inconsistency in people's behaviour is because they don’t make economic decisions on the economic outcome (in the Uber example, the final cost), but on what the scale and direction of the change are from the reference point.
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By presenting surge pricing as a multiplier on top of a reference point, Uber is ensuring that they will always cause the consumer to perceive surge pricing as a monetary loss. This, in turn, results in extremely dissatisfied customers, because they experience the change twice as much as they would a change in the other direction. One behavioural economics-based solution to this problem is to invert the cost structure so that consumers are given an inflated regular price,5 and are then given a large discount in off-peak hours (Figure 2). One worry with this approach might be that there will be a large initial backlash to an across-the-board increase. But it is important to note that Uber is not a parity product with other transportation options like cabs and buses. Uber is not chosen primarily because it is cost effective, and when Uber users are asked if they even know what the price per mile is for Uber, nearly 90% say that they do not.6 This is likely because riders are not choosing Uber based on price, but based on convenience and service. Another design based on behavioural insights – and perhaps a better one – is to change how the information is presented, such that the exact same economic outcome occurs, but the consumer does not experience the change in price as a loss. In fact, in some cases they can experience it as an overall gain. The recommendation here is to show the price at the current time and set that in the user’s mind as the reference point. From that reference point, the app should then show future projected prices, say over the next thirty minutes (Figure 3). This can result in three possibilities: (1) the prices stays relatively the same over the next thirty minutes, (2) the price decreases over the next thirty minutes, or (3) the price increases over the next thirty minutes. In the first case, the app is now signalling to the user that the only trade-off in hailing a ride now, versus any other time over the next thirty minutes, is the departure time. But, in case (2), a more interesting economic decision happens, viz. the consumer can now choose to
5 In fact, some customers purportedly state this as a preference. Kerr (2015) quoted a driver as saying: “I have had passengers who say they would be happy to pay a higher overall fare that was stable rather than the fluctuating fares caused by surges.” 6 Of 165 respondents who had used Uber, 88.52% responded “No” and 11.48% responded “Yes” when asked “Off the top of your head, do you know how much the ride sharing service Uber charges per mile?” 2015, August 28.
leave immediately or trade off a later departure time for a decreased trip cost. This has the affect of not only giving the consumer a perceived choice where it was not obvious before, but of allowing them to feel better about choosing the higher price as a trade off for the convenience of departing immediately. Moreover, since the price to leave immediately is the reference point, the decreased cost over the next thirty minutes is perceived as a gain (think ‘discount’) rather than a loss, as it is with surge pricing’s multiplier presentation, which would present the same price as, say, 1.2 times more than some base price. Finally, in the third case, the consumer will feel they are avoiding a loss and, remember, losses are twice as bad as an equal monetary gain. This feeling comes about because, as the cost increases over the next thirty minutes, it signals to the consumer that they are avoiding a loss by requesting the ride immediately instead of waiting. Again, the reference point is the current cost, so booking now is perceived as a positive experience rather than a neutral experience in the case of non-surge pricing moments in Uber’s current experience. It is important to note that the reference point in the different cases is not the same base price, but rather the current market price. Using this approach avoids the need to present any immediate ride as costing more than a reference point. Conclusion At the centre of service design are humans. Behavioural economics is about accounting for how humans make decisions and what affects their behaviours and experiences. When designing services, each touchpoint should be considered with the understanding of the innate cognitive biases and cognitive shortcuts that the target audience has. Just as in the case with Uber, the perspective that behavioural economics provides to designing services will uncover significant shortcomings and often illuminate significant opportunities. References: Böhme, R., & Köpsell, S. (2010). 'Trained to accept?' in Proceedings of the 28th International Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - CHI '10. Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow [iBooks 1.2]. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kerr, D. (2014, October 9). ‘Uber gets an F from the Better Business Bureau’. Retrieved August 30, 2015. Kerr, D. (2015, August 23). ‘Detest Uber's surge pricing? Some drivers don't like it either’. Retrieved August 30, 2015.
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Bank, Real Estate broker or 7-Eleven 7-Eleven and localised urban service design
One company advancing the design of services is 7-Eleven, the convenience store chain, whose 56,000 stores across 16 countries explores designing diverse yet localised services. In Taipei, Taiwan, such services include checking one’s blood pressure, paying utility or credit card bills, ordering taxis, receiving packages, purchasing Zach Hyman is a Design Strategist at Continuum. He is interested in service design, and has helped develop products and services around healthcare, transportation, mobile phones, and education across seven countries. He received a Fulbright scholarship to study innovation in China, and recently published Yangonomics, a book about Myanmar’s informal economy.
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concert or airline tickets and even paying parking tickets. Taipei’s 7-Elevens’ service design strategy1 is driven by a focus upon selfservice, creating space to relax, and a balance between franchiseemanaged stores’ local market knowledge and licensee-owned stores’ ability to experiment. Many are familiar with the 7-Eleven chain of convenience stores. For Americans, associations typically include oversized sodas, weak coffee and a panoply of junk food. Focused upon the quick, primarily product-centric satisfaction of needs for time-constrained (typically car-driving) customers, the American model of 7-Elevens isn’t what comes to mind when one thinks of organisations pushing the bounds of service design. In Taiwan, however, 7-Elevens are challenging Starbucks’ and McDonalds’ dominance of the urban ‘third space’ market by transforming themselves into hubs of convenient services for time- and space-constrained customers, offering
them room to relax amidst crowded cities lacking public space.2 A joke in Taipei goes that, ‘if one were to throw a rock in any direction in the city, one would hit a bank, a real estate broker or a 7-Eleven’. Being home to over 4,000 7-Elevens, the city of 7.4 million has more 7-Elevens per capita than Seattle has Starbucks. Convenience-centred third spaces Many of the diverse services in Taipei’s 7-Elevens are facilitated through an ‘ibon’
1 ‘Interview with 7-Eleven Master Franchisee'. Franchise Malaysia, Web. 5 Nov. 2015. <http:// www.ifranchisemalaysia.com/interview-with-7eleven-master-franchisee.html>.
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machine, an ATM-like kiosk offering over 700 kinds of services through partnerships with over 300 companies. In 2014, more than 150 million service interactions occurred though the ibon phone app and 7-Elevens 5,000 physical kiosks – from paying traffic fines and printing documents, to purchasing airline tickets and booking hotel rooms. These machines enable fewer staff to offer more services across the varied servicescape of Taipei’s 7-Elevens.3 Beyond redesigning their servicescape to compete with laundries, post offices, and banks, Taipei’s 7-Elevens also stock staples like rice, cooking oil, fresh vegetables and packaged meats, as well as instant meals ranging from microwaveable dishes that the staff offer to warm up for customers, to offerings like slices of fatty pork and multiple kinds of chicken feet. Taipei 7-Eleven’s coffee beverage line, City Café, has become the store’s most profitable product line (Taiwan’s 7-Elevens brew over 100 million cups of coffee annually, earning more than US$17 million).4 In deference to time-constrained customers, some Taipei 7-Elevens have developed a novel touchpoint of City Café-branded takeout windows, through which harried commuters can order and retrieve their coffee and morning meal without entering the store. On the other end of the time-constraint spectrum, to design for various speeds of customer journeys, many of Taipei’s 7-Elevens offer indoor or outdoor seating at which customers may enjoy their food and beverages at a leisurely pace. Taipei’s 7-Elevens with outdoor seating capitalise upon a classic piece of ‘urban code’ by mimicking street cafes, which provide a flexible servicescape that places their goods and services in the centre of the neighbourhood’s daily routines, whether with coffee in the morning, sandwiches at lunch, baked goods in the afternoon, or wine and beer in the evening.5 Taipei’s International Airport’s 7-Eleven even boasts an attached food court (reminiscent of McDonalds’ service environment), and specialises in a wide range of reading material, microwaveable meals and aeroplaneappropriate snacks.
left: Parcel storage area, adjacent to photocopier and ibon machine right: An employee helps a customer use an ibon machine to photocopy
City Café express window at a 7-Eleven
2 Schonhardtmay, Sara. ‘7-Eleven Finds a Niche by Adapting to Indonesian Ways’.in International Herald Tribune, 29 May 2012: Print. 3 Bitner, Mary Jo. ‘Servicescapes: The Impact of Physical Surroundings on Customers and Employees’. in Journal of Marketing, 56(2), 1992, pp. 56-71. 4 Yang, Ya-min, and Jake Chung. ‘Nation Sees Strong Coffee Sales as Market Heats up'. in Taipei Times, 04 Nov. 2012: 3. Web. 22 Oct. 2015. 5 Mikoleit, Anne, and Moritz Pürckhauer. Urban Code: 100 Lessons for Understanding the City, Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2011. Print.
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List of Taipei 7-Elevens services (observed), based upon Bitner’s ‘servicescape’ framework
Foodcourt attached to Taipei International Airport’s 7-Eleven 24 Touchpoint 7-3
Finally, with free Wi-Fi and apparent indifference towards customers carrying in goods from other businesses, Taipei’s 7-Elevens have turned themselves into Taiwan’s most ubiquitous urban mixed public/ private space. Early one rainy weekday morning, in a 7-Eleven in the northern suburb of Tamsui, a mother and two daughters (age about 7 and 9) enter, with each child carrying their own reading material and chatting excitedly about what food they want. After choosing and purchasing some fried snacks and steamed buns, the mother pushes two tables together, and sits down with her daughters. She pulls out a thermos and a digital camera she had in her bag and begins looking through photos as her younger daughter reads aloud to her from her comic. After several minutes, the mother begins braiding each of her daughters’ hair. Simultaneously, the store hosts many rapid service interactions in addition to these more leisure interactions: a young man comes in to pick up a package and pay a bill (possibly a utility bill or a parking ticket), a Buddhist nun enters and places her bag down on a table to reorganise its contents and an older man walks in to buy a bottle of tea, leaves and then returns on a scooter 30 minutes later, double parking and dashing in to buy cigarettes. Future challenges and opportunities One key factor appears to be a mixture of company- and franchisee-owned stores. In countries like Taiwan, Malaysia and Japan, 7-Eleven both owns its own stores and invests in franchisees that open and manage their own stores across the country. 7-Eleven’s service design strategy draws upon the wide distribution and entrepreneurial spirit of franchisee-managed 7-Elevens to gather ideas for locally relevant services, vetting and iterating upon those ideas in licensee-owned stores that can take higher financial risks. The head of the licensee company for 7-Eleven in Malaysia, Ng Su Onn, Executive Director of 7-Eleven Malaysia Sdn Bhd, framed the licensee-owned 7-Elevens as: “necessary for us to conduct training, [and] test new concepts, products and services”.1 If the service shows promise after testing, the licensee then designs the backstage and support processes before scaling the new service to franchiseeoperated stores across the country. This service design strategy is ground-up rather than driven by any corporate ‘localisation playbook’ or strategy. 7-Eleven recognises that franchisees have local-level
IBON KISOK
‘Payment Terminal’ icon by Sergey Ryazantsev from the Noun Project, https://thenounproject.com/search/?q=kiosk%20machine&i=28824 ‘Conversation’ icon by hunotika from the Noun Project, https://thenounproject.com/term/conversation/42559/
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Simplified process of a Taipei 7-Eleven’s laundry service insights into a community’s service needs, while those locally-run stores can draw upon the resources and reach of the licensee to prototype their idea for a new service through 7-Eleven’s company-owned stores functioning as ‘service labs’ that test the idea in a variety of environments. Related to the challenges of being a neighbourhood service hub, offering such diverse services in a single store may lead to a poorer customer experience for customers with such diverse goals engaging with the same staff and service environment (not to mention increasingly harried and thinly-spread staff). Indeed, the challenge of balancing service quality with convenience is summed up in a quote by a competing Taiwanese convenience store owner, Alex Chao: “At one point, we offered custom-made breakfast sandwiches cooked on the spot … but we had to stop that. People liked them so much that the lines got really long. And then it was no longer convenient.”6 In countries with mixed licensee-owned and franchisee-managed stores, 7-Eleven’s service design strategy hinges upon balancing franchisee-managed stores’ entrepreneurial approach and insights with
licensee-owned stores’ greater resources and ability to experiment. In Taiwan and other mixed-ownership markets, this leads to a service design strategy that turns each 7-Eleven into a “community centre [providing] all kinds of services instead of just being a convenience store". Rather than buying an affordable meal from a street vendor, visiting a laundry to drop off one’s clothes, stopping by a small grocer for dinner ingredients and then going to relax at a coffee shop, 7-Elevens in these markets are strategically aggregating these (and other) services within a flexible servicescape, using ibon machines to relieve the burden upon staff and offering meals and seating to accommodate customers who want a ‘third space’ to relax in. This makes them an attractive choice over other ‘single-function’ stores and service providers, and reveals an interesting service design strategy, both for 7-Eleven’s convenience-focused competitors, as well as a promising service design approach for 7-Elevens across other global markets.
6 Dou, Eva, and Jenny W. Hsu. 'How Convenient: In Taiwan, the 24/7 Store Does It All'. in The Wall Street Journal. 16 May 2014. Web. 01 Dec. 2015.
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F E AT U RE
Selling Service Design
Who Are You Selling To? What makes companies buy service design
During the past years, Hellon’s sales team has become very successful in selling service design. The yearly turnover has increased at an accelerating pace, reaching a total growth rate of 30% in 2015. The growth can be attributed to a process of learning about our customer base. The sales team has developed its skills along the way and has recognised a great number of meaningful factors contributing to successful sales. Based on Minna Einiö M. Sc. (econ), Client Service Director. She has years of experience from leading creative agencies’ top management tasks and in consulting clienteles from various fields. Her strength is to support clients in challenges where creativity can make a difference. Laura Franck is Client Service Director and has reached excellent results in growing Hellon’s sales. She believes that meeting client companies’ needs on a strategic level will secure the good co-operation leading to excellent results. Mariann Parts is Client Service Director and has years of experience in consultative selling of design both in public and private sectors. Mariann specializes in finding innovative ways of meeting client needs. Pauline Ranta is Client Service Manager and has special experience of local service innovations.
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that experience, this article summarises key insights from the Hellon sales team: how to sell service design to various clients from large and small companies, in both private and public organisations.
Why is selling service design important? Never in human history has technology developed as fast as it has in the past twenty years, greatly affecting the way we live, work and communicate and the way we act. Now we are reaching a tipping point, the corporate world is beginning to understand and react on their customers’ needs for more emotional connections, for a sense of belonging and for the need to bring the human back to the centre stage. We are entering the era of ‘human-to-human’ business and service development. Service design is a great approach for this. However, the service
design process is not simple to adopt for companies as they have to shift away from a technology or marketing focus towards real empathy for their customers. Moreover, they need to figure out ways to support their employees in turning empathy into innovative services and profitable growth. Even though it is relatively easy to explain the benefits of service design, the selling process can sometimes be challenging, frustrating or even impossible. How do companies utilise service design? Generally, there are three types of challenges in organisations1:
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Organisation design programs with a strategic focus — of making the company customer-centric and driving long-lasting results In order to build a longer-lasting relationship with the client, it is crucial for the client to fully understand the value service design can bring to the organisation. A careful identification of the different client profiles can help the service design agency here.
A design approach is well suited the latter two types2 . There are two reasons for this: first, the clients with ill-structured and wicked problems tend to know there is something wrong but they don’t know what to fix and how to fix it. Second, as the unclear problem sometimes leads to the need for a better brief, some service design methodology can be sold and utilised already in the briefing phase to obtain mutual understanding of what the project should solve and how it should solve it. Collaboration between the service design agency and the client often starts with a smaller service design project. If successful, there is an opportunity to build a broader co-operation or an organisation design program. However, if the client feels that the project hasn’t reached expectations, continuing the co-operation becomes more difficult and service design may become a ‘one-time experiment’. Hellon collaborates in two different ways with organisations: — Service design projects, typically tactical and rather short (2-3 months) aiming for incremental improvements and quick wins
1 Rittel, H. W. J., & Webber, M. M. (1973). ‘Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning’. Policy Sciences, 4, 155–169. 2 Buchanan, R. (1992). ‘Wicked Problems in Design Thinking’. Design Issues, 8(2), 5–21.
Who buys service design? The Hellon sales team has identified two primary customer profiles: ‘The Advocate’ and ‘The Solver’. Each represents different challenges when dealing with them and the organisations they are representing. The Advocate The Advocate is familiar with service design, even an enthusiast. They strongly believe in this approach and they want to increase the use of design thinking in their organisation. As personalities, they often challenge the more traditional frameworks, enduring and embracing uncertainty. The mission of the advocate is to look for novel solutions and service design is one of them. Selling service design successfully to this profile is straightforward. They are already open to the bridge between disciplines and embrace the service design process containing visualisation, agile prototyping and iterating. As long as the Advocate gets approval from the top management or is a part of the top management, the selling process tends to be defined by clear objectives and a common understanding of the brief. The biggest challenge for them is how they can utilise service design even better across the organisation. From the sales point of view, the client company hierarchy can sometimes bring challenges to the sales process or to the final outcomes of the co-operation. When dealing with an Advocate, the obstacles can arise from the other key decision makers within the client company. As the Advocate can sometimes be a loner in supporting service design, the agency should support Touchpoint 7-3 29
The Advocate Is a service design enthusiast and familiar with service design as an approach: is a designer or has been to a class/education. Decision making factors: – agency brand and reputation – agency’s expertise and person brands Appreciates: – being part of the design team and process – getting design support Pay attention: The Advocate has authority to make decisions and implement outcomes. If not, support the Advocate by involving organization’s gatekeepers in the project.
The Advocate's project process
them in the internal PR and buy-in of service design. The primary objective is to involve all the people, including the gatekeepers and the decision-makers during the sales process, in order to ensure a successful sale, implementation and customer satisfaction at the end of the project. The Solver Solvers can be directors from different parts of the organisation: from development, HR, marketing, customer service, accountants or even CEOs. The Solver’s mission is to tackle the problem at hand and they are most likely to seek different approaches for this. From the service design sales point of view, this broadens the number of competitors in pitching situations since the approach to solving the problem is not yet locked down. Solvers are familiar with buying ready-made solutions from traditional consulting and marketing services. They 30 Touchpoint 7-3
often develop services and products in traditional ways and are usually not so familiar with involving customers in their processes. Solvers will make decisions based on their belief of what approach will solve their problem the best. With this profile, you have to reserve much more time in the selling process for understanding their situation and strengthening the trust towards service design. Even if the Solvers like the proposal and the methods, they might struggle in actively engaging their internal stakeholders and developing customer-centric mindset. In order to succeed in this ‘leap of faith’, the sales team need to support Solvers in building a firm trust in the service design process. The Solvers hesitate until they truly understand and trust the impact of service design. The entire selling process is often about creating security and trust between people. One part of the trust towards the agency comes from the recommendations
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The Solver Buys the best approach to his/her problem and is interested in trying new approaches. Decision making factors: - the most secure and trustworthy approach to solve the problem - references, similar cases, recommendations, awards - trust and chemistry between the people involved in the selling process Appreciates: - project management - milestones and communication, no surprises Pay attention: Enlighten the Solver in what else service design can solve and how service designers work differently compared to other approaches.
The Solver's project process
of the existing customers, from the success stories and previous projects as well as from trust instilling awards and recognitions. The agency brand is of course very important when building trust. The other part of trust is all about chemistry between the persons involved and their emotional connection. Selling to Solvers needs constant education by the agency throughout the selling process and often the briefs are built in tight collaboration with the client and end up being created by the agency itself. Throughout the project, project management and communication with the client are crucial for maintaining that trust and security, which were established during the sales process. After the successful project, Solvers are often enlightened about service design and its extended possibilities in their organisation. â&#x20AC;&#x153;The service design approach was totally new for us,
and it took us quite a while to re-frame the proposal over and over again. And still, after signing the deal, there was some uncertainty regarding the process and outcome. However, the project was really enlightening and inspiring. The fresh approach produced excellent results that were far better than we expected. We also learned a lot along the process.â&#x20AC;? Pauliina Rintamäki, Head of Cross Channel Business Development, TeliaSonera. Summary We believe that all business is human-to-human business and that it is not processes, but people, who drive emotional connection. The challenges in selling service design come from the fact that service design is not the solution itself but an approach. We need to get better when communicating this to our clients, both to Solvers and to Advocates. Touchpoint 7-3 31
The Path To Value via Service Design Conversations in the C-suite Executives are busy people. Daily, they struggle to rise above the mountains of emails, back-to-back meetings and the demands of managing staff to focus on and achieve the strategic and tactical responsibilities they hold. A conversation to sell the value of service design in this attention-deficit, time-poor and limitedPaula Giles is founder of We are Singularity. The company aligns strategy, service design, customer experience, culture and change to assist companies in achieving accelerated value. Paula has a distinguished executive and management-consulting career working in large global companies and has practical experience leading sustained change and reform in corporate and government settings.
bandwidth world must achieve ‘cut-through’ quickly and directly. But how? A modest proposition This article proposes that to be credible and successful selling the value of service design, a practitioner must be able to demonstrate how the outcomes and benefits from these initiatives link to a company’s overall strategic purpose, enhance its competitive position and help it to respond to shifting industry forces. This requires service design practitioners to look beyond the design process itself and take a ‘whole of enterprise/industry’ view to align their language with that used by their client in the C-suite1 . This perspective is fundamental if service designers are to fully deliver the scope of their profession and ‘take an holistic approach that considers the 1 C-suite refers to positions such as Chief Executive Officer (CEO), direct reports and functional heads such as Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), Chief Information Officer (CIO), etc.
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end-to-end service experience across all channels and touchpoints from a customer and organisation perspective properly’. This will bring service design further into the heart of the enterprise and become even more relevant to senior decision makers. Service design can perform a central role in enabling business innovation, improvement and sustaining a service-oriented culture. Start where they are So, how to proceed? First, understand both the hidden and more visible drivers and forces in your clients’ world. Conduct a conversation that explores their personal motivations and needs as well as their business context (refer to Figure 1). This will help a service design proposal achieve further relevance and traction. A deft and client-focused service designer is likely to uncover the unstated
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Performance Framework
Description
The different needs for power, achievement, or affiliation that drives individual behaviour
The political, power and authority bases by which individuals exercise influence and make decisions.
The external competitive forces and regulatory framework that impact the entity e.g., economic, social, environment, political.
The performance framework used to measure results. Combination of long and short term incentives.
Typical client questions
‘What is in it for me?’ ‘How will this help advance my career?’ ‘Can this help me achieve my personal goals?’
‘What is needed to get this proposition ‘across the line’?’ ‘If I take this issue on, who will I need to get on board?’
‘How is this relevant to what is happening?’ ‘How does this proposal help us meet our regulatory conditions?’
‘How will this contribute to our company performance e.g., increase sales, reduce costs, improve share price?’
Client Operating Context
personal motivations and political cues and conduct a conversation to uncover these issues in a subtle and sensitive manner. However, as service quality and customer experience increasingly defines the competitive and strategic landscape, the second strategy service designers require is a framework and language to more closely align the work they do and the contribution it can make to their client’s market, business activities and strategic direction. So how can a service design professional demonstrate this ‘line of sight’ between service design and the contribution it can make to improve company performance? Link business value and service design An effective conversation about the value of service design at the strategic and business performance levels needs to reference a range of concepts2 . This will include financial ones that describe the underlying performance generated from business activities. It may also include shareholder value (e.g., ROSF3) and financial performance (e.g., EBITDA4).
2 Such as the ‘balanced scorecard’ construct that was developed by Kaplan, R.S and Norton D. P., HBR Publishing 1996 and proposed a framework to translate strategy into operational areas using Financial, Customer, Learning and Growth, and Internal Business Process. More recent multi-dimension performance frameworks include reference to Triple Bottom Line, Social License to Operate. 3 Return on Shareholders Funds or Return on Equity (ROE). A measure that indicates the probability of financial return received by investors from company operations. Demonstrates that the company has earned enough to repay its shareholders. 4 Earnings before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortisation. Essentially represents net income from a company’s core business operations. Often used as a measure to analyse and compare profitability between companies by eliminating the effects of financing and accounting decisions.
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Strategic or business drivers
Service Design methods
Expected Outcomes
Indicators of success
“What forces or issues are you facing?” “What do you need to pay attention to?”
“Methods we use and how these help”
“The benefits you can expect to see from investing in this activity”
“The results and measures to demonstrate outcomes”
Industry disruption
Human centred design principles
Services that are more: efficient by making the optimum use of scarce resources.
Revenue
Services that are effective as they are valued by customers and offer a positive customer experience.
Customer retention
New entrants Damage to company reputation Regulatory changes Shifting consumer preferences
Business Model Canvas Fieldwork & Insights research ‘Outside-in’ thinking Prototyping Journey Mapping Staff Journey Mapping Co-creation Back-stage, Front-stage Rapid prototyping Design pod structures
Increased level of employee engagement, commitment and advocacy. Staff who are better equipped and empowered. Increased capacity to change at pace and scale.
Return on invested capital, Brand reputation
Customer advocacy (NPS) or effort (CES ) Employee advocacy and engagement score Workplace reputation Customer satisfaction Time to proficiency Speed to market Share price Internal rate of return on a project
Linking Business Drivers and Service Design features
The conversation is also likely to touch on customer and brand concepts such as loyalty, customer retention, brand advocacy, reputation and measures such as Net Promoter Score (NPS)5 and Customer Effort Score (CES)6 along with those used in customer satisfaction research. And, as people deliver services (in addition to digital channels), the conversation would show how employee matters such as engagement, empowerment, enablement and creating a customer-oriented culture can be positively influenced by service design projects. Service design methods and frameworks should also describe how they contribute to speed of implementation of a project or the organisation’s overall ‘agility’. Crafting a conversation that ‘covers all the bases’ 34 Touchpoint 7-3
5 Net Promoter Score was developed by Reichheld F., (2003) in Harvard Business Review and is calculated on responses on a 10 point scale to the question ‘How likely is it that you would recommend our company/ product/service to a friend or colleague?’ Those who respond with a score of 9 or 10 are defined ‘Promoters’. Use of NPS has become a common default measure despite recent criticisms and reservations. 6 Customer Effort Score was developed by Dixon, M., Freeman, K and Toman, N (2010) in Harvard Business Review and is based on responses on a five point scale to the question ‘How much effort did you personally have to put forth to handle your request?’. This concept was further developed in Dixon, M., Toman, N., and Delisi, R., ‘The Effortless Experience’ (2013) and proposed a new question using a seven point scale ‘To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statement: The company made it easy for me to handle my issue’.
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and touches on the common preoccupations in the executive suite provides service designers with a compelling narrative about the value they can offer. A way to proceed Accordingly, an essential competence for a service designer conducting a conversation in the C-suite is to be able to demonstrate how business outcomes can be achieved from the judicious and appropriate application of service design methods, features and frameworks. This will require linking the value of service design with more traditional drivers of company performance (e.g., efficiency) along with those that matter in the service / experience economy (e.g., customer experience and employee engagement). This provides a basis for calculating the business case and estimating the performance improvements that could be attributed to a service design project. Tangible and intangible benefits can be calculated by estimating the revenue, retention and cost benefit from providing services that are easy to use, efficient to perform and provide customer experiences that engender loyalty. Furthermore, employees involved in service design projects are likely to have higher levels of engagement, skill and knowledge and better able to provide services (either to internal or external customers) in a more customer-focused manner. Finally, service design processes should enhance your clientâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ability to sense, shape, shift and change more easily and quickly than competitors to deliver competitive advantage. Figure 2 provides a start for framing this conversation. Conclusion In this article I have proposed frameworks to assist service design professionals demonstrate how the outcomes of great service design can apply to the context and measures that matter to executives. Hopefully these frameworks and discussion points will enable service designers translate the best of what they do to the very thing that matters to everyone â&#x20AC;&#x201C; reducing complexity to create agile, customer oriented and innovative businesses.
Read Touchpoint Archive Online 310+ articles free access
Touchpoint, the Journal of Service Design, was launched in May 2009 and is the first and only journal dedicated to the theory and practice of service design. Published by SDN three times per year, it provides a written record of the ongoing discussions within the service design community. To improve the reach of this unique resource, Touchpoint has opened its Archive (all back issues except the three most recent) to everyone. That means more than 310 articles related to service design freely available on our website. Enjoy the opportunity to search online articles from our Archive by volume and issue, by authors or keywords. Full issues of Touchpoint may be also read on-screen and on mobile devices via the Issuu website and app. Visit SDN website and dive into the Touchpoint Archive!
www.service-design-network.org Touchpoint 7-3 35
Prototypas Bravas Service Design Tapas Get Organisations Hungry for More
Service designers truly help organisations innovate, if they manage to blend the two fundamentally different approaches of problem-solving and decision-making. We propose a three-step approach. First, answer a client’s challenge in a small exercise Manuel Bollue is Innovation and Transformation Project Manager at Crossroad consulting. He makes good ideas happen in different industries, from banking to logistics and retail. Master in Communication Sciences and Marketing. Improviser, runs on idea energy, adheres to lean start-up principles and is addicted to visual management. Jurgen Tanghe is Service Design & Customer Experience Leader at Crossroad consulting. He advises companies on change and innovation. Master in Psychology and Business Administration. Lecturer and Phd Researcher at Delft University (the role of design in business strategy). Fascinated with human behaviour in relationship to business and design.
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or ‘tapa’, using service design. Then motivate the client to experiment with prototyping. Finally, be ready and in delivery mode when the client is ready to order more. Picture yourself in a restaurant, hungry. The waiter walks over to your table, but he does not hand you the menu. Instead he describes how every dish is prepared: cooking methods, ingredients and kitchen tools. This guy is clearly in love with his ‘métier’. You, in the meantime, are now very hungry. Would you eat in such a restaurant again, or recommend it to others? Probably not. Yet, the waiter reminds me of someone. Someone who tries to sell a service design approach to an organisation, a consultant or an internal collaborator. Anyone who has ever participated to a service design session can share the creative approaches, productive outcomes and high energy. Service design advocates rather surf on this positive vibe, than address their (internal) client’s challenges. However, the love for their discipline is one of the reasons why service designers and
corporate decision makers get lost in translation, but it is not the root cause. Different ways of reasoning and decision making Service designers and corporate decision makers speak a different language because they approach situations in fundamentally different ways. Let us first make the assumption that a service designer is an entrepreneur, improving existing services or creating new ones. Renowned research by Sarasvathy shows that ‘classical’ organisations make decisions by ‘causation’: analyse a market, predict a goal or a return and choose the means to achieve it. Entrepreneurs do not predict their returns. Instead, they start with a limited set of means (their personal needs, their ideas and their network). Along their way, they select between possible effects that can be created with that set of means: service offerings, client experiences
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ship. Service design provides organisations with the tools to put effectuation into practice. So, how do we introduce them in organisations? Take a three-step approach. Start with offering decision makers a ‘tapa’ or a service design ‘appetiser’. Participants will show similarities with tapas bar visitors: they will experiment and order more.
and organisational structures.1 This approach called ‘effectuation’ is very similar to a design process. Other research shows differences between entrepreneurs and commercial bankers in perceiving and managing business risks. Presented with five investment challenges, entrepreneurs started from “… a best worstcase level of risk and then tried to increase the returns. Bankers picked an aspirational level of return and tried to reduce the risks. In this ‘conjunctive decision procedure’ also used by management committees, anything lower than a pre-specified critical return is considered a loss.”2 This risk-aversion contrasts heavily with design principles. Organisations require both causation and effectuation Causation is very valuable in dealing with challenges in mature markets: process quality, incremental innovations and continuous improvement. However, when organisations want to pursue new opportunities and create breakthrough innovations, they had better do this the way entrepreneurs do. First of all, entrepreneurs generate more alternative solutions (and even more problems to solve) because they explore a larger ‘cognitive problem space’. Whereas managers choose a solution based on financial, legal and ethical considerations, entrepreneurs also consider personal aspects and values. The former look for solutions within their responsibilities, the latter extend this view to external solutions.3 Second, their effectuation approach allows entrepreneurs to “… experiment with many strategies and with more ideas at lower cost, create strategic alliances and exploit unexpected contingencies.” 4 Effectuation infuses organisations with entrepreneur-
Step 1: taste the tapas A service design ‘tapa’ is a short and intense workout in a small group. It focuses on a specific business challenge, for example related to customer loyalty or in-store experience. It makes use of service design without putting it at the centre of attention. We introduced service design to a toy retailer with over 180 stores in seven countries. We tackled four relevant challenges (feel welcome, find your choice, pay and after-service) with 191 store managers in 25 teams. In a half-day session, participants left their usual role behind (using customer personas) and identified over 50 strengths and weaknesses in the current customer experience (journeys). They developed 25 ready-to-use service interventions (storyboards).5 The benefits of a ‘tapa’: — A wide array of customer insights (making team knowledge explicit). — Predictable outputs: a precise number of journeys and storyboards. — Worst case, the loss is small (3.5 hours). The management, a bit sceptical at the start, is now willing to experiment further. Step 2: experiment with new flavours After an organisation has had its first taste of service design, it can experiment with pilot projects and create new services through active prototyping. It takes some getting used to making-not-meeting and dealing with
1 Sarasvathy, Saras D, “Causation and Effectuation: Toward a Theoretical Shift from Economical Inevitability to Entrepreneurial Contingency’, The Academy of Management Review, Vol. 26 N. 2 (2001). 2 Sarasvathy D.K., Simon H. and Lave L, ‘Perceiving Business Risks: differences between entrepreneurs and bankers’, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Vol. 33 (1998) 3 (id. 1) 4 (id. 2) 5 Brown T. and Martin R., ‘Design For action’, Harvard Business Review, Sept. 2015
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‘real’ end user feedback from early on in the process but, once this has become acquired taste, prototyping offers: — A tangible image of what the services will look like. — An effective and client centric decision making tool, based on observations and not predictions. — An idea of the dynamics in a full service design project and creates a desire for more. After an applied service design training that we hosted for various governmental services, participants were motivated to reflect on the service quality and the experience they wanted to provide. This led to a number of service design briefings and workshops. A one-day conference allowed to reach even more people. Eventually, with the support of the internal quality department, at least a dozen government agencies defined innovation and customer orientation projects based on service design practices and thoroughly changing existing services. Step 3: order more A recent project at a large financial institution has taught us three keys to success for implementing on a larger scale. After a service design workshop (‘tapa’), we ran pilot trainings (experiment) focused on delighting clients in day-to-day interactions. Immediately after the pilot, we kicked off a training program for more than 1,100 managers and employees, still, however, in ‘experiment' mode. Even amidst a large restructuring, the program generated an increase in client Net Promoter Score and positive evaluations by employees. Despite this, a minority of employees and a few key managers questioned the value of the project and the reliability of the indicators. The project was put on hold. How could we have been more successful? 1. Thrilled to move on, we didn’t anchor the good results
of the prototype within the organisation. So, once you have gained insights on the potential of a new or improved service, build a business case and have it validated. Choose your metrics carefully. Don’t promise X% more revenue. It is usually too difficult to demonstrate a direct short term impact, (this is called ‘causal ambiguity’ in strategy research). Instead, think of directly observable results like first time conversion: improve a specific measure in customer satisfaction survey, not the overall satisfaction. 38 Touchpoint 7-3
Corporate Managers
Entrepreneurs
Risk Management
start with acceptable risk
start with aspirational revenue
then lower risk
then increase revenue
use existing means …
allocate means …
Decision Making
… create various effects
Effectuation
… to achieve predefinied effects
Causation
Reasoning and decision making
2. Despite an effort of over 200 man days, the project
kept the ‘experiment’ label. Instead, when you rollout, get in delivery mode and communicate accordingly. It’s much more difficult to pull the plug on a company project than it is on an experiment, especially when you are working in a constantly changing environment. 3. We performed the rollout from outside the
organisation, as a subcontractor. But it’s difficult to steer if you are not in the car. Instead, work with a mandate, a project governance and an (accountable!) sponsor. Be at the table where the decisions about your project are made. This allows you to manage expectations, to frame field feedbacks correctly and to proactively deal with resistance.
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Service Designers
Corporate Managers
start with aspirational revenue
start with acceptable risk
Order more
then increase revenue
use existing means …
then lower risk
3 2
allocate means …
Experiment
1 … create various effects
Taste the tapa … to achieve predefinied effects
Three step approach
Once a service design experiment has helped you create a positive return, get out of effectuation and into causation. It might not be as fun for you as the experimenting playground, but it helps you build the business others will want to taste. Service design can ‘taste’ weird for some business people, because of the difference in logic they are using and their approach to risk. Too often when selling our service design services, we are trying to force-feed. Instead, we suggest letting them try-out little ‘tapas’, get used to the ‘taste’ – the goals, methods, and tools – of service design until they savour it and are ready to go for more.
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Selling Service Design Internally by Tapping Organisational Behaviour In life, we are constantly faced with the limited view: the office window that shows you a sliver of the outdoors; the car mirror that shows you most of the lane beside you; the porch light that helps you navigate half the staircase in the dark; and perhaps many of us experience a limited view when we are trying to figure out something about our own health or to help others with theirs. Annette Bush is an Art Director and Visual Design Manager at Healthwise. She is interested in service design thinking and visual communication. Jason Hessing is a User Experience Strategist and Senior Interaction Design Manager at Healthwise. He thrives at the intersection of behaviour change, holistic design and digital ethnography. Becky Reed is the VicePresident of User Experience at Healthwise. Her passions include design strategy, accessibility and health IT. We’d like to thank Pat Truman for her editorial guidance.
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Here at Healthwise, our mission is to help people make better health decisions. We aim to broaden the limited view that people face when they seek good health information. Over the years, we’ve discovered how we must design with a detailed understanding of the whole health system in order for a part of it to be successful. Consider a patient in a hospital who doesn’t receive information because a printer is too far away, or a daughter who is caring for her sick father and who struggles with tough decisions when information is trapped in an online system she can’t use. For us, the value of the information doesn't matter to the patients if they can’t access it. One of the biggest challenges we face internally is this: each of us carries around in our heads limited bits of information about the whole and we make our decisions about our separate deliverables. It’s myopic. We need wider vision, no pun intended, to match our mission. So our
vision or goal of late has been to join all of this limited information into farsighted models that enhance how our products integrate with the health system, help evolve the system to fill gaps and help bridge the separate parts of the system. This requires service design. And while our user experience practice is solid, service design is new to us all. We need to see beyond a single team: to see the whole organisation practicing service design. We’re incorporating our shift to service design incrementally. Lots of small sells versus the usual ‘big sell’, which often frays under pressure. We’ve seen good things emerge into something great, one step at a time. Journey with us on the path of service design in our organisation. You’ll learn to know when your organisation is ready for what, to adapt your approach based on your organisational culture and to implement with the whole organisation in mind.
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1. Organisational readiness is everything Align with your organisation: Our first projects arose from folks deeply aligned with the priorities of our organisation who had a problem to solve and saw value in the service design examples we described. Tips for finding where your organisation is aligned: — Pay attention to the direction that your organisation is taking and the strategies its leaders are using. Examine the traditional deliverables of business: strategic plans, backlogs and organisational goals. — Listen to conversations. Apply your ethnography skills toward understanding what troubles and excites your leaders. — Draw an initiative map (similar to a stakeholder map) to chart out your organisation’s initiatives (Figure 1). Then look for connections (Figure 2). If service design can support a number of other initiatives, now is a good time to act. Build your change coalition: We’ve experimented with several models of advocates and practitioners. Success came when: — We empowered a champion, i.e., someone with ownership around launching the idea within our organisation. We empowered an ‘intra-preneur', i.e., a person inside — our organisation who has an entrepreneurial spirit. Arm yours with a 'license to try’, with ‘duct tape and twine’ or whatever minimal resources they need to run some experiments. We rallied influencers, i.e., folks who spread service — design ideas and support from their areas of the organisation. Offer a clear picture of what you want to accomplish, so your influencers can quickly learn and share with others. Your champion will advocate to prepare folks for upcoming progress. Your intra-preneur will fill whiteboards, meet in small groups and find new ways to prove the value of service design. Your influencers will connect
with their teams and offer ideas in ways that pertain to these groups. This outreach will help align the work to organisational priorities. Your change coalition will get folks excited, curious and comfortable. Find small ways to try it out: It seems odd to suggest that a design discipline that focuses on the ecosystem can fit – and win – in a small, confined problem space. There are benefits to breaking down big problems into small project requests. Small things: — are easier to say ‘yes' to (and to budget for and fund), — bear less organisational pressure, — lead to small wins, which build trust and credibility. Starting with tiny opportunities to try service design out develops confidence. It may well mean occasional failures along the way, but that is natural. Help your stakeholders see that finding opportunities to practice will develop your organisation’s service design skill and muscle. 2. Localise to your organisation and your colleagues Use the common language, and tell stories: At the risk of watering down our common language (front stage, back stage, actors, ecosystems, blueprints, etc.), we have found more interest from our stakeholders when we localise to our organisation’s context. We are a health information company. So we localise in that direction. Storytelling helps. Connecting with people and their goals is paramount: build that into your story. Start by describing one of your organisation’s challenges. Concretely illustrate (with pictures) your idea. If it’s too abstract or dense, people won’t see what you want to do. In the words of Mike Davidson of Twitter, “a prototype is worth a thousand meetings.” Give folks room to explore: Starting our discussions around an organisational need where service design can help has worked well only because we were open to other ideas about which project Touchpoint 7-3 41
Figure 1: Map your organisationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s external and internal initiatives
E XTERNAL
INTERNAL
innovation accounting
succession planning
rebranding
CORE population health
meaningful use
product consolidation
service design
continuous deployment
wearable tech
EXTERNAL
Figure 2: Identify and draw in the connections between initiatives.
INTERNAL
innovation accounting
succession planning
rebranding
CORE population health
meaningful use
product consolidation
service design
continuous deployment
wearable tech
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to start with. Having a stakeholder ask ‘Oh, can we try it on …?’ is an exciting starting place versus trying to ‘pitch’ your idea as a better one. Fit within established processes: How is work done in your organisation? How does information flow? Who interacts with whom? If you have a functioning project management process, understand it and follow it. Going with the flow can lower barriers. Sometimes you can help people see how their portion of the flow has downstream implications. Service design becomes a bridge between established processes. Respect how people interact with change: People can feel uncomfortable with change. How can you create safety? How can you reward trying something new? One of the hardest things to adjust is our desire to introduce too much too soon. Sharing key concepts and getting folks exposed is much more important than detail. When we moved too quickly, we saw the cues that folks weren’t ready: no movement, passive discussion and flat-out confusion. 3. Give service design away
sufficient attention to feel traction. So before your next step, reassess: what does your next small step need to reinforce? Is it time for something new, or do you need to invest in what you just did? Either way, be sure to celebrate small learnings and wins, and make everyone feel very good about progress. Think ‘multi-channel’ and ‘multi-source’: There is something magical about hearing of something within a short time frame from multiple sources. Help your service design ‘snowball’ by increasing the number and quality of touchpoints that your prospects have with your service design efforts. 5. Sold! Tapping into organisational behaviour and taking small steps, we’ve helped our company realise a lot of improvements and successes. See for yourself. Take small steps that allow you to experiment, build on successes and learn from failures. Create champions. Get folks thinking about and learning how to use service design. And discover that the service design win for your organisation can come about more easily than you think.
Disseminate tools and ideas: We have learned that, no matter what, never hold on to design. Your ‘doing’, ‘owning’ or ‘pushing’ creates little, if any, momentum or enterprise-level ownership. Let folks learn experientially: Experiential learning makes champions. Find ways to support folks while they experiment. Who owns the process? Maybe you? Who owns updating the deliverables? Perhaps they do? What if they see a way to extend the model? Try it! Talk about the results. Learn together. 4. Build on success We constantly remind ourselves that we must disseminate service design vision repeatedly before we can capture Touchpoint 7-3 43
Stop Selling Service Design Start selling solutions (to their true challenges)
As service design practitioners, we continually help our clients to better understand their customers: we help them find out how they can be more valuable to their clients, how they can make a difference or how they can persuade prospects with extraordinary services. Nonetheless, when explaining to future clients what we do, we have a hard time demonstrating the value we bring. We have all the techniques in place to understand the Bart Muskala, Managing Partner of True North, was active in the Belgian advertising industry as an executive at BBDO. He cofounded True North to help companies grow. Christophe Leuckx, Managing Partner of True North, is a BBDO-alum and long-time practitioner of user experience methods, touchpoint planning and the like. Maarten Aelvoet, Business Designer at True North, founded a big data startup that collected customer insights. His background helps customers listen to the voice of theirs. True North works for Lunch Garden, Baloise, Liberty Global, KBC, among others.
44 Touchpoint 7-3
true needs of our client’s customers: customer understanding is the essence of our profession. It’s time to apply those techniques to our own efforts at winning new clients. With our backgrounds as service design practitioners, we should be able to be the best sales team in the world as successful selling hinges upon empathy with prospects, our core business. However, being a domain expert does not guarantee perfect practice when it is needed most. Over ten years ago, I started working for a digital advertising agency. Our website was mediocre at best: nothing compared to the award-winning projects we launched for our clients. It took us three years to finally bring our own digital presence up to the standard of our client work. It was only when we started dealing with our own site as a client project that we made a difference.
Practice what we preach in order to be successful Despite this sounding anecdotal, it outlines the true problem: we are good at practicing service design for our clients, but we often fail to practice it when we need it most. Over the years, we have concluded that there are three key approaches to improve the sales process. Not surprisingly, they are directly linked to the practice of service design itself, and were also named by the authors of This is Service Design Thinking: being ‘user centred’, applying ‘sequencing’, being ‘cocreative’, being ‘holistic’, and ‘evidencing’. Nobody wants service design … Selling service design is hard, because it sounds like hard work for our buyers.
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Uhm... Do we speak the same language?
Most challenges we tackle involve more than one touchpoint. And the service concepts that we improve are only as effective as the weakest touchpoint of which they are composed. Suppose you were tasked to have a look at an improved user experience of a prospect’s website, let’s say one touchpoint. ‘Sequencing’, a principle of service design, helps us identify all interrelated actions to make sure we do not overlook a pitfall or create a shortcoming that might impact the success of services offered. For the prospect’s website project, it means that the website needs a technical upgrade, the retail personnel might require additional education, the logistics department might be summoned to update its procedures, etc. Almost all the time a ‘holistic’ view is required. We noted that this is when the real challenge for our contacts we are selling to starts. Our marketing contact needs to find his way up to the sales or – heaven forbid – the IT director. Our clients have problems that require ‘co-creation’, but our processes of selling are often siloed rather than shared, because we
tend to mimic our prospects’ organisations. Rarely will you find an internal contact who is thrilled to involve his colleagues as it incurs budget discussions, manpower hassles and turf wars. The tension we contain in our workshops to turn opponents into advocates are the same tensions we choose to ignore when we are in a sales cycle. We suggest using stakeholder exercises during your prospecting phase, together with your contacts, to reveal the required parties involved and create quick empathy maps for each stakeholder. It has helped us to find the right arguments to persuade the organisation rather than the individual. We consider our contact to be our internal ‘coach’; our source to manage the sales process from the inside. Nobody buys service design... Our interventions are merely a means to an end, and we should start treating it that way. We’re no end, we are, at best, a methodology, an approach and a set of techniques Touchpoint 7-3 45
Great! We are on the same page now!
to create the insights needed to solve the real problems that are on the table. In our experience, companies rarely look for service design as such. Our clients have other, often unspoken, reasons for the questions they ask: a larger ‘buy’ button is marketing slang for ‘conversion impact’. A quest to boost unboxing videos of clients is about ‘increasing customer satisfaction’. The question whether people want a paper or digital receipt is most probably input for a multibillion-euro business case. Almost all questions we help answer are business challenges, yet we often feel tempted to discuss techniques, explain stakeholder approaches and elaborate on methods used. A ‘user-centred’ approach starts by uncovering what our customer expects rather than us choosing what we offer. This means we must focus on their business needs and challenges rather than on the methods we use. We have learned not to start by offering service design as a solution. Instead, we dive deep into framing the 46 Touchpoint 7-3
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project, understanding the ins and outs of the business challenge. Only after we have shared our initial thoughts on the challenge do we answer the ‘how?’ question. We share the business impact of the cases we co-created rather than explaining the process that took us there, and we advise to gauge our performance by looking at the impact of our work more than our methodology.
“The role of the service designer is
We should stop selling service design… Our clients want to buy a guarantee of success. Our empirical methods are a means to a substantiated end result. If we want service design to be successful in the end, we have learned that it is about solving business challenges. Hence, to be impactful in the end we must create buy-in at the highest levels of our client’s company. Part of doing that is being able to understand and speak the language of upper management. But far more important than speaking their language, we must deliver proof. The more anecdotal and empirical that service design is, the less convincing it will be for those used to basing decisions on spreadsheet calculations. ‘Evidencing’ is, therefore, the fifth principle of service design that should be applied when selling service design. Without proof, people tend to buy from companies that guarantee a sense of certainty: guided by fear, uncertainty or doubt, it seems wiser to choose a potentially inferior solution – often more expensive – instead of betting on the unproven risk of service design. We handle the evidencing requirement by including NPS tools, customer satisfaction surveys or quantitative methods to deliver statistical proof for the assumptions sourced from customer understanding. We support the empirical evidence we collect in order to become more trustworthy.
Birgit Mager, Professor of Service Design
changing. Yes – we are designers, but we are also facilitators and teachers, conflict managers and we have to learn the language of our clients. They have already learned our language.”1 at Köln International School of Design. Our methods are different, but our objectives are the same. Service design firms believe in: the power of customer understanding instead of spreadsheet understanding, looking at the bigger picture instead of the individual touchpoints, involving all stakeholders instead of only the directors, a holistic view rather than a purely digital focus and prototype validation instead of intangible business cases. We hope the lessons we have learned over the years help you to persuade your customers about the value of service design. By applying the customer-facing methods you use to your prospective clients, you have a better change at addressing their real needs and winning their business. 1 Mager, B. 2015. Emerging Issues and the Future of Service Design [Online]. 17 November. Keynote speech presented at Service Experience Conference 2015, San Francisco, CA.
Same, same but different… Because our work often entails solving business challenges, we are not the only players on the field. We are faced with competitors from different angles: traditional business consultants, digital transformation agencies, business model companies, and even internal innovation departments. Touchpoint 7-3 47
Selling Service Design in Canada The key questions that every service design pioneer must answer From the front covers of the Harvard Business Review and Businessweek, it would appear that design has become a part of every facet of business. But, while Toronto is home to North Chris Ferguson is the CEO of Bridgeable and leads strategy and design projects with some of the world’s largest and most innovative organisations in Canada, the US and Europe. His work with the team at Bridgeable has been honoured with numerous awards and he writes and presents regularly about the intersection between human-centred design and business strategy. He holds degrees in biology and entrepreneurship. Katherine Monteith is a Design Strategist at Bridgeable and works hand-in-hand with clients and project teams to uncover rich customer insights and develop strategic, accessible solutions that drive business value. She has more than eight years of experience leading research and brand strategy programs for clients across five continents and in multiple industries. Katherine holds an International MBA from IE Business School, and a BDes from York University.
America’s third-largest design workforce1,service design remains a new phenomenon here, and across Canada. Signs of the changing seasons Now, encouraged by the performance of market-leading corporations and start-ups, Canadian firms are beginning to turn their attention to an oftenneglected piece of their operations: building a strategic design capability. In some of Canada’s largest companies, departments beyond marketing are taking an active role in understanding and improving their services from the perspective of customers. The public sector is following suit. In rarer instances, teams of practitioners are popping up within organisations under the banners of: ‘customer experience management’, ‘design strategy’ and ‘service design’. Recognising this shift, we set out with the leaves beginning to change in the Autumn of 2015, to examine how
1 Martin Prosperity Institute, The Place of Design: Exploring Ontario's Design Economy, (March 2009), p. 19
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Canadian firms are planning, organising, and executing internal service design projects and programs. We interviewed seven senior executives from top-tier Canadian organisations, from healthcare to retail to financial services. We wanted to hear first-hand how they were evolving their operations to respond to this new era of customer-centricity. What we observed is that Canadian firms have begun to implement the tools and practices of service design to tackle their organisation’s toughest strategic priorities. At the same time, it’s clear that these pioneers still lack a consistent approach and vocabulary. Additionally, how, why, when and with whom their methods are applied varies significantly. Moving from design thinking to design doing For Canadian businesses willing to jump in, the application of service design is seen
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Spectrum: design of discrete service to design of service system
as a new way to differentiate in highly competitive or rapidly evolving markets. But while design thinking and service design rhetoric has become more widespread in the last several years, the practical application of these methods is more difficult to implement. “Many years ago we established that ‘Customers First’ was the only real way we could differentiate ourselves as a service provider. Now our competitors say the same thing but it takes a long time and a lot of commitment to actually do it effectively,” said Judy Mellett, Director of Service Strategy and Design at one of Canada’s leading telecommunication companies, TELUS. The ability to 'actually do it’ looks very different, depending on the organisation and the industry in which it operates. We discovered that investments in strategic design activities exist along a continuum. At one end of the spectrum, service design is applied to deliver discrete value to a discrete part of a business. It is introduced once the scope has been established, involving a relatively small number of internal stakeholders. At the other end of the spectrum, service design is applied to reinvent systems or industries where multiple internal and external stakeholder groups will be impacted. Where an organisation finds itself on this spectrum depends on how it approaches several key questions. These are the key questions that every service design pioneer must consider. 1: How big is the scope and scale of the challenge? When we talk about scope and scale, we’re defining how an organisation views its potential reach (or scope of impact) on a given issue. In other words, how broadly (or narrowly) does a firm define the sphere in which to apply service design? When it is defined more narrowly, organisations view service design as a tool for solving a particular business problem, most often within a particular business vertical. The business problem itself can have a long or short duration. “We always start by framing the business problem that needs to be addressed. What is the customer pain point? What’s the expected ROI?” said Anthony Wolf, Associate Vice President of Private Label Brands at Canadian Tire. Starting here often provides tangible, business-focused results that fit within a firm’s existing frame of reference. It’s a great way to gain traction quickly. Touchpoint 7-3 49
Companies interviewed by the numbers
Other organisations are applying service design to solve much more complex problems that are not easily defined. These initiatives look at the interactions that exist across a wide variety of stakeholders, both internally and externally. Organisations like Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) are considering the scope of desired impact (and therefore the scope of its projects) more broadly, to include a larger system of multiple channels, products, and business units that touch the customer. “The biggest benefit to the service design approach is that it creates client empathy and clarifies customer expectations based on their ultimate goal. Consumers expect seamless interactions and don’t really care about our organizational challenges. Their expectations are shaped by their experiences 50 Touchpoint 7-3
across sectors, as well as their last interactions with us. So it's important to look at design as managing an ecosystem of experiences, across channels, across roles and across products,” said Lucie Cousineau, Director of Customer Experience Design and Innovation at RBC. Some organisations are defining the ‘ecosystem’ even more broadly to expand beyond the walls of their own operations. This is no easy task, especially in industries that are highly regulated. But Roche Canada proves that it is possible, and that it’s worth the effort for the benefit of the customer (or patient in their case). “If we discover there’s a series of diagnostic tests that are supported in one institution and not [in] another, we can connect those two institutions to start talking about how one institution does it and the other [one] doesn’t. So we can
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start connecting people and connecting teams even if we aren’t able to solve the problem,” said Anne Elsley-Swan, Vice President of Customer Strategy at Roche Canada. Multi-stakeholder collaboration means truly putting the user at the centre of the solution, and determining which organisations need to come together to improve that user’s experience across the system. Josina Vink is a former strategist and service designer at the Mayo Clinic and the Center for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto. She defined “the notion of the system and the collection of services” as a means of “moving beyond one organisation and one service experience to really look at the movement of one individual service user, through multiple services across service sectors.” For example, “in mental health, we were bringing together people from housing, healthcare, justice and social services, and beginning to map how people were moving through the full system, what the key problems and pressure points were and what some of the key leverage points within the system were to be able to make changes. Then we were working with that whole collection of individuals to make changes across organisations.” All of these approaches are important in the advancement of service design as a practice. Tackling more narrowly defined business problems in the short term serves to create ‘quick wins’ and to illustrate the benefit of a service design approach. As confidence in the tools, language and methods of service design increase, there will be more opportunities to engage in larger systems thinking, applying service design to solve more systemic social and business issues. 2: ‘Quick win’ or long-term strategy? How quickly does an organisation need to show results? The definition of the time horizon can greatly impact an organisation’s confidence in applying service design. Organisations often start out by tackling a shorter-term initiative that can quickly and easily demonstrate results. “One way to sell service design internally is to look for the low hanging fruit. Fixing an existing opportunity that is already known, rather than finding new opportunities,” said RBC’s Lucie Cousineau. However, there are limitations to the ‘quick win’ approach. Often, the service design process itself is longer than a typical business strategy and analysis process, and requires a greater investment in time, resources and money. “Trying to sell that model with
a short term financial viewpoint can be difficult,” said Roche’s Anne Elsley. “It's too easy to say it's taking too long and that we’re distracted from our core business.” Interestingly, this sense of urgency to see results is often at odds with an organisation’s natural hesitance to put prototypes in market quickly, test them and iterate rapidly on the fly: a key element of the service design process. “People want perfection, and internally we get caught up with that. The notion of pushing out code that’s not perfect and fixing it on the fly is not common,” said James Gray-Donald, Vice-President of Sustainability at Bentall Kennedy, one of North America's largest commercial real estate advisors. To get those quick wins with big results, sometimes a bit of calculated risk-taking is required. But for leaders who are willing to (or interested in) looking beyond short-term results, service design can play an even more interesting role. There are organisations that are using service design to identify new areas of focus or future opportunities beyond the scope of their day-to-day business challenges. This future-focused approach is often coupled with scenario planning: it applies a customer-centred lens to the definition of future business opportunities. It can also expand well beyond the business sphere to begin to look at larger change drivers that exist in the market and in more complex ecosystems. The Government of Alberta is using this approach to help define priorities for the province. “We do a lot of scenarios work to engage executive teams around some of the big drivers of change that are impacting our system of healthcare here in Alberta,” said Oksana Kachur Niedzielski (Specialist), and Jonathan Veale (Director) of the Strategic Foresight and Innovation Unit at the Ministry of Health with the Government of Alberta. “We deal with huge volumes of information and complex, contradictory perspectives and data points. We need a way to add structure and form to this information to make it more manageable and coherent so that we can make informed, reasoned decisions or provide advice to the elected government to make sure they’re successful.” Service design is proving to be a powerful approach to provide human context and structure to the design of ambiguous and complex systems. 3: How will you measure success? What gets measured gets managed. Most of the organisations we spoke to believe that there is value in determining clear KPIs for any service design project. Touchpoint 7-3 51
Typically, in order to gain internal traction, those KPIs are aligned with what is already important to the business. If a firm’s most important measurement is a Net Promoter Score, a service design project should demonstrate an ability to positively influence that number. “Whatever metrics have been defined for the initial business problem you’re trying to solve should be the key metrics,” said Canadian Tire’s Anthony Wolf. However, is tracking traditional ‘hard' business metrics enough to capture service design’s impact? “It’s not just about the business and black-and-white numbers in the short term,” said Anne Elsley. Sometimes it’s necessary to move beyond those standard measures, or even redefine them. At Roche Canada, she said, “we built [our patientcentred strategy] into our balanced scorecard, so all company efforts were behind launching it as a strategic imperative. We looked at changing the traditional business measures: can our sales be measured in patient lives? Can our process quadrant talk about better insights to patients?” The application of service design is, by definition, intended to introduce a more qualitative and human perspective to traditional business thinking. Net Promoter Scores are fine, but service design uncovers the ‘why’ behind the score. Sometimes this leads to a new product or innovation, but sometimes it means choosing to walk away from something that your customers tell you doesn’t work. For service design to be successful, firms must be comfortable with both outcomes. Even as it provides value to the business, “how do you measure what you chose not to do as a result of the process?” asked TELUS’s Judy Mellett. It’s clear that several organisations are already beginning to identify these less quantifiable, humancentred indicators. However, there’s no clear consensus on the best way to track them. And it becomes even less clear when you move beyond tracking the outputs at the end of a project and begin to look at tracking the process of the project itself. As Josina Vink argued, “we need measures for outcomes but we also need to evaluate the process.” How do participants feel throughout? Do they feel engaged or sidelined? Is the process creating positive or negative attitudes? These more abstract, processoriented metrics become more important the more a firm is trying to manage for future engagement and long-term organisational (or brand) loyalty.
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4: What are you trying to achieve, really? What should a service design project’s output be? With much of service design terminology and practices historically rooted in product and interaction design, the expected output is often an improved or new product, feature or application. And while this is a good place to begin, most firms we spoke with recognise that this view falls short. Anthony Wolf confirmed, “a product-focus is not enough. For example, at Canadian Tire we did work in our paint department. We know that the selection of the paint itself is only a sliver of the overall experience. So if you’re only looking at that, you’re missing all the richness of insights around the customer: who’s shopping, the state of mind that they’re in, what they’re looking for, what they’re expecting, the decisions they’re trying to make. It’s like having super blinders on and ignoring most of what your customer is trying to balance.” These blinders are not uncommon. We often see prospective clients come with a request for a redesigned website or a new app. But before we engage in a project, we always ask, “What is that new website or app trying to do? What problem is it solving, or what need is it fulfilling?” If all an organisation really wants is a new skin on an existing website, then service design is probably not the right tool. If an organisation wants to truly understand its customer’s experience as they interact with the company (the good, the bad and the ugly), and how the organisation’s website fits within a much broader context of multiple channels with which the customer is interacting, then service design is exactly the right tool. Using service design to understand the complete customer journey is incredibly useful for organisations that want to deliver a better experience. Even if the final output is a new website (or product), it will be designed with the totality of the customer experience in mind and grounded in the internal people and systems that make it tick. And beyond website or product design, there are opportunities to redefine the complete system of service delivery for firms willing to take on that challenge. A prototype for leading Canadian organisations Answering these questions helps firms to find the right balance for their organisations, and to apply service design appropriately on a case-by-case basis. No firm we spoke with falls exclusively at a single end of the spectrum. The pioneers who have been brave enough
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to tread into uncharted territory look for opportunities to apply service design where the greatest impact can be made that influences key internal decision makers. This can look very different from firm to firm. Choosing projects wisely and aligning stakeholder expectations from the start supports the growth and confidence of service design practice and growth in the positive impact that can be achieved.
Lessons in service design from Canadian early adopters
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Serve Well to Keep on Serving! Lowering the volume on service design As much as service design has evolved as a discipline to deliver better results and become more attractive to organisations, many business executives are not even aware of the importance of delivering great service experiences. So, in my upcoming book, I’m trying a new strategy: lower the volume on service design to Luis Alt has been, over the last decade, using design to help people and brands to provide better services. He leads innovation and service design projects as founding partner of Livework in Brazil, is the author of the bestseller Design Thinking Brasil and teaches at renowned universities around the globe.
first spread the word about the impact that great services can have on businesses. How to sell service design? As someone who had to develop the market in Brazil from scratch, bringing the first service design consultancy in the world to Latin America, I have been in the position to ask myself this question over and over again. How should we approach organisations? Or better yet, how to attract them? My answer has changed quite a bit over the past years, and now I think that if we want to make the design approach ubiquitous, we might want to stop talking about it for a while. People and organisations Throughout our lives, we are constantly interacting either with people or organisations. Sometimes, we interact with a person who represents a specific organisation. Other times, we use some organisation’s machines in order to interact with people in our personal circles. At the end of the day, the way
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we feel is determined by the sum of how those relationships happened. Keep this information for now: it will all add up later, I promise. Service (design) awareness levels If we remove ‘service design sceptics’, we might say that there are three types of business leaders inhabiting our planet: 1. The ones that are already convinced of the value that service design is capable of bringing to their organisations, so that’s basically what they are already looking for in the market. 2. The ones that know the importance of providing great services but haven’t heard of service design yet – and therefore experiment with many approaches and tools. 3. And, finally, the ones that just don’t care about the experience their clients have at all, as long as they get expressive bottom line results by the end of the year.
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As service design practitioners, the way we approach each of them and our arguments should be completely different.
Service design sceptics aside, organisational leaders can be classified in either one of these three categories. Up until now, most of the arguments used by service design professionals have been targeting the top two.
‘Push’ versus ‘pull’ strategy For a long time, service design consultancies, in order to get new projects, tried to sell methods and tools, bragging about their own processes and how they lead to great results, in a sort of push strategy (service design turns into great results). The idea was simple: organisations will choose the consultancy with the best professionals and the most impressive methods and tools. Many consultancies have realised now that it is much better to do the exact opposite: show the kind of great business that can be generated through the use of service design. It has become mainly about the results, not the process.
Some people don’t care! Although the latter, the ‘pull’ strategy, is still the best approach to sell service design to people who are trying to deliver great experiences, there are still a lot of people who just don’t care about that. Sadly, they actually outnumber the other two types of professionals in the market. So, what should one do and how should one approach those executives who don’t realise how important it is to properly serve their clients? How to talk to organisations that are not yet mature enough to understand the value of their clients, and therefore keep looking at the market with an inside-out perspective? Well, in order to reach this type of professional, I think we should first just make them aware of the importance of delivering great services. Skipping service design It is important to understand the needs of our customers and future customers (as service design agencies). Some people are not yet ready to get the full message and should, therefore, only be convinced about the importance of delivering great services. Later, in the long run, they will get to know and value service design but, in the beginning of this journey, it is important to stop talking about tools and methods and start delivering simple messages about great services and their impact. Let’s think of the great service experience as the ‘why’ and service design as the ‘how’. First people need to learn the reason behind what they are doing, so we should try to help them find just that. What comes next? Developing new methods and tools and writing case studies has proved their worth in attracting people who have already discovered service design and are now learning about its value. I don’t think that we should stop doing that. It is a short-term strategy to close deals with people who have come a long way in understanding the ultimate goal of businesses. But we should go earlier in the service design journey of some potential clients. We have to get those businesses that are dealing with customers every day without realising how important Touchpoint 7-3 55
© Paola Mânica, from Livework
Sometimes service experiences are awful because the organisation isn't even aware of the relationship between delivering
they are on-board. What they need at this moment are not tools, but powerful messages on the benefits of ‘serving well to keep on serving’ (and not going out of business).
great experiences and getting better business results.
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With great power comes great responsibility If, at some level, our experience in life is shaped by the relationships we establish with organisations and people, and service designers have a crucial role in defining the way clients interact with organisations over time, then service design as a discipline can really help human beings to have a better, happier life. Talking about purpose, in order to spread the use of the discipline that can make organisations better (with the help of many other areas and professionals, of course) we should first stop talking about service design and understand that there is a path to be walked by organisational leaders, a ladder to be climbed. We must rescue those people, making them aware little by little, with simple messages, and we must try to contribute to a better world (of services).
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Practical advice for rescuing business leaders: Understand their moment in the journey: organisations go through different phases and their leaders might have varying mindsets. When exploring opportunities, try to think how your project might fit into the whole business strategy. It’s all about purpose: enable discussions around the purpose of the business in order to stimulate peoplecentric thinking, which will turn into great services for clients in the long run. Stop preaching design: design is the how, not the why, and people really don’t care where you come from and why what you are doing is so innovative and great. It’s not about you being a designer: it’s about how you can help the organisation. Focus on the small steps: sometimes the big changes might come from a 30-minute meeting that was rethought into a collaborative workshop. Don’t try to do everything at once: instead, try to accomplish small victories within the organisation and show the value of delivering great services bit by bit. Great stories matter: never underestimate the power of a good story. True, they are not numbers, but they might have an even greater effect in the boardroom. Collect testimonials and keep track of what’s happening on the front-line (the good and the bad). Don’t forget the numbers: pragmatic leaders are always impressed by data. Think of ways to associate great services to business results and measure the accomplishments made at every new step.
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Easy to Buy – Not Easy to Sell Outperform with a customer-centric approach to selling We believe selling service design isn't about making service design sellable. Instead, successful sales are determined by adopting a mindset of ‘becoming buyable’. We believe that applying the methods and approach of service design to your sales process Daniel Ewerman is Entrepreneur, Co-Founder and CEO of Transformator Design. Daniel has delivered over 300 successful projects in the last 16 years. He’s a board member, columnist and frequent keynote speaker on the topic of customer experience, service design and service innovation, and author of the book Customer Experience - Why some organisations succeed … and others don’t. Anders Landström is Senior Service Designer at Transformator Design with broad and international experience. He manages customer-centric projects at both strategic and handson levels for clients from all business sectors and industries. With a background in industrial design and change management, he successfully creates impact for both clients and customers.
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will help you become buyable. In this article, we share critical factors for understanding your clients, and show how to act as service design consultancy when selling your expertise. This article isn’t all about becoming buyable, but let’s start by ticking off the basics needed to get hired: — Packages of different sizes — Understandable deliverables — Content in every step you sell — Appropriate price It also has to be very clear how the client can make use of the result. The more abstract and strategic the project, the more structured the package needs to be. You can’t sell a future solution or idea, but you can sell a trustworthy and proven process for developing solutions. Be the nanny Selling is always part of a problem solving – or opportunity seeking – process between two parties: the problem owner and the solution provider. The problem owner has an issue important enough to pay someone to solve
it. This is always the starting point. When someone with an established deliverable, deadline and budget gets ownership of a problem, a project can be initiated. You, as a consultant, have to be a nanny and embrace the problem with them. By taking a genuine interest in the client and their customers, you can dive deeper into the situation. We’ve found that looking over small prestige battles and adopting a holistic perspective of the client works as a successful strategy for building great working relationships. One prospect, but two agendas You need to know who the buyer is — both the person/group contacting you, and their organisation. You need a deep understanding of each to become buyable: The person: When has the purchasing client done a good job? What are their KPIs? How
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So far, we’ve never met an organisation where the buyer’s best interests fully align with the organisation’s, even if it’s the perfect situation we always hope for. That’s why it’s so important to understand each of these perspectives.
© Illustration: Per Brolund
For real, or just for joy? There are two sorts of buyers: — Those who will buy a development project — And those who want to implement and create real change
are they themselves measured? What do they want to achieve within their organisation, or even their career? What is the dream scenario that this project will help them achieve? Will they take any risks when doing or not doing this project? The organisation: What does the organisation want to achieve? What’s the strategic plan? What counts in the organisation? How do employees become heroes? Who will win from doing this project? Who takes a potential risk, and are there any losers? Losers could be those who fight for the same budget. A difference in the needs and driving forces of the two parties shows an organisation’s potential dysfunction.
Far too many organisations are willing to buy service design projects without being prepared to face the consequences of implementing the result. The type of buyer will strongly influence your proposal. For the buyer who wants to use service design to fuse the organisation, talking about implementation is complex and joy-killing. While, for people who want to make real change, not discussing implementation comes off as fluffy, unrealistic dreaming. Know your buyer from this angle and you can adapt to communicate the most buyable proposal. For those that want to create real change, key figures, numbers of results and detailed effects are extremely powerful. The mindset of the client organisation Understanding the dominant mindset of a prospect organisation will deeply influence your proposal. We’ve found that people in organisations are driven by: — Creating success stories – usually focused on higher earning, market share, etc. — Not making any mistakes – usually focused on efficiency and cost cutting Touchpoint 7-3 59
Often, we encounter the latter in mature industries with high competition. However, this focus can change over time, sometimes very rapidly. A new C-level leader can change things overnight. Additionally, mindsets shift during different periods of the year. Year in, year out, we’ve found that Quarter 1 is about income and futureoriented possibilities, while Quarter 4 is all about cutting costs.
Learn to love the ‘NO’ You also need to be sure you have the right counterpart. Does the person you’re in touch with have the mandate to make the buying decision? Too many times we’ve spent a lot of time discussing with people who didn't have the mandate to buy. Selling isn’t always about getting a ‘yes’: it’s just as much about getting a ‘no’. The ‘no’ will free up time for you to focus on other prospects.
The three-legged stool When talking with an organisation about your proposal you have to grasp their situation and the value your service can offer. This depends on three factors: 1. Is it important for them? 2. Is it complicated to solve? 3. Is it urgent to solve it?
Sell business wellness, not heroin The client usually needs to create an overview of what they buy. Therefore, it’s important to let them see an ending to your relationship, and the possibility that they’ll take ownership over the process. As a consultancy, we constantly strive to educate and empower our clients. In doing so, we create a win-win situation: our work gets implemented, and the client organisation embraces transforming their organisation to better meet customer needs. At Transformator Design we’ve developed Custellence, a digital tool that enables its users to create dynamic
If all three are consistent, the project will have a high value for the client and they’ll be interested in buying. If any of them are not valid, lower the cost or drop your project and return when the situation has changed.
Service map made in Custellence, a digital dynamic customer journey tool.
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customer journeys and to lead change management. Delivering customer insights and journeys in Custellence ensures the client has a delivery that facilitates initiation of their work from a common ground. It further builds the organisation’s capability to have a live customercentric approach, where initiatives and projects are launched continuously. It’s open for everyone, from clients who want to work independently to competitors who want to strengthen their position in a local market. Simplicity leads to success Regardless of the type of buyer, the stories you tell need to be easy to spread. A complex message is hard to re-tell a boss or colleague. A simple, slapstick-based approach can be fun, easy, and spreads like a virus. Consider stories such as: ‘Satisfied customers are cheaper to serve than abused customers’; ‘It’s a hassle to work from outside in’; ‘I don't mind a customer-centric focus, as long as I don't have to change the way I work'. These catchy phrases, quotes or proclamations are sources for small chats next to the coffee machine.
In this article, we’ve described a few critical factors for understanding clients. They’ve certainly helped us on our journey from two designers in 1998 to a renown service design agency today. To tie it all together, we suggest that applying service design methods to your own selling process will make you more buyable. The customercentric approach is often forgotten as a selling tool. Let’s use the good advice we give our clients to sell our own services and develop our business. As service designers we have unique superhero powers: understand humans, innovate based on these insights and visualise it. Let’s use them for a good purpose! Good luck!
Bring the client into the kitchen Make working with you joyful. With a happy, warm, comfortable and creative atmosphere, the client won’t just be interested in the end-result, but the journey they’re taking with you. Laughing with our clients, helping them, getting to know them: these are just as important to us as the project outcome. Embrace your competitors We believe in including the client, which means being transparent. So we give them the chance to compare us to the competition and to understand their businesses and deliveries. We’ve always used this approach, along with sharing our tools, methods, and stories. In this way, we’re easy to find, easy to connect to, as well as easy to copy. We know that if you want to continue developing service design you need to know your own position in the market and perform even better by constantly developing your methods and tools. To do this, you can’t be afraid that someone else will start to use them. Touchpoint 7-3 61
Selling Service Design in a Developing Country Customer Experience perspective and a maturity framework In this article, we look at selling service design in the context of a developing country (Chile) where the concept is still at a relatively early stage in both the private sector and in academia and research. The actual literature on evangelising, selling and Carmen Gerea is Co-Founder of UsabilityChefs.com, usability evaluation and user experience (UX) testing platform. Digital coach and Mentor. Master of advanced design and Humancomputer interaction (HCI) PhD student. Santiago, Chile. Rodrigo Gajardo is a Designer, strategic design, ethnography and public services Consultant, Professor and Researcher. Master of advanced design. Founder of EstudioDIES.com, a strategic design consultancy firm. Santiago, Chile.
executing service design projects refers to methods and tools that are difficult to implement in a real context, particularly where there is a lack of knowledge of service design basics. Findings and learnings from typical client cases motivated the creation of a framework for selling service design that we present and discuss in this article.
Selling service design requires a lean mindset, where each step of the process â&#x20AC;&#x201C;research, define, design, test, execute â&#x20AC;&#x201C; can be a milestone and a project at the same time. We explore current challenges facing consulting teams and propose a framework for approaching and selling service design to an organisation based on a maturity model. This article is relevant to service design practitioners, both from consulting firms and client side, who struggle with engaging organisations in service design processes. The proposed framework is an instrument for assessing the maturity level of service design adoption and
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building a value proposition based on the company's context and business goals. Context and motivation As a quick summary from a typical project, the potential client came with a very specific request: a fast-growing financial business that needs to automate its processes in order to get the most out of the sales funnel from website conversion to optimisation and lead generation. A simple conversation on some basic topics related to customer experience, reveals that actually, from a client perspective, the post-sales activities are not supported by a clear protocol, neither in front- nor back-office process.
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Selling Service Design Based on Maturity Model
Findings and learnings from this client case motivated the creation of a framework for selling service design that we present and discuss here. Whom to talk to on the client side Innovation, marketing and customer experience departments are likely to adopt service design practices because they usually have customer experience in their DNA. Additionally, customer experience and innovation departments might have had some contact with design thinking, probably the most-used concept when it comes to innovative problem-solving methods and tools. Surprisingly, the approach of selling service design as 'innovation' is not exclusively related to developing countries. The Design Council mentions it as a current practice in UK in a recent report 1 . An ideal sales cycle for service design starts from a first contact with an organisation that has an identified problem (it is always much more expensive to evangelise or to make them see they have a problem). Because of
1 Design Council, 2012, Scoping Study on Service Design: https://www.designcouncil.org.uk/sites/default/files/asset/ document/Scoping%20Study%20on%20Service%20Design%20 Final_website%20summary_v2.pdf
the hierarchical corporate culture, it is maybe especially important in Latin America: talking to the right person is fundamental. The right person is someone who understands the need for a change and has the proper internal power to impact on decisions and resources for future projects. We will call this person a ‘sponsor’ and we will detail the importance of identifying who is the best decision-maker to talk to. The framework Understanding business goals will help you find a direct relation between customer experience and service design from a business perspective. Customer research is a great starting point, in the sense that executives are familiar with concepts such as ‘market research’ or ‘focus groups’. Having a mental reference helps them to understand the value proposition and how the results of a service design project will generate new business opportunities or solve a problem. From the very beginning, the approach has to make sense in terms of what kind of insights are expected to be found and how much value lies in the process itself. Get a sponsor in the organisation and an internal partner for the execution of a first project. An ambitious CEO will easily accept investing in data, but managing a service design project on a daily basis requires that Touchpoint 7-3 63
the initiative be engaged, requires that it communicate and drive relevant adoption by the entire organisation. It should not be only a matter of an executive board. On the other hand, in order to have an accurate and close follow-up, the consultant needs to be in permanent contact with one counterpart who should be in charge of the execution and have the empowerment to take decisions. Evangelise service design as a process that goes way beyond a specific project and propose a lean roadmap in order to get from step zero (no idea what service design is) to adopting service design as a mindset to design meaningful experiences.
Get a sponsor in the organisation and an internal partner for the execution of a first project.
Develop internal capabilities through mentoring and coaching. Adopting service design and driving organisational change through service design is a matter of articulating strategic vision with practical capabilities that need time to be developed. In this context, a first project can help to initiate an organisation with the service design approach. Afterwards, given limited resources, future impact can be driven by empowering the internal team with service design tools and methods. Showing meaningful insights and getting small results should be a focus in this first project. Insights can be easily converted into ideas, but connecting these ideas with the executive board agenda is a bigger challenge in terms of transforming conceptual design into tangible projects with a budget for prototyping. Meaningful insights are generally related to a core business challenge or problem. Converting them into small results is a key factor to gain credibility and this is what makes a service design team – internal or external – strong enough in order to get future resources to implement a second or third project. In the context of the mentioned project, one of the first deliverables was a tool for matching potential 64 Touchpoint 7-3
clients with vendors depending on the personas identified during the research period. Practical issues when selling service design Co-creation, co-design and participatory design are clearly value-added activities in the new paradigm of project management and innovation. Nevertheless, involving the internal stakeholders still presents some issues, especially in terms of defining the process and the tools to be used, but probably the most important aspect is understanding that doing service design requires a different mindset that conveys changes in the way of working. Based on previous experience, facilitation should go way beyond open-design where no specific actor is responsible for design decisions. Working with intermediate deliverables or several small projects has advantages, but could also present disadvantages. In an ideal scenario, service design external practitioners could use the first research findings in order to propose a series of working plans, based on design proposals considering the customer journey and service blueprint mapping. However, in a more realistic scenario, companies interact with other stakeholders – as digital agencies, marketing consultancy firms, IT providers – therefore, the service design firm can not anticipate or control. The existence of these other potential providers will potentially situate the service design firm in a more competitive context for the next step: execution. Some tactics will situate service design firm in a more favourable position when the time comes to decide who will implement: 1. Keep the control, proposing and executing initiatives with other partners of the service design firm. 2. Give the control to the client, collaborate with other existing providers and maintain a facilitator role. There are pros and cons when deciding if a consulting firm should be involved in project management. Some pros: assure initial design proposal goes live and increase client loyalty. On the other hand, the cons are related to diversifying the tasks or keeping the focus on the design:
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Need to incorporate other profiles depending on the — nature of the projects (eg: PMO), what might not always be part of the internal and close team of a small service design firm. — Exposure to time-consuming activities and tasks that are not intrinsically part of a service design firm's current activities, like validating requirements into deep details with IT counterparts. Conclusions Motivation for doing service design may somehow run counter to the sales and execution context. In fact, in the actual scenario of Chile as a developing country, different management and innovation paradigms compete in the organisations (eg: give priority to fastgrowing sales versus focus on customer experience and long-term customer value). In these dynamics of selling service design, specific questions need to be addressed, such as: where does the role of the service design consulting firm stop? Assessing the maturity level of the organisation regardless of service design knowledge and adoption early in a project cycle, as well as demonstrating a deep understanding of the business goals when presenting a quote, are critical factors of selling the service design strategy.
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From Kilowatt-hours to Customer Experience Anchoring service design in the off-grid energy sector In our daily lives, the electric plug has long become indispensable, making it all the harder to imagine that there are still more than 2 billion people worldwide without access to electric energy. In 2011, a handful of engineers wanted to tackle this problem by combining renewable energy with internet-of-things technology Klara Lindner strives to connect human-centred design with sustainable energy provision. She joined the solar-energy company Mobisol in its infancy to manage the pilot phase in Tanzania. Alongside managing Mobisol's customer experience, Klara joined the Microenergy Systems research program in 2013, investigating service design in the BOP/energy context.
and founded the Mobisol company in a Berlin garage.
We worked toward developing an offer that is both appealing and affordable for households living at the so-called â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;base of the pyramidâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, and encountered many challenges, in addition to the expected technology appropriation: weak physical and institutional infrastructures; lack of skilled staff in rural areas; and the great cultural distance between future customers and us. We then came across service design, and saw that it could be just the right approach to accomplish our aim: if we managed to put it into practice. This article intends to put forward three tactics that helped service design take root in our engineering-driven organisation. 1. Bring development closer to real needs Common in many companies, but especially in those driven by (German) engineers, is a decision-making process based on unambiguous facts. Service design goes beyond aggregates and puts
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real people at the centre of inquiry, and it can be quite a culture shock to discuss ideas based on a limited set of in-depth interviews or insights from extreme users. To convince the team of the value of qualitative research, we investigated household routines and energy-use cases by using home visits and cultural probes. Pictures showing what our rural customers really do with the electricity greatly surprised the tech team, but also gave them inspirations for future developments. Research showed that some users charged not only their own phones, but had set up a frightening arrangement to charge them by the dozen, thereby generating extra income. This led to the development of a highly efficient multiple phone-charger, which can be directly connected to a solar-panel system. Nowadays, all employees reflect on how their actions influence actual customer experience and readily incorporate new insights into their work.
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2. Avoid jargon and support staff by lowering complexity and workload While it might make sense to ‘sell service design’ to top management as a great new catalyst for innovation, the staff will be more likely to collaborate if it is something they can relate to. Rather than introducing a fancy new method only you know about, try to use common terms and show appreciation for how much employees are already involved in refining customer experience or backoffice operations. Service design offers a comprehensive basket of methods and tools that can be much less painful than the mere trial & error process they are currently using. One example from local operations: to present the outcome of their activities, our customer-care team was surveying hundreds of people over the phone, because assessing variables like customer satisfaction on a 1-5 scale and aggregating data into pie charts were the only data synthesis they were acquainted with. By introducing personas and the jobs-to-be-done framework, we equipped them with a reasonable complement to Excel. This reduces their workload immensely and at the same time allows us to get richer insights about customer pain points and ‘wow’ moments. 3. Stick around for implementation Customer journeys or service blueprints are great ways to propose a new or optimised service concept. However, the path from idea to reality is usually plastered with obstacles and a new service design will only materialise outside the meeting room if you also collaborate with the operational team. What has been shown to be very helpful as a first step at Mobisol, was adding another row below the scenario we created: in here, we detailed all that is necessary to realise each change. Together with the team, we broke down the new concept into well-defined work packages. This resulted in concrete action items for hardware and software developers, the marketing guys or our qualityassurance team. This canvas then turned into a living document that was adapted to issues arising during implementation on the fly.
Uncover actual user behaviour to inspire future developments Today, Mobisol is a company with 350 employees who together provide electricity to more than 30,000 EastAfrican households under a pioneering business model. The aim of this article was two-fold: first, to show that it is possible to ingrain customer experience into the DNA of an organisation even if it is run by energy engineers. Second, to contribute to the emerging area of ‘transformative service research’ by highlighting the potential of service design beyond simply turning ‘okay’ services into great ones. By “putting an emphasis on understanding the consumer, envisioning new service experiences and prototyping them,” 1 service design can really make a difference and create solutions that previously seemed impossible.
1 Anderson, L. & Ostrom, A.L. (2015). ‘Transformative Service Research: Advancing Our Knowledge About Service and Well-Being’ in Journal of Service Research, 18(3), 243-249.
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The Value of Customer and Staff Engagement: How Service Design Pays for Itself Happy employees make for happy customers. Intuitively, this relationship makes sense, but how can it be proven? How can it be understood in a nuanced-enough way to organise the design, delivery, and assessment of services? How can it be used to make Elliot Felix is the founder of brightspot strategy. He is a strategist, facilitator, and sense-maker who has directed projects for leading companies, nonprofits, cultural institutions, and universities. Solving space, operational, and organisational problems gets him up in the morning. Thinking about the future of work and learning keeps him up late. Victor Nwankwo, M.D., is a physician who received his training at the University of Illinois in Chicago. He is currently Managing Director at the Dr. DCN Memorial Foundation as well as a Trainee at Weill Cornell Medicine’s Clinical Translational Science Center in New York City. He is as much a programmer as anything else.
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the case for keeping both the employee and the customer sides of the equation happy? We know that engaged employees provide better service and have higher retention, higher productivity, lower absenteeism and fewer mistakes. As for customers, satisfied customers use services more frequently, spend more, promote brands, hang in through crises and provide input that makes products and services better. This is what the fields of service marketing and service management call the ‘cycle of success’.1 The problem is, many organisations are instead stuck in cycles of failure: most employees aren’t engaged and many customers aren’t satisfied. Gallup indicates that, of the American workforce, only 31.5% are engaged (they are “involved in, enthusiastic about, and committed to their work and workplace”), 51% are not engaged (neutral), 17.5% are actively disengaged (working against the interests of the organisation). Likewise, many companies have dismal Net Promoter scores, including cable
companies and airlines with negative scores. Many hospitals continue to provide unsatisfactory patient experiences as measured by HCAHPS (Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems), with a 2014 national average of 71 out of 100. This problem cannot be solved by looking at the customer side alone, for no other reason than services are co-created between customers and providers. It is also a problem that applies to all types of companies because all companies are in the service business, whether they recognise it or not.2 Of late, service design has focused too much on customers.
1 Lovelock, C. H., & Wirtz, J. (2011). Services Marketing: People, Technology, Strategy. Upper Saddle River, N.J: Pearson/Prentice Hall. See for example p.286. 2 This is based on the concept of 'service dominant logic' cf. Vargo, S.; Lusch, R.: 'Evolving to a new service dominant logic for marketing'. Journal of Marketing. Vol. 68 (January 2004)
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This article argues for approaching service design as an organisational development activity, one that engages and develops providers in order to create cycles of success. In our view, ultimately what needs to be designed isn’t really the service: it’s the way people will work. We will make this case by reviewing existing literature that links employees and customers, by demonstrating this relationship through brightspot’s own analysis and by providing a simple methodology for demonstrating how a service design process that develops employees pays for itself. What the literature says about employee and customer engagement A large body of research concerns the relationship between employees and customers. For instance, Bernhardt et al., 2000, Koys, 2001 and 2003 and Harter et al., 2002. Studies generally take one of three approaches: empirical analyses of an organisation, meta-analyses within/across industries or indices linking employee and customers. The first typically relates employees and customers by surveying both and then examining business outcomes like profitability, stock performance, or customer retention. For example, in hospitality, Salanova, Agut, and Peiró demonstrated that employee engagement predicts service climate which predicts employee performance and, in turn, customer loyalty.3 In retail, Wangenheim, Evanschitzky and Wunderlich demonstrated the link between employee and customer satisfaction, even for employees who are not in contact or very rarely in contact with customers.4 Meta-analyses demonstrate a correlation between employees and customers by looking at large data sets on how employees and customers feel relative to how the organisations perform. For example, Gallup’s 2012 meta-analysis combines 263 research studies across 192 organisations in 49 industries and 34 countries, including 49,928 work units and nearly 1.4 million employees. It builds upon their ‘Q12’ instrument with 12 questions determining employee engagement such as “I know what 3 Salanova, M., Agut, S., & Peiró J. (2005). 'Linking Organizational Resources and Work Engagement to Employee Performance and Customer Loyalty: The Mediation of Service Climate'. Journal of Applied Psychology, 1(6), 1217-1227. 4 Wangenheim, F. Evanschitzky, H. & Wunderlich, M. (2007). 'Does the employee–customer satisfaction link hold for all employee groups?' Journal of Business Research 60, 690–697.
is expected of me at work” and “the mission or purpose of my company makes me feel my job is important.”5 Gallup’s analysis found that firms in the top quartile of engagement had 25% less turnover, 37% less absenteeism, 21% more productivity, and 22% more profitability as compared to the median. There are also several indices that correlate employee satisfaction, engagement and/or loyalty with that of customers. In 2014, the Answers Corporation combined data from their American Employee Study and their Experience Index for over 40,000 customers of U.S. retailers to show a relationship between customer satisfaction and employee engagement, with the top retailers including Advance Auto Parts, Ann Taylor, Apple, Barnes & Noble and Costco. Bassi, Frauenheim, McMurrer, and Costello created the Good Company Index that evaluates Fortune 100 companies across 3 dimensions: employer, seller and steward. Comparing employee vs. customer rankings To see the employee-customer relationship for ourselves and to lay the foundation for a future assessment tool, we compiled rankings from three employee ratings and three customer ratings for an exploratory analysis: Glassdoor.com 50 Best Places to Work, Career Bliss’s 50 Happiest Companies in America, Fortune’s Best Places to Work, American Customer Satisfaction Index, Tempkin Net Promoter Scores and the Brand Keys Customer Loyalty Engagement. Of the 623 companies that appear on these six sources, 36 had both employee and customer scores, so we focused on these for our analysis. Because different sources had different scoring scales (e.g., a good net promoter score might be in the 60-70% range while Fortune’s Best Places to Work are ranked 1 through 100), we converted each to a relative integer rank between 1 and 36 to create a non-weighted composite rank for comparison testing. Comparison testing determines if there is a correlation between the rankings: if there is a strong correlation we can expect a company that ranks highly in one domain to achieve a similar ranking in the other. Figure 1 shows
5 Harter, J., Schmidt, F., Agrawal, S., Plowman, S. (2013). 'The Relationship between Engagement at Work and Organizational Outcomes: 2012 Q12 Meta-Analysis.' [Online] Retrieved October 25, 2015, from http://www.gallup.com/services/177047/q12-metaanalysis.aspx
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the 36 companies plotted by the composite employee ranking against the composite customer ranking. A Spearmanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s correlation revealed a very weak positive correlation between employee engagement and customer engagement (rs = 0.0499, P = 0.7724). While the results may not demonstrate a strong correlation, visual inspection shows a clustering trend along the diagonal and the companies commonly associated with both high employee engagement and positive customer loyalty (e.g. Google, USAA, Southwest) are all along the trend line. However, there two outlier groups that significantly reduce the strength of the correlation. Nordstrom, Hyatt, eBay and Apple are outliers that achieve high customer ratings without commensurate employee scores. Conversely, Adobe, Facebook, McAfee and NBC Universal are outliers that have high employee rankings without the return on customer rankings. Further investigation is needed to explain the outliers: for instance, how might differences by industry type, organisation size or service type contribute to the employee-customer relationship?
Best Rank 1
Apple
Hyatt Nordstrom
6 eBay
Customer Ranking
11 Wegmans Costco
Toyota
General Electric
26
Ford
p (rho) = 0.0499 Farmers Insurance Intuit
Nationwide Insurance
Fidelity Investments
DirecTV Bank of America
Nokia Orbitz Citigroup
NBC Universal
Yahoo!
31
36
Southwest WellPoint (Anthem) Microsoft USAA Nestle
Chrysler Nike
21
Adobe McAfee Facebook
PayPal 36
31
26
21
16
11
6
Worst Rank
1 Best Rank
Employee Ranking
Companies plotted by the composite employee ranking against the composite customer ranking 70 Touchpoint 7-3
Employee Engagement Factor
Service Design Characteristic
Connection to a larger purpose
Creating vision, purpose and philosophy of the organisation
Creating a sense of belonging to a team and the larger organisation
Leveraging a participatory process to build the team and create shared experiences
Setting clear expectations, coupled with recognition and reward
Defining the roles needed, setting clear performance metrics and developing reward mechanisms
Investing in employee growth and development
Learning new skills during the process (and via formal training)
Providing input that is listened to and applied
Creating a participatory process for input and cocreation
Having the tools and equipment to do your best
Using service blueprints to identify the tools and infrastructure needs
Sharing a commitment to quality
Developing shared values and performance standards as part of the service design process
Google American Express Marriott Fedex
16
How service design can help Good service design can keep both sides of the equation happy: providing jobs that connect employees to a purpose, offering opportunities for growth and creating a sense of belonging while they deliver services that support and delight customers. But this can only happen by approaching service design as an opportunity to develop the people providing the service. To think about service design as organisational development, we can use the most common contributors to employee engagement6 to structure the service design process. For instance, giving people a sense that their opinions count can be reinforced through a participatory design process that also gives employees a chance to shape their own future and opt into a change, instead of it being foisted upon them from the top down.
6 Sources on common employee engagement factors include organisations such as Gallup, Towers Watson, MSW Research, and The Institute for Employment Studies as well as thinkers such as Jane McGonigal, Daniel Pink, and Teresa Amabile
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To see how this kind of employee engagement-driven service design process would work, let’s consider an example of five walk-in urgent care centres that want to improve their patient experience and renovate their check-in, triage and waiting areas. We would structure this as a bottom-up participatory process of staff working groups, apply the same tools to staff and customers and pair staff with embedded external experts for training in real-time. Initial research would mine transaction and satisfaction data as well as gather new data through interviews, observations and service safaris. From all of these, we would create a shared purpose and vision, customer/staff personas and customer/staff journey maps. We would then prototype new ideas for the checkin experience. Service blueprints would then identify the staff actions, infrastructure, skills and performance metrics. To complement the staff development from a participatory process, a staff training program would be designed and delivered along with coaching on implementation as the new services and spaces go live. How to make the case for service design If we think about service design as an activity that develops employees, then we can make the case for it based on two facts: first, there is a link between employee engagement and business outcomes and, second, employee time costs money. So, the time you save service providers through improvements like reduced absenteeism, reduced turnover and increased productivity can offset costs associated with developing people as well as the costs for space changes, technology, marketing and so on. Detailed business cases can be created that look at the current conditions in comparison to the future state and determine whether and when benefits exceed costs. But, to make the case simply, you can determine the annual staffing costs, then estimate how much those costs could be reduced annually through the service design process (based on your previous work or other publicly available data like Gallup’s), and then calculate how long it will take for those cost savings to offset whatever you spend to achieve them. For our example of five urgent care centres, staffing costs might be around $4.5M per year7 on around $16M revenue.8 If we were able to improve the organisation from average to top quartile performance, that would be about $1.6M in annual savings relative to these costs. The service design, training and implementation process
(operational expenditure) would be about $500,000 and the space enhancements would be about $2.3M (capital expenditure). So, the payback would be about 3.75 months for the operational expenditure and 17.25 additional months for the capital expenditure. To make their own case this way, practitioners can look at a variety of factors on the customer and employee sides of the equation, as shown in the table below: Costs
Revenues
Staff Facing Costs
Staff-related Cost Savings
— — — —
Service design consultation Training Implementation coaching Staff time in meetings, workshops, etc. Space, furniture, and — technology
— Reduced turnover — Reduced absenteeism Reduced inventory — shrinkage (theft) — Reduced quality defects — Reduced safety incidents — Increased productivity
Customer Facing Costs
Customer Revenues and Cost Savings
New digital tools/ — platforms — Marketing — Space, furniture, and technology
— Increased profitability — Increased spending/ share of wallet — Reduced cost of acquisition — Increased loyalty/ reduced turnover — New Customers
Conclusions We’ve shown how employee and customer engagement are related and linked to business outcomes. To capitalize on this relationship, service design can be a way to develop employees in order to satisfy employees and customers alike. This way, service design pays for itself with the cost savings and revenue gains offsetting the design and implementation costs. Then we have happy employees, happy customers, and happy service designers.
7 For each location, assuming 80 operating hours per week and a staff of 2 physicians, 2 clinical assistants, 2 operations managers, and 4 customer service representatives 8 For each location, assuming 360 visits per week at $172 per visit, using averages from the Annals of Internal Medicine Report, adjusted to 2015 dollars: See Mehrotra A1, Liu H, Adams JL, Wang MC, Lave JR, Thygeson NM, Solberg LI, McGlynn EA.(2009). 'Comparing costs and quality of care at retail clinics with that of other medical settings for 3 common illnesses.' Annals of Internal Medicine Sep 1;151(5):321-8.
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Tools and Methods
Software Tools for Service Designers How software tools can support the service design process While working as a team in real-world settings is crucial to the design process, and certainly should not be replaced entirely, the deliberate use of software tools can enhance the productivity of Christiane Rau is Professor of innovation management at the University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria and Founder of cœur innovation. She is active in research, teaching, and consultancy in the fields of strategic innovation management, service design and customer co-creation. Anna Zbiek is currently a Research Assistant at the University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria. She conducts research in the fields of customer experience and digital methods of service design. She gained experience in the field of design working for Fraunhofer Center of Applied Research on Supply Chain Services SCS, Polytec Holding AG, and Mazda Motor Europe.
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service design teams throughout all stages of the service design process. Reviewing the current market, we have identified 21 software tools that are currently available and that we think are particularly useful for different circumstances that can arise in service design projects. Setting the stage When service design teams consist mostly of Generation Y members, they often expect that software exists to support their activities: ‘Is it really necessary to keep flipcharts with persona descriptions?’; ‘How should we capture our interview data?’; ‘How can we create digital mock-ups to let prospective customers interact with a new website?’; ‘How can we consistently communicate early service concepts to customers in various focus groups?’ In recent years, we discovered one tool after another that helped to improve our collaboration and that opened up new possibilities for gathering insights (e.g. mobile ethnography). This made us wonder if other, potentially more powerful, tools exist. After conducting a
systematic analysis, we are able to share some insights about software tools for service design and provide an overview of software tools currently available on the market. For each of the software tools, we provide a short description, as well as a summary of features for collaboration. Additionally, we recommend phases in which the tool might prove particularly beneficial. As pricing models differ, the prices of the tools are categorised based on a common use case: three service designers work on a project for three months. They want to work with the given tool collaboratively and want to be able to integrate around 20 users throughout the process. Clearly, this project-based perspective favours particular price models (e.g. those providing free trial
TOOLS AND ME THODS
versions for up-to three users) and put others at a disadvantage (e.g. those only offering one year licenses). We find that three particular types of software tools for service design are currently available on the market: (1) tools using pre-configured templates; (2) tools for gathering and analysing mobile ethnographic data; and (3) tools for designing service mock-ups. Exploration phase While tools exist for each phase in service design, a clear majority of tools are aimed at the so-called ‘exploration’ phase. One of the greatest challenges in a service design project is to get a holistic understanding of the context of a service and its prospective customers. We find that a variety of applications exist that support the visualisation of the output of well-known methods such as personas, stakeholder maps or customer journeys. Platforms, such as smaply, provide templates that can be filled out online or printed out (Fig. 1). Similar tools are available in this area with slightly different functionalities. In Touchpoint Dashboard, it is possible to add quantitative data to touchpoints in customer journeys and the program assists in their analysis. Templates can (for the most part) be shared and edited collaboratively. For design teams, they provide good services for the documentation and visualisation of results in a time-effective and professional way. While straightforward and easy to use, these platforms and their applications simply translate well-proven tools to the digital world. Mobile ethnographic applications and related platforms for analysis provide a whole new way of capitalising on the rise of smart phone and tablet ownership. In the past, ethnography has often been abandoned due to its demands on time and resources. Nevertheless, the insights generated from a deep immersion on site are crucial to the design process. Mobile ethnography is increasingly becoming popular as user-related information can be gathered without time or spatial constraints. Instead, rich, real-time information can be generated ‘in situ’. We identified several applications in this area. For instance, with Contextmapp, service designers can create customer assignments, such as tasks to videotape particular situations or to answer qualitative or quantitative questions (Fig. 2). In addition, online focus group interviews can be conducted to discuss particular insights. All data is uploaded and can be analysed in the backend.
Using the application ExperienceFellow, customers capture their experiences with a particular service on the spot, without having to stick to preconfigured touchpoints. The users track touchpoints and document these with text, audio, photo or video, providing the service designer with a valuable glimpse into the customers’ perspective. In the background, the ExperienceFellow application is used to analyse the qualitative data. Creation and reflection phase During the creation and reflection phase, creating early service prototypes and refining them iteratively within the team and with prospective customers is essential to developing winning services. Table 3 provides an overview of software tools to design service mock-ups, in particular tools to create mock-ups of apps and wireframes as well as videos. In recent years, the demand for designing web services has risen steadily. Service designers have reacted to this demand and have extended their portfolio to offer online
Customer Journey created with smaply Touchpoint 7-3 75
Ethnographical research with Contextmapp service design where appropriate. Tools such as Axure and Balsamiq provide easy-to-adapt mock-ups for the development of interactive prototypes of websites and web applications. These visualisations are the basis for the actual programming later in the process. Interactive prototypes for smartphone apps can, for instance, be designed using FieldTest or InVision. Gathering feedback on prototypes quickly is also critical. InVision enables users to connect with the project team and provide feedback. To explain complex services and to convey the emotional aspect of a new service concept, we find VideoScribe particularly helpful. With VideoScribe, designers can create animated video stories using an included image database. In the final scribble videos, a hand draws the assembled images while the concept or, in this case, the service is explained. Those who do not wish to rely on the images included in the platformâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s database can create their own images and upload them. 76 Touchpoint 7-3
Implementation phase During the implementation phase, companies need to prepare the service introduction. Service designers often use service blueprints to communicate the service process and resources required to their clients. The Canvanizer application, with its templates for service blueprints, can be useful to clearly encapsulate all of the components of the service. Of course, software tools from various other disciplines can be used throughout the service design process. To name but three, tools from market research (such as EthnoCorder for ethnographic research), architecture (e.g. Autodesk Homestyler for prototyping service surroundings) or creativity support (e.g. BrainReactions for brainstorming) can prove useful. While it would be impossible to cover all existing software tools, our overview shows that a variety of platforms and tools for particular tasks in the service design process are available on the market. Yet, to the best of our knowledge, no platform supports the entire service design process seamlessly. Hopefully, a more holistic approach empowered by next-generation software will open up new opportunities in the future. It has to be mentioned that some service designers prefer conventional software solutions such as PowerPoint or Excel. Even if they are less well adapted to the particular purpose, they are available to most clients. In addition, no problems with firewalls or internal security systems arise. In any case, it is advisable that service designers check the data security policies of the software providers and consider their clientsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; data security requirements before selecting a software tool, in particular when it comes to web services. To sum up, our review identifies a variety of templatebased tools that can increase the efficiency of wellknown methods. Platforms for mobile ethnography can help to deepen understanding of customers by enabling on-going communication bridging spatial and time constraints. Various tools to create service mock-ups can convey a vivid understanding of future services, thereby enabling better customer feedback. None of the presented tools can replace collaboration in real-world settings. Nevertheless, deliberately combining offline world and online support increases service designersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; efficiency and takes collaboration with customers to a whole new level.
TOOLS AND ME THODS
Software tools for service design using pre-configured templates
Implementation
Reflection
TRACK CHANGES
Creation
comment
view/try
edit
mobile app
LIVE CHAT/ FORUM
PHASE
Exploration
COLLABORATION SHARE
desktop app
DESCRIPTION
web platform
TYPE OF SOFTWARE
PRICE FOR USAGE*
Canvanizer www.canvanizer.com
• Templates for service blueprints and other service design, business and project management purposes are available online • Templates can be downloaded for print out or filled online
Free
Creately www.creately.com
• Templates for 40 types of diagrams, including flow charts, business models, data base diagrams
Platform: € Desktop: €€1
Cacoo www.cacoo.com
• Templates for various diagrams
Free1
FeatureMap www.featuremap.co
• Templates for user stories and customer journey maps • Tasks can be defined for each stage in the story or map • Combines customer journey development with project management tools
Free
Lovely Charts www.mylovelycharts.com
• Templates for different types of diagrams
€
Rapid Modeler/ Rapid Scanner www.app.rapidmodeler.de
• Templates for Business models, action plans (organise implementation phase) • Templates can be downloaded for print out or filled online • Feature: RapidScanner App (offlined filled templates can be digitalised)
€€€2
smaply www.smaply.com
• Templates for customer journey maps, stakeholder maps, and personas • Templates can be downloaded for print out or filled online
€
Touchpoint Dashboard www.touchpointdashboard.com
• Templates for customer journey maps • Features to analyse and present customer journey maps • Offers customized views of information for different stakeholders
€€€3
*Prices calculated for the use case: €: ≤200€; €€: 200€–1.000€; €€€: ≥1.000€ 1Free with limited functionalities 2Free for individual use 315 days free trial 4Free with limited number of participants. Prices significantly differ for particular groups, e.g. students 530 days free trial 630 days free trial, prices significantly differ for paricular groups, e.g. students 76 days free trial 814 days free trial 97 days free trial 1045s branded videos free
Touchpoint 7-3 77
Software tools for service design gathering and analysing mobile ethnographic data
Implementation
Reflection
PHASE TRACK CHANGES
Creation
comment
view/try
edit
mobile app
LIVE CHAT/ FORUM
Exploration
COLLABORATION SHARE
desktop app
DESCRIPTION
web platform
TYPE OF SOFTWARE
PRICE FOR USAGE*
Contextmapp www.contextmapp.com
• Platform on which customer tasks can be posted and managed • Customer task can include to gather mobile ethnographic data (video, audio, photo), answer questions (multiple question types supported), and can participate in online discussions • Data can be analysed in the backend
€€€1
ethOS app www.ethosapp.com
• Ethnographic observation system on which customer tasks can be posted and managed • Customers document the completion of the tasks with video, audio, photo, or text and can participate in online discussions • Data can be analysed in the backend
€€€4
ExperienceFellow www.experiencefellow. com
• Supports customers to capture touchpoints during a service experience • Users can document individual touchpoints via video, audio, photo, or text and evaluate them • Information can be summarized, analyzed and displayed grahically in the backend
€€
*Prices calculated for the use case: €: ≤200€; €€: 200€–1.000€; €€€: ≥1.000€ 1Free with limited functionalities 2Free for individual use 315 days free trial 4Free with limited number of participants. Prices significantly differ for particular groups, e.g. students 530 days free trial 630 days free trial, prices significantly differ for paricular groups, e.g. students 76 days free trial 814 days free trial 97 days free trial 1045s branded videos free
78 Touchpoint 7-3
TOOLS AND ME THODS
Software tools to design service mock-ups
Implementation
Reflection
PHASE TRACK CHANGES
Creation
comment
view/try
edit
mobile app
LIVE CHAT/ FORUM
Exploration
COLLABORATION SHARE
desktop app
DESCRIPTION
web platform
TYPE OF SOFTWARE
PRICE FOR USAGE*
axure www.axure.com
• Using drag&drop to create mock-ups of websites and apps in different styles as well as personas • Different templates can be used
€€€5
Balsamiq www.balsamiq.com
• Using drag&drop to create mock-ups of websites and apps in comic style
€6
InVision www.Invisionapp.com
• Creating mock-ups for websites and apps • Layouts have to be designed using other design software (e.g. Omnigraffle or Adobe Photoshop) • Advanced collaboration functionalities
€€1
Mockingbird www.gomockingbird.com
• Creating mock-ups for websites • Example webpage to get an impression • Pre-designed elements can be placed by drag&drop
€7
Moqups www.moqups.com
• Creating mock-ups of websites and apps • Pre-designed elements and own images can be placed by drag&drop
€1
Pixate www.pixate.com
• Creating high fidelity prototypes of apps
€2
GoAnimate www.goanimate.com
• Creating films in comic style • Images are directly lined up like a cartoon • Choose a theme, background, and characters by using drag&drop, adapt them, and assign actions • Use templates or own images
€€8
PowToon www.powtoon.com
• Creating films and animated presentations in comic style • Choose animated characters, background music, templates, adapt them • Use templates
€€1
VideoScribe www.videoscribe.co
• Creating films in whiteboard style • Images are drawn by an animated hand while watching the videos • Use templates or own images
€9
Wideo www.wideo.co
• Creating animated presentations • Use templates or own images
€10
*Prices calculated for the use case: €: ≤200€; €€: 200€–1.000€; €€€: ≥1.000€ 1Free with limited functionalities 2Free for individual use 315 days free trial 4Free with limited number of participants. Prices significantly differ for particular groups, e.g. students 530 days free trial 630 days free trial, prices significantly differ for paricular groups, e.g. students 76 days free trial 814 days free trial 97 days free trial 1045s branded videos free
Touchpoint 7-3 79
Making a Service Design Movie Learn how to use video in service development Service concepts and added value are best communicated through action and a moving image. A moving image concretises service moments and interactions. It can be easily distributed through new media channels. A service design movie, then, is a great way to develop and share your service concept and value offering within the business. In this article, we present the basic steps for making a service design movie, while introducing Satu Miettinen is a Professor at the University of Lapland. She is currently directing several international service design research projects. Her research interests include areas of social and arctic design. Mira Alhonsuo works as a Research Coordinator for service design projects at the University of Lapland. Her research interests include service design methods, process visualisation and public service development. Heikki Tikkanen works as a Designer at the University of Lapland. He uses video and audio material in service designs for business. His expertise area is Audiovisual Media Culture.
80 Touchpoint 7-3
optimal tools and methodologies for creating a storyline, a story structure, and a service concept pitch. Using movies as a concretising tool A moving image carries meaning and content in a way that written reports simply cannot. It incorporates visual, emotional and aural levels of a service experience. In this article, we present how a movie can be used as a service development tool in order to develop, test and prototype a service. Services today are developing at an ever-increasing pace. As a result, new means are required to represent these service experiences visually, to share foresight knowledge on service development within a company and with the companyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s stakeholders and to acquire user information through social media and other new media channels. Moving images, sound and storytelling are concrete elements that can be used
to achieve this. They can be combined with the development of services to better concretise â&#x20AC;&#x201C; for both a company and a potential new user â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the benefits of a new service design or concept, thereby providing anticipatory knowledge. A story (script) can also create and reinforce strong emotional experiences. This makes it possible to create a more outstanding service experience for customers, one that takes the best advantage of multiple media channels. This article covers cinematic scripting tools using case studies from two companies, KONE and Pentik, to demonstrate the process of making a service design movie. Tools and techniques are based on research and development done in two research projects funded by Tekes, the Finnish
TOOLS AND ME THODS
Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation: Humanizing Service Experience (HumanSee) and Need for Speed (N4S). With Pentik, the service design movie was used to communicate and sharpen the company’s brand values, demonstrate good practices that strengthen sales and to demonstrate new service concepts in action. The aim of the movie-making project was business development. The video was produced by the design team but facilitated by a professional video producer. In this case, the design management approach had the most value for the company. The movie-making process was constructed around preliminary fieldwork, which included interviews and workshops with the company management, and shooting the film material at a factory. The preliminary preparations were a valuable part of the process. The movie was produced in a two-day workshop. On the first day, a storyline was created and the script was completed. On the second day, the film was shot and edited. During the editing process, online picture and sound databases were used to quickly locate the material needed for production. In this case, the movie-making process involved a more strategic approach and aimed to help in brand management. In the case of KONE, the process was more about developing a new design tool for the service design team, which comprised both in-house and external designers. The team was already familiar with using movies as a strategic tool for sharing their concepts with the management. Their motivation was to use the movie to process existing data and materials and to outline the challenges they had faced during the fieldwork research phase. Tips for getting started The following tips and tricks will help you during the movie-making process. Remember, you don’t need to use high quality and expensive filming equipment: you can make the most of the technologies and accessories available to you. The main point is that anybody can create movies with the technology at hand, be it smart phones or tablets. Also, you needn’t spend weeks editing
the movie. While editing does take time for beginners, after few practice rounds, you will become familiar with the editing applications and learn new tricks. By using user-friendly applications that enable easy editing, even novices can create polished movies. 1. Define your goal
In a short film, you can only communicate one message. What is the one and only point of your story? What is the main point that you want to convey? What do you want the viewer to do right after seeing the movie? It is important to consider these questions before you begin filming and keep it simple. 2. Define the roles
What kinds of roles do you need in your movie? For whom do you want to create empathy? Whose point of view do you want to share? How you can present the characteristics of your role or persona in the movie? 3. Plan your story
Give the movie a simple and clear structure: a beginning, middle and an end. Each of these parts serves a unique purpose in engaging the viewer with the service you are portraying. Also remember to consider the ‘before’, ‘during’ and ‘after’ phases of your service.
Basic structure of a short service design movie Touchpoint 7-3 81
Working with a story board which is
4. Create a storyboard for the movie
created by using cards that illustrate
A great way to share your story ideas is to make them visible by creating a storyboard before filming. Visualisation is one of the key elements in service design, and so it works well in a service design movie making. Although not essential, a basic understanding of different shot sizes and camera angles (composition) will help you improve the emotional impact and continuity of the movie. Even a short web search goes a long way here. You can plan the composition beforehand on the storyboard, or record many shot versions on the fly and pick the best ones when editing.
service scenes. Cards can be utilised in prototyping and scripting of service.
5. Set up the environment!
Build the appropriate environment with props and concretise your ideas so that your main point is effectively conveyed. Creativity is your best friend while prototyping your ideas. A chair doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t need to be chair. It can also 82 Touchpoint 7-3
TOOLS AND ME THODS
be, for example, a car, a dispenser, a shopping cart or an exercise machine. 6. Get the right equipment in order
Before you begin, download a movie-making application to your smart device, if you don’t have one yet. Application stores offer apps like iMovie and Stop Motion Studio for free, or at least for cheap. These are adequate tools for basic movie-making. Benefits for businesses Service design movies serve many purposes in service development. One such purpose is evidencing. Sometimes you need to convince a board of directors and show them your concept in two minutes flat. When you work with the top management, your proof of concept has to be credible. In such cases, you can choose to create the manuscript with your design team but outsource the shooting to a video professional. The movie can be produced with a strong iteration and experience prototyping twist. Experience prototyping methods are well suited for ideating, testing and evaluating within the design team. When making the movie, you can choose what you want to emphasise. Is the project more about experience prototyping or about design management? Is it about creativity and action, or is it about the story, design and brand management? By taking a strategic approach, the outcome will be more polished. Concretising the concept is one of the main benefits that a service design movie provides to the design team. Instead of spending time in discussion, the concept can be quickly and effectively demonstrated to the viewers. When using freeware or cheap applications, moviemaking is a cost-effective way to get your message across. Movies especially provide a lot of value when sharing information with stakeholders who come from various cultural backgrounds and language groups. Through video, one can communicate one’s message across boundaries. Service design movies, then, are a powerful medium for sharing development work internally and for communicating values externally.
Examples of service concept videos SANO service concept video by Federico Zoppei, Helena Galeeva and Varvara Borisova: https://youtu.be/UyGh7JntclE
F-secure doc & loc service concept video by Titta Jylkäs: https://youtu.be/2CV0ImQhNks
Touchpoint 7-3 83
Interview with Ulla Jones In this issue’s profile, Touchpoint Editor-in-Chief Jesse Grimes speaks with Ulla Jones, Business Designer at OP Financial Group, the biggest banking and insurance group in Finland. Her company is currently working on building an in-house design team, the first of its kind in Finland. Ulla Jones is a Business Designer at OP Financial Group, a Finnish banking and insurance company. She works to bring customer insights and empathy to the heart of all new service development.
Jesse Grimes: The topic of the previous issue of Touchpoint was on the growth of in-house service design capabilities, and I'm aware that you've been involved in setting this up such a capability within your current employer. Can you share some of your experiences so far, and advice on those who may be going down the same path?
Ulla Jones: The challenges we face are often related to the way projects are constructed. The outcome is set before a project begins, most money is allocated to the technical solution instead of creating and testing the business case, and sometimes it happens that if the customer insight leads to an unfamiliar direction, the project is repackaged into a traditional banking or insurance case. To fix this we try to involve ourselves as early in the project as possible so that we can help to formulate the project description to allow new discoveries and
84 Touchpoint 7-3
unpredictable outcomes. We also make a point never to work alone and come back with a readily-solved case. We are always part of a multidisciplinary team and involve everyone in customer research, interviews and analysis. This helps to penetrate the service-design methods further into the organisation so that they become useful and everyday tools for anyone wanting to take a customercentric approach. When building an in-house designteam, first make sure your company is truly ready. Designers will challenge your status-quo, ask difficult questions and challenge the ‘Hippos’ (highest-paidperson’s-opinion). Is your company ready to lose hierarchy, take risks and test out new things at a continuously growing pace? If you answered yes, then by all means, go for it! But remember to have a contingency plan, so that the designers you hire will have a room to grow and develop along with your company.
P RO F I L E S
In your previous jobs you`ve been involved in strategic
While more and more service designers are entering
design and service design activities, both of which need
the field having undergone a specific service design
real traction within an organisation to become a success.
education, you have - like myself - found yourself
In this issue we`re looking about how we go about selling
practicing it, despite having degrees in other disciplines.
service design. What have you learned about doing this
Can you share with us your educational background,
successfully within large companies?
and what path you took to get to where you are today?
I’ve learned that initiating change takes a lot of time. I know it's a cliche but unfortunately there is no short cut if the leadership is not ready to take on new methods. Luckily the start-up scene has sped the things up a bit. There are small disruptive businesses mushrooming everywhere and big companies are starting to feel the effects of these niche-services eating away at their revenue. Big company executives are doing their homework and investigating what makes start-ups so successful. Suddenly iterative, agile and explorative methods are something to take seriously. So it is definitely a good time to be selling service design. However if the industry you’re working on is not under ‘attack’, the executives usually have other pressing issues to deal with than preparing for disruption. In those cases, selling customer experience and service design can be more difficult and I would not start by proposing a big strategic re-envisioning project that doesn’t have any concrete outcome. Internal stakeholders need success stories and pilot cases to build their understanding and trust for an approach that to them may seem new and ambiguous. I would advocate to include as many people from the company side as possible in the early research stages, especially in customer interviews and visits. The most rewarding thing is when your company’s sceptical, superresults-oriented sales-shark shares how he just made a successful sales pitch that was completely based on the consumer insights he has picked up while attending consumer interviews. When a service design project delivers benefits beyond the core goal of the project and people in the company start using the methods in their daily work and vocabulary, you have managed to create a whole bunch of potential clients.
I am a landscape architect and consumer economist by training. Early on in architecture I was disillusioned by the profession’s general lack of interest in the users. Architecture was more about light, shadows and masses. I wanted a career that was more closely connected to people. Consumer economics is a hybrid degree combining business studies with sociology, that focuses on people’s behaviour as consumers. When I made the leap from architecture in 2005, I got a lot of questions about what sort of career I imagined to have with these two seemingly different degrees. A year later I did a minor in International Design Business Management (IDBM) at Aalto University and I had my answer. I discovered design thinking and human-centred methodology and I was sold. Since then I have applied human-centric methods in all my work and gradually educated the people around me to see the value and benefits of this approach. I think that a designer should have a wide perspective and an ability to look at things from multiple angles. It definitely helps if you’ve studied a few different disciplines and schools of thought, because you know for a fact that there is never just one truth. I am happy to see service design becoming an actual degree programme and more widely recognised profession, however I would still advocate that people studying to become service designers would learn widely about business and technology and human behaviour. I think the richness of service design is its multidisciplinary nature and interest in human behaviour in all its irrationality and quirks.
Touchpoint 7-3 85
Service Design National Conference in Finland: ‘Design or Conform’ Held in Helsinki early September 2015, the national conference was organised by a team of engaged SDN volunteers and attracted 140 service enthusiasts to hear more about the necessity of service design thinking in modern organisations.
The conference was the first ever service design event organised during the popular and traditional Helsinki Design Week and was part of its official programme. That shows a late, but definite, expansion of service design beyond the traditional areas of product and industrial design. The conference full-day program was timely and gave interesting insights into creating powerful customer experience with service design. The event was composed of keynote presentations, parallel sessions of service design cases as well as activating workshops. Among the interesting keynotes were: Teemu Äijälä from Fjord who showcased how living services are the next wave of the digital transformation; the British keynote, author and academic Kamil Michlewski who provided insights about design attitude and why all prominent and successful companies 86 Touchpoint 7-3
are suddenly all into design; and Tarja Meristö, Laurea principal lecturer and business futurologist, who presented a visionary concept of how future trends and numerous uncertainty factors can be built into various scenarios and utilised during the service development process. The breaks with sponsored breakfast and lunch also offered great opportunities for connecting with other professionals. And an open-to-everybody ‘SDN Blind date’ reception after the programme attracted even more people to the venue. Many guests left the successful event with the hope of attending a similar event in the coming years. “Today, most products are very similar, so service is the way of standing out and [of gaining] competitiveness. Service design is the methodology to guarantee a superior customer experience. I
met a few really interesting contacts in the event and we will continue discussing a possible co-operation. If the event could be improved, it would be having even more time for casual networking.” said partner Elisa Tiilimäki from Respondeo Ltd. Tarja Chydenius works as Senior Lecturer at Laurea University of Applied Sciences. She is the co-founder of SDN Finland and is a member of the SDN Management Team representing national chapters. Laura Rinta-Jouppi is an enthusiast service designer with a multidisciplinary background. A pharmacist, editor and designer, she now works as a Customer Service Specialist and is finalising her studies for her Master of Business Administration, Service Innovation and Design at Laurea.
INSIDE SDN
Service Design National Conference in Taiwan: â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Service Design for Social Impact in Asiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; The SDN Taiwan Chapter hosted their very first conference on 23 October 2015 in Taipei City. Over 160 people from the business, academia, agency and social enterprise fields gathered to discuss the meaning of service design. The conference included not only Taiwan's practitioners but also Asia's service design community. Eighteen contributors from the United States, Japan, China and Taiwan delivered two keynote addresses, 11 presentations and two workshops. Presenters shared their works, experiences and ideas to demonstrate how they are using service design to create social impact. To name a few, Jamin Hegeman from Adaptive Path, who also represented the SDN management team, discussed how to bridge the gap between designers and nondesigners. Prof. Hsien-Hui Tang discussed a project to help visually
impaired people navigate and create a service experience in the dark. During the morning session, Owen Lee talked about the UDN Vision project, which is shifting media toward a new role regarding Taiwan's public issues; Andrew Yu presented the social enterprise 1kg. org, which focuses on education in China's rural areas; and Dr. Atsushi Hasegawa and Taro Akabane shared their project on elderly nursing care with Caiso in Japan. In the afternoon session, Han Wu from the World Design Capital 2016 gave a keynote
about the social design movement in Taiwan and the WDC 2016 in Taipei; and Xue Yin shared a point of view about the service design trend in China. A panel discussion, moderated by Diane Shen, followed to discuss challenges and opportunities for service design in Asia. SDN Taiwan would like to thank everyone who joined this conference. We wish to see everyone next year and create more connections and sharing opportunities between service design practitioners in Asia. Arthur Yeh is the chapter representative of SDN Taiwan and director at Service Science Society of Taiwan, facilitating interdisciplinary teams to work better on service innovation and service design. He focuses on creating value in co-creation service systems in social and business environments. He also runs the training workshop for both public and private organisations to spread the impact of service design.
Touchpoint 7-3 87
BASE YOUR CUSTOMER JOURNEY ON F***ING RESEARCH! MAKE IT SUPER-EASY FOR CUSTOMERS TO RECORD THEIR REAL EXPERIENCES Use ExperienceFellow for diary studies based on mobile ethnography. ExperienceFellow combines a free mobile app for customers and a web-based research software. All uploaded data is automatically visualized as customer journey maps and can be filtered and analysed with different tools. Export highquality journey maps for workshops and gain a better understanding of customer experience. With ExperienceFellow you can research customer experience along the entire journey in real-time – across all online and offline channels.
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88 Touchpoint 7-3
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SECOND BUSINESS MEET - UP IN HELSINKI
A group of approximately 30 people from different companies gathered at Nordea’s premises in the centre of Helsinki on 9 November 2015 to share experiences on internal service design work. They heard two interesting opening speeches on how service design has helped improve both the service processes and customer experiences in private banking (Pontus Slotte, partner) and real estate and housing SKV (Timo Kaisla, CEO). After the opening speeches, participants were split up into groups and decided, independently, on a service design-related subject they would like to elaborate. Groups created ideas on ‘internal marketing’: how to convince upper management on the benefits of service design, and how to engage colleagues that are not yet familiar with service design. Many of the ideas were ready to be taken into practice immediately, which delighted the co-creators. It was an energising evening hosted by Concept Management Team Leader, first vice president Taina Mäkijärvi and Senior Concept Manager Riitta Vainikka from Nordea. The next BMU will be held in the beginning of 2016 and hosted by Digia Plc. The BMU events are a confidential sharing platform for company representatives and internal service designers only. Article written by Jaana Komulainen.
How can I read Touchpoint? vol 7 no 3
| january
2016
Selling sign Service De
Insider
creating value for the qualit service design y of life. global confer ence 2014 SDN teamed up with its Nordic chapters to host The confere this year’s global nce offered great conference in speeches and Stockholm, Sweden talks. Highlig hts . Over 600 leaders included Mark and practitioners Levy from Airbnb from around talking about the world joined employee engage us to explore the theme ment, Fred Leichte Creating Value r from Fidelity for Investm Quality of Life. ents, Kigge Hvid on how the design of service “This was a big collaborative s can improv effort. I’m very e life for people, Nathan thankful to Shedroff on defining everybody that value, Shenye participated. n, a Buddhist It felt monk, extremely inspirin talking about g to be amongs quality and time, t this great crowd Wim Rampe n from Delta and I believe Lloyd sharing we have a huge deep persona opportunity l insights and to improve many life around the more. Denis world with service Weil held the closing design,” said talk reflecting conference chair back on the two-da Stefan event Moritz from y and sharing Veryday. his perspective on how service Enthusiasm for the event design can reach was great from the the next level. start, with tickets selling out two Aside from experie weeks prior to the ntial opening of the highlig hts like healthy conference. And many food, artisan participants espresso, live al said their expecta sketching and tions yoga, an have been exceed ambula nce drove ed. “We put straight into a lot of thought into the venue to introdu the overall experie ce the patient nce, ensuring time experience worksh and space to op. Some of the share, encourage networ other popula r handsking and particip on workshops tion,” added a- on empath focused conference produc y, defining the value of er Magnus Bergma service design, rk from Doberm waiting experie an. nces and employee Prior to the confere engagement. nce, three introduction Overall the confere semina rs offered the nce possibility to atmosphere get familia r was excellent; with the basics, get answer participants s from experts enjoyed a global on questions and spirit and vibrant the value of sharing and service networking design. SDN atmosp also hosted its here. You’re invited to members’ day with check out and activities linked follow the discuss the newly-launche ion and reflections d Special Interes at the confere t Groups (SIGs) nce website, as well focused on the as find videos areas of healthcare, of presentations. finance, public service and service design implementatio n. www.service-d esign-network. org
Y – NOT EAS Y TO BUY by Satu Giles 58 EAS by Paula IGN MOVIE E DES IGN SERVIC E DES VIA SERVIC MAKING A TO VAL UE dström 80 H Lan PAT ers 32 THE rman, And anen Daniel Ewe Heikki Tikk TO SEL L by nsuo and Mira Alho 18 eur o Mie ttinen,
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