Service Design 101 - 2019
Yes, it’s another goddamn funnel. Let’s call it the focus funnel 😆
I wrote this article because I had been thinking about a way to explain Service Design in a clear way for stakeholders.
You’d be forgiven for rolling your eyes at the latest buzzword: Service Design. I mean, how many more design roles do we really need? Isn’t it enough to speak about User Experience design, Interaction design, and Customer Experience design? Well, no, it isn’t. See — all these flavours of design are related, but they vary in their breadth and depth and can be used alone or in combination to accomplish business goals.
Let’s use an example: a clothing business wants to open an online shop offering delivery to customers. Here’s how the design roles can be better understood:
Interaction design:
Understanding, designing and testing the way that users interact with the finer details of a digital product. This is generally limited to the way elements on the screen move, interactive feedback of inputs and the action definitions for gestures.
IXD will take care of how customers browse through clothes, how selecting a size, colour, or print might work. What the visual feedback there would be for adding something to your cart. They may look into a 360 degree model of an item on a mannequin and how to rotate and zoom in.
User Experience design:
Here the design focus is on one digital touch-point, but in its entirety: an app, website or ATM even. UX design is focused on how users move through a channel or product, and what the “feeling” of it is. What context and mindset are users in when they use a product? Can they find what they’re looking for? Does the flow make sense? Can we use clever tools and tech to make things simpler and more intuitive?
UXD will look into design patterns that are predictable for online shopping, how users create an account so that it isn’t a barrier, how complementary items might be related to improve up-sell opportunities and optimising the checkout process. They will map out the user journeys within the site/app.
Customer Experience design:
The scope is broadened to include the users touch-points across various channels leading up to the primary product as well as afterwards. For example, how a person becomes aware of their needs, the market offering, how they make the decision to use a specific product, using it as well as after sales/service. Generally, this kind of design is focused on customer journeys before, during and after interactive with a product.
CXD will look at how a potential customer becomes aware of the website, what data we can use to target the adverts, how payments could trigger confirmation emails, how to get customers back if they’ve abandoned their carts, how delivery can be handled as well as planning for complaints, returns, and reviews. CX maps the before, during and post-fulfillment of an experience.
Service design:
Broad as well as deep, this kind of design takes the user journeys from CX and digs into how business and technology enables end to end services which may include many touch-points across channels such as marketing collateral, software, hardware, call centre, delivery, repeat tasks/services as well as after-sales.
But the real magic about service design is that it looks at the service holistically: we’re not just designing for our customers (or potential customers), but also the staff that delivers a service, technology that powers it, the vendors we rely on and the business rules that enable it. Because you cannot provide exceptional service without looking at how it comes to life.
We typically start a SD project by understanding the way a customer currently experiences our service (if relevant): this means talking to people, asking them to walk us through their most recent experiences with our offerings. We want to take note of where they struggled to understand something, or where we promised something but didn’t deliver.
But we do the same research with staff — ask them to walk us through the fulfillment of a service and point out what makes their lives easier or more frustrating.
Often staff members have amazing insights into how a business’ systems or processes affect customers — so listen to them! The more we know about our clients, staff and any other people involved, the better we can design for them.
After mapping both client and staff journeys with relevant “pains” (where things are going wrong), “gains” (where things are going well) and “opportunities” (ways we can innovate or improve), we start investigating what a better Customer Experience looks like.
Good ideas are collected around each pain point, alongside things that competitors are doing well and narrowed down into feasible chunks and mapped into “To-Be” journeys (mostly for customers only, but it really helps to do this for staff members too). As an aside, this is normally where the scope of CX ends and SD really begins.
With our To-Be journeys in hand, we need to test the journey. This can be quite complex when a service runs across multiple channels and has time dependencies, but mocking it with customers will quickly show us where we’ve placed too much or too little focus.
We then break down each step into a list of requirements, services, processes and tech solutions required to make the journey possible. This is a key step in SD and is delivered as a Service Blueprint.
A Service Blueprint breaks an experience down into two primary levels: Front-stage and Back-stage. There is also a section for Insights where necessary.
The front stage is what the customer sees and interacts with. Imagine a play or a pantomime, where the actors and the visible set pieces and props are in the front stage, while the backstage is behind the curtain (lighting, sound, prop hands that move the set around).
Using our online shopping example, here’s a (high-level) illustration of a Service Blueprint.
1. Front Stage:
Customer actions: Normally in chronological order, matching the desired user journey.
Eg: searching for an item, getting to the website, choosing the right size, adding to cart, checking out, paying, and receiving delivery.
Front stage actions /actors/touchpoints: For each customer action, and/or who are they interacting with (instant chat staff on-site, call centre, delivery partner)
Eg: viewing site on desktop, mobile, or app; scheduling delivery with the delivery partner, receiving the package.
2. Backstage:
Backstage actions/actors/touchpoints: For each customer or front stage interaction, what is going on in the background, behind the line of visibility? Are there people doing jobs?
Eg: Suppliers and stock controllers, packaging staff and logistics personnel.
Systems and Processes: How do the various systems work together to allow the front stage to function?
Eg: Stock management system, payment gateway, automated email confirmation. Ideally, these will be fairly detailed, sometimes showing the flow and movement of data between systems to show dependencies and risks, but also to point out gaps in the stack.
Observations or Facts: Any statements that are important to note and add detail to the overall step.
Eg: For payment, we need not accept Diners Club cards, Courier chosen is DHL.
Metrics and Data: How can we measure each step to be able to pick up on issues or service breaks? How can we measure success at each step?
Eg: Average cart abandonment is 40%; our goal is 25%. Use Google analytics to track navigation behaviour and search results.
Policies or Rules: Are there any laws or regulatory requirements that govern the way something needs to be done?
Eg: Terms and Conditions of sales, returns policy, refunds policy, SLA between delivery partner and online store.
3. Insights:
Questions: What uncertainties do we have?
Eg: How can we use data to improve our stock management and ordering system?
Potential Pitfalls: Where in the journey can we anticipate friction or failure? What is the likelihood and how can we mitigate it?
Eg: If a garment is out of stock and our suppliers don’t have an estimated delivery time, how do we handle it? If delivery takes 7 days rather than 3, how do we restore our customers’ trust so that we don’t lose them?
Critical Moments: Key moments that could cause a service break or pain for our customers. We want to note these so that we can plan for edge cases as well as know-how to handle problems that are not within our control.
Eg: For overseas customers, postal services may not be reliable — do we change the expected delivery times or restrict our shopping areas to mitigate it. What is the worst thing we can do to a customer?
The Service Blueprint is just one tool that allows us to plot the experience. Ideally, an “As-Is” blueprint (the way it currently works) will show us where we have gaps in training, siloed processes and show what new tech we need to improve our journeys. Having an “As-Is” as well as a “To-Be” is a powerful way to show the difference between current and ideal states. The “To-Be” blueprint can be used to assign tasks or requirements to relevant teams so that each piece of the service works harmoniously.
Service Design isn’t just for online offerings; it’s been used to improve service in restaurants, hospitals as well as banks. Everything is a service, even getting a passport, and a well-thought-out, end-to-end process can really improve sales, perceptions, and efficiency.
