Service Design

Not all services are designed equal

Every service experience you love or loathe has been designed – maybe in bits, sometimes as a whole. And that includes even the really, really bad ones. Lately we have been 'talking' Service Design with a few of our clients and 'doing' Service Design with others. What we have observed is that Service Design can be both a big, scary spectre and a liberating and transformative opportunity for businesses. People have described it as either small, iterative and manageable or all- encompassing and holistic – but, simply put, Service Design is the practice of delivering great on-brand customer experiences using optimised and efficient business systems and operations. 

The thing we've noticed is that many businesses look to improve customer experience, and many also look to streamline processes, improve their offers, migrate to the channels and Touchpoints their customers most use, cut costs and so on. Service Design is the practice of doing both in unison.

‘Ground up’ is how many organisations deliver improved services, and ‘ground up’ is where many look to cut costs. ‘Top down’ is how Service Design thinking suggests you'll be most effective.It is, however, an ambitious endeavour that requires clear vision, strong leadership and compelling value models. What we have learned is that while you can bite off Service Design and chew it rapidly in pieces, and while you can improve, optimise, and create services and customer experiences iteratively, you can never tune a single touchpoint or make the most of a given channel in isolation from the cumulative customer experience strategy.