Selling Service Design

vol 7 no 3 | january 2016

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 Pictures Volume 7 No. 3 Unless otherwise stated, the January 2016 copyrights of all images used for The Journal of Service Design illustration lie with the author(s) ISSN 1868-6052 of the respective article

Published by Proofreading Service Design Network Tim Danaher

Publisher Printing Birgit Mager Peecho

Editor-in-Chief Fonts Jesse Grimes Mercury G2 Apercu Editorial Board Robert Bau Service Design Network gGmbH Melvin Brand Flu Mülheimer Freiheit 56 Stefan Moritz D-51063 Köln Jesse Grimes Germany Birgit Mager www.service-design-network.org

Project Management Contact & Advertising Sales Cristine Lanzoni Cristine Lanzoni Hanka Meves-Fricke [email protected]

Art Direction For ordering Touchpoint, please visit Miriam Becker www.service-design-network.org Jeannette Weber

Cover Illustration/ Picture p.26 – p. 27 Irina Polubesov FROM THE EDITORS

Selling Service Design

Service design practitioners are rarely seasoned salespeople. While they may be Robert Bau is a strategist and comfortable with all the challenges that a service design project can throw at thought leader in service innovation, branding and marketing them, they are often less sure of themselves when it comes to securing the project with more than 15 years’ agency in the first place. experience in shaping customer Despite the growth of service design as a discipline - as evidenced by the expectations and experiences. Robert is a former Professor number of practitioners, academic programmes and in-house capabilities of Service Design at SCAD and springing up around the world - it still faces a difficult challenge: How does one played an instrumental role in building and directing the first sell service design? MFA and BFA service design It’s a so-called wicked problem, made of intertwining questions that often have programs in the U.S. no clear answers. Who are the right people to speak to on the client side? How can Melvin Brand Flu is a partner at potential ROI be measured and justifiably presented as part of the sales process? Livework where he is director of What can trigger an interest in service design when it is unfamiliar to the prospect? strategy and business design. What does a project proposal consist of? And can service design projects be He has over 25 years’ experience working on the cutting edge “pitched” in the same way as other design projects? of customer, business and These challenges and more are at the heart of this issue of Touchpoint. We technical inno vation in industries asked the service design community to share their experiences of how to best to ranging from telecommunication and financial services, to public sell service design, and we have collected that advice to share with our readers. sector and entertainment. 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 Stefan Moritz is an entre preneur, corporate change-maker and service designers to become more “buyable” (page 54), there is a wealth of tips customer experience champion. within the following pages to help get the commercial side of service design Leading a unit of researchers, designers, digital experts and projects off to a successful start. strategists he works with global I hope that the articles in the following pages help to effectively grow the service companies, governments market for service design, by improving the way we acquire new work. Here’s to a and public sector organisations. He is Vice President Customer successful (sales year) 2016! 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. Jesse Grimes for the editorial board 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.

Touchpoint 7-3 3 16

2 IMPRINT

3 FROM THE EDITORS

6 NEWS 44

12 KERRY’S TAKE 26 FEATURE: 12 Want to Sell Service Design? SELLING SERVICE DESIGN Get a Trojan Horse 28 Who Are You Selling To? Kerry Bodine 44 Stop Selling Service Design Minna Einiö, Laura Franck, Bart Muskala, Christophe Mariann Parts, Pauline Ranta 14 CROSS-DISCIPLINE Leuckx, Maarten Aelvoet

14 How Service Design Is 32 The Path To Value via 48 Selling Service Design Transforming Product Service Design in Canada Development Paula Giles Chris Ferguson, Katherine Tim Murdoch, Steve Haigh, Monteith Warren Drummond 36 Prototypas Bravas Manuel Bollue, Jurgen 54 Serve Well to Keep 18 Redesigning Uber’s Tanghe on Serving! Surge Pricing Luis Alt Robert J. Neal 40 Selling Service Design Internally by Tapping 58 Easy to Buy – 22 Bank, Real Estate broker Organisational Behaviour Not Easy to Sell or 7-Eleven Annette Bush, Jason Daniel Ewerman, Zach Hyman Hessing, Becky Reed Anders Landström

4 Touchpoint 7-3 CONTENTS

72 TOOLS AND METHODS 48 74 Software Tools for Service 88 Designers: How software tools can support the service design process 86 INSIDE SDN 62 Selling Service Design in a Christiane Rau, Anna Zbiek Developing Country 86 Service Design National Rodrigo Gajardo, Carmen Conferences in Finland: 80 Making a Service Design Gerea ‘Design or Conform’ Movie Satu Miettinen, Mira 66 From Kilowatt-hours to 87 Service Design National Alhonsuo and Heikki Customer Experience Conferences in Taiwan: Tikkanen Klara Lindner ‘Service Design for Social 84 PROFILES Impact in Asia’ 68 The Value of Customer and Staff Engagement 84 Interview with 88 Second Business Meet-Up Elliot Felix, Victor Nwankwo Ulla Jones in Helsinki

Touchpoint 7-3 5 GLOBAL SERVICE DESIGN COMMUNITY MEETS IN NEW YORK CITY

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 3RD SERVICE DESIGN NATIONAL THE TIDE IS TURNING: CHANGE from around the world joined the CONFERENCE IN JAPAN 2016 AGENTS, A TREND REPORT ON event to explore the theme of ‘A FINANCIAL SERVICES Journey to Value’. SDN Japan will hold their third The conference offered great national conference on 23 January New technologies are enabling keynote talks and sessions. To 2016 at Fujiwara Hiroshi Hall, new ways to interact with money name but a few of the highlights: Keio University, Yokohama, and customers, and expectations Billy Seabrook from Citi Bank Japan. Themed around ’Evolution of financial services are changing talking about aspects of purpose, of Service Design in Japan’, the tremendously. To foster change intelligence and trust regarding conference will welcome guests and raise opportunities for service customer experience and value from around the world and design in this area, the Service exchange; Ryan Armbruster from introduce the latest global trends, Design Network is proud to United Healthcare on designing for while developing an understanding announce its first Special Interest gaps in healthcare; Christian Bason of how service design is practiced in Group Trend Report on Financial from the Danish Design Center a wide range of industries in Japan, Services. Written by Gravitytank, focusing on the evolution of design; and exploring future challenges. with the support of many SDN Katrine Rau and Katrina Alcorn The conference program features members and other service design from GE Energy on developing a diverse lineup of guest speakers thought leaders, the report explores the Internet of Things; and Jon from abroad, including Jamin major trends that are changing the Campbell and Dr. Muni Karavdic Hegeman (Adaptive Path/ SDN), way we spend, save and invest money. on building a sustainable engine Katrine Rau (General Electric) and for growth within established Alisan Atvur (Novo Nordic), as well The trend report full-issue PDF can organisations. Kerry Bodine held as presentations of case studies on be downloaded free of charge and the closing talk reflecting across service design projects by Japanese the printed copy can be purchased the two-day event and sharing her companies, and a panel discussion on SDN website: perspective on how service design by the speakers. www.service-design-network.org/ can reach to the next level. trendreport Overall, the conference had a Get more information at: great buzz, a truly global spirit and www.japan.service-design-network. a vibrant sharing and networking org atmosphere. Check out all the remarkable content, including presentations, videos and pictures at: www.service-design-conference. com/content

6 Touchpoint 7-3 NEWS

SERVICE DESIGN AWARD 2015

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. CHALLENGING URBAN ISOLATION AND target groups: the elderly, kids with The prize-giving ceremony and LONELINESS: THE SDGC15 DESIGN working parents and new urbanites. exhibition of The Service Design CHALLENGE After receiving the innovative Award 2015 took place on 3 October ideas, the Design Challenge jury had 2015, in New York City, integrated Today’s cities provide us with more a difficult task ahead of them. But, in into the Service Design Global opportunities than ever before to the end, they chose Be.ROOTED, a Conference 2015 program. Among connect with one another and to unique service that helps alleviate the high volume of submissions engage in the activities that help the fear of moving to a new city with from 23 countries, 13 projects were us to live healthy and fulfilling engaging packages that inspire users shortlisted by the jury and four of lives. However, cities can also be to connect with their new home. them brought home the Service immensely isolating places, lacking Submitted by Kendra Shillington, Design Award! in intimacy, identity and accessibility. Founder of Shift Design and Rachel To address this issue, Designit Safren, President of Vital Form, the Catch a glimpse of the amazing and Wipro Digital came together team relied on their own experiences winning projects on the following at the Service Design Global as transplants and dived into the pages and find all the details at: Conference 2015 to challenge emotional journey of someone in the www.service-design-award.com partici pants to develop new ideas midst of relocating. Be.ROOTED that could empower citizens of truly en cour ages new urbanites to Entry for the Service Design Award urban environments to make more pro actively engage in an adventure of 2016 will be open on 1 February meaning ful connections with one exploration and connection. 2016. Any organisation or individual another and their surround ings. worldwide is invited to submit their Following an engaging kick-off Read more about the Design work, which will be judged by a workshop at SDGC15, five teams Challenge, the winning idea and jury of internationally recognised were formed and each left inspired the jury statement at professionals. to tackle one of three separate www.designit.com

Touchpoint 7-3 7 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/designing- government-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.

Touchpoint 7-3 9 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 Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4 diagnostics At the general Sorting and sending out Examinations and Diagnosis and practitioner appointments preliminary answer treatment plan

CLIENT Oslo University Hospital, Norway

LINK http://service-design-award.com/ award/winners-2015/redesigning- breast-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.

10 Touchpoint 7-3 NEWS

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-s- pharmacy

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 low- barrier access to health services and creating new co-operation in public health care.

Touchpoint 7-3 11 Want to Sell Service Design? Get a Trojan Horse

I’ve been a fan of service design since my introduction traumatic memories of junior-high to it in grad school —and an active champion of the school art class combine with distrust of anything not firmly rooted in discipline since my initial involvement with the Service spread sheets or computer code — Design Network back in 2010. In fact, I’ve spent a and they instantly reject any notion significant amount effort over the past five years helping of design. In a meeting several weeks ago companies understand what service design is and how with a big tech client, I used the word it can benefit their organisations. But it’s been a hard ‘design’ with a group I had assumed to be familiar with design thinking slog for two key reasons. concepts — but their sudden silence, blank stares, and crossed arms told People don’t know what U.S. asks, ‘How was the service at me otherwise. I quickly backtracked ‘service’ is the restaurant?’ they’re specifically and started talking about “under- For cultural, social, and economic asking about how friendly the wait standing the real problem and proto- reasons that are beyond the scope of staff was, how quickly the food came typing solutions.” They nodded, and this article, the term ‘service’ is much out, and perhaps how generous the disaster was averted! more broadly used and understood waiter was with his pours of Chianti. The innovation team at a govern- across Europe than it is in the They’re not referring to the food, ment agency I work with also met United States. When I speak with drinks, décor, or cleanliness — and with strong resistance when intro- my U.S.-based clients, and even with they’re certainly not thinking about ducing design methodologies to the my friends and family, they equate the systems of people, processes, organisation several years ago. It now ‘service’ with one of two things. and technologies that enable the uses the term ‘HCD’ when describing The first is the support organisation restaurant to serve customers every its approach to design projects — you call or visit when you need to day. In short, there’s zero recognition and cross-functional project team resolve a problem with a company that the entire restaurant is a service members go along for the ride, or product: ‘I had to call customer in and of itself. compliant with this new acronym service to get the charge reversed’ and blissfully unaware that they’re or ‘I need to take my car in to the People are scared of ‘design’ practicing Human-Centered Design. service department’. Despite the best efforts of designers, The prevailing attitudes towards The second concept is limited educators, journalists, and industry design in the business world are so to the interactions customers have analysts, the word ‘design’ still rampant that a pair of co-authors I with in-person employees in certain strikes fear in the hearts of business spoke to recently admitted that they industries. When someone in the people around the globe. For many, consciously try to omit the word

12 Touchpoint 7-3 KERRY ' S TAKE

‘design’ from their design workshops a chief customer officer within their a successful service design initiative, — and even tried to cut the number of organisations. is comfortable with the approach, references to it in their book, which Well guess what? 2016 is here, and can understand its business (you guessed it) is about design. and the good news is that customer benefits, then it’s time to broadly experience has proved to be a lasting market the approach as service We can’t wait for the new guard strategic imperative among today’s design and turn your clients into I expect that both of these problems executives. The even better news is advocates for service design both — misunderstanding about the nature that customer experience and service within their organisations and of services and fear of design — will design go hand-in-hand. They’re across the industry at large. And correct themselves over the next certainly not the same thing, but in then, they will help to sell service decade, as more design-educated (or the words of Forrest Gump, they go design on your behalf. at least design-friendly) professionals together like peas and carrots. make their way into top management For service designers who want to positions around the globe. But the make inroads with organisations that service design community can’t wait just don’t seem open to something that long to advance our discipline as seemingly nebulous, confusing, and apply our expertise to weighty or scary as service design, my advice problems in both industry and the is this: talk about pain points in the public sector. organisation’s current customer We need to find a way in. experience and what those issues are costing the organisation from a Service design’s Trojan Horse: business perspective. Lost revenue Customer Experience and increased cost to serve are Several years ago, IBM conducted good starting points. Inevitably, a study of roughly 4,000 C-level the conversation will turn towards executives from around the globe. what exactly they’ll need to do to The study, titled The Customer- make improvements — and this, activated Enterprise, stated, “We of course, is the perfect entrée identified three key themes that will for service design. But, following help you shape your organisation’s the lead of some of the designers I future: open up to customer mentioned above, I’d encourage you influence, pioneer digital-physical ‘not’ to start immediately waving innovation, and craft engaging the service design flag during these customer experiences.” sales conversations. And in its 2014 survey of Instead, talk about your approach Kerry Bodine is a customer experience expert and the 200 companies, global analyst in terms of the activities you’ll do co-author of Outside In. firm Gartner found that 89% of and what the tangible outcomes will Her research, analysis and opinions appear frequently respondents planned to compete be. Sell your clients on your ability to on sites such as Harvard primarily on the basis of customer take a smart, effective, and innovative Business Review, Forbes, experience by 2016. And to that end, approach to solving their customer and Fast Company.

65% of the companies surveyed had experience problems. Follow Kerry on Twitter at already appointed the equivalent of Once your client has experienced @kerrybodine.

Touchpoint 7-3 13 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 us to deliver. design, development and deployment of m-pesaTM, Vodafone’s mobile payment We develop novel product technologies: budget and technology. This is embedded service. He has awards for typically those that combine intellectual within our business as a strong ‘V’ model innovation and technology challenge with collaboration across process where we establish a cascade and patents in objected- orientated systems and multiple science, engineering and design of ever-more detailed requirements mobile payments. disciplines. We are now seeing first-hand (the down stroke on the V) which we how product development is increasingly then fulfil and recombine to create the Steve Haigh is the Software Architect for Iridium driven by the services that they support. whole product (the up stroke on the Extreme® Push-To-Talk The progression of product develop- V). During this process, the product is with a penchant for user ment to be driven by service design is typically divided into functional elements experience and service design. He works at the thus a vital and much needed evolution interlinked by well-defined and hard- intersection of wireless of our industry. But one which gives us a to-change technical interfaces. networks, IoT and service design. problem: how does a technology-focused We have found that service design product development house evolve to be challenges this process in two ways: Warren Drummond driven by service design? 1. Firstly, service composition is driven worked at GDS deploying a performance platform by flow rather than function: user for service and product Service design is not just another journeys and service blueprints shape managers; using service discipline, it is transforming our the product holistically and this often design principles to measure the Digital by Default business exposes multiple – and often conflicting – transition across the UK Product development demands clear requirements on individual functional Government. requirements, manufacturing lead times elements. and a focus on delivering the best possible 2. Secondly, the human factor in service product within the constraints of time, design means that discovery never

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Service design is a journey, not a destination

stops, requiring an iterative process and flexibility ment task rapidly became a service design problem. The in both requirements and product architecture. This provision of services for geographically disparate teams leads us to adopt agile methods that don’t sit naturally across multiple talk-group memberships that results in within a ‘V’ model approach. over-the-air provisioning demanded, first and foremost, a seamless and robust end-to-end service experience. A good example of the transformation of how we work is This change of focus from technical function to service a recent project we did with Iridium, a global communi- flow was perhaps the start of our journey to expand our cations company. Their 66 low earth-orbit satellites fly capabilities to deliver the services. 485 miles above the surface of the planet at 17,000 mph, continuously focussing on the face of the Earth to provide When the company decided to build on our experiences total coverage. with Iridium, our first thought was that this was a ‘Cloud’ We have worked with Iridium for over a decade and ‘Big Data’ story where we could impress our clients developing handsets, modems and gateway technologies. with our ability to deliver large databases in the Cloud Four years ago, we started working with them on a with sophisticated analytics to support their business service that we thought was predominantly a technical applications. However, instead of a pure-play Cloud or challenge, but which led us to establish our first digital Big Data expert, we chose experience in service-led experience team and to begin to transform our business innovation: someone with the war stories and first-hand towards service design. experiences of service-led innovation. In this case, it Iridium Extreme® Push-To-Talk enables group com- was in creating m-pesaTM, Vodafone’s mobile payments muni cation at the push of a button: walkie-talkies over service in Africa. satellite to anywhere on the planet, instantly. What started m-pesaTM is a revolution in financial services, available as a multi-component, technology-led systems develop- 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 breathes by the projects that we do, each one bringing passing through it. Safaricom was transformed surface- new challenges to advance our capabilities. So, we invest to-core from a telecommunications company to one in projects of our own that take our thinking forwards that delivered financial services. Now, over 20 million and demonstrate our multi-disciplinary capabilities. Kenyans have money on their mobile phone, almost all One great example is KiCoPen, a diabetes management gaining access to financial services for the first time in service anchored around an insulin pen that uses energy their lives. harvesting techniques to power an in-built Bluetooth The experience of delivering m-pesaTM brought us radio that talks to the phone every time it is used. first-hand the knowledge that service-led innovation is transformative for the companies that deliver it. Strategic KiCoPen reduces the burden of diabetes by making daily significance is moving rapidly from ‘device’ to ‘service’, management of the disease easier and more accurate. and technology-led innovation on its own is no longer The device captures the exact insulin dose delivered enough. and transmits the information to a smartphone. Other devices gather blood glucose levels, activity and food Service design is a journey, not a destination consumption. Local and cloud-based analytics turn the Implementing service design within a company that is data into insights which help the patient stay in control. multi-disciplinary has its challenges: changing language Winner of a recent Red Dot design award, KiCoPen and process has been the key. is a great demonstration of how multiple disciplines are Many of these challenges have been addressed by the required to deliver a device-enabled service: UK’s acclaimed Government Digital Service (GDS), the ——The idea is initiated by our Smart Systems team who team responsible for establishing the digital services realise that a simple ‘wiggle’ motion would generate manual being used to transform services across govern enough energy to power a Bluetooth signal long enough ment. This year, we added another hire to our team, to share information with a phone. bringing expertise drawn from service transformation ——Our Connected Health team spots the opportunity to projects across government. address an unmet need for diabetics. In addition to the usual co-location of our cross- ——Our Human Factors team crafts a device that combines disciplinary teams, we now create dedicated spaces strong industrial design with the demanding require where our team and our client can work together. We ments of a medical device. use every available wall space to bring the plans out ——Our Sensor Analytics team identifies algorithms that of the lab and onto the wall to become (in the rather determine how the device is used and what this means cheesy words of GDS) ‘information radiators’ that bathe for patient behaviour. the entire team with the latest information, from user ——Our Data Analytics team explores the potential for journeys and technical architectures to tasks lists and large data populations to improve the quality of burn-down charts. services offered by pharmaceutical companies and Perhaps, one of the most important things we have physicians. done is take a leaf out of This is Service Design Thinking ——Our Service Systems team architects an agile platform and to start to craft a company playbook: Service Design with distributed data storage, separating out ‘Personally for Product Development. This not only combines our Identifiable Information (PII)’ and yet still allowing many experiences, it is a way of refining our practices personalised digital services. and sharing them with colleagues of all disciplines ——Our Programme Management team ensures that the throughout our business. project is delivered to ISO 13485, the standard required Where next? A company such as ours lives and of all medically regulated devices.

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— Finally, our UX and Service Design team explore the Winner of a recent Red Dot design award, wider need to improve the life, not just of the diabetic, KiCoPen is a great demonstration of how but also of those that care for them. They build on the expertise from and then drive and coordinate multiple disciplines are required to deliver the requirements for the many disciplines across the a device-enabled service. project.

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 service- led innovation creates and will continue to refine our approaches for product and service development.

Touchpoint 7-3 17 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 consumers are most likely to rely on cognitive shortcuts or Board Member at service design consultancy Qualia cognitive heuristics, those tools are not only inadequate, but (www.qualiaagency.com) where he serves as a can lead to the wrong outcome. consultant for applied behavioural sciences in service design and user An outstanding recent example of this Uber’s surge pricing experience design. He is is the introduction of ‘surge pricing’ Take, for example, Uber’s surge pricing also a frequent speaker. You can find him on Twitter by Uber. Uber’s model is sound from model. It is a reasonable solution to @robertjneal. a traditional economics perspective a problem with some difficult facets. and their user experience design to The problem stems from the fact that implement it is laudable in many respects. Uber’s drivers are all contractors who However, years later, they are still work under a model that allows them consistently rated poorly by consumers to set their own hours. An Uber driver because of surge pricing. can turn on their driver’s app at any One tool that is often overlooked by time of the day, any day of the week. designers is behavioural economics However, this model results in some research and the wider cognitive science economic inefficiencies and some theories that encompass principles of potential customer dissatisfaction. behavioural economics. Without taking Specifically, there is no way for Uber to into account the numerous findings ensure that they have enough drivers by cognitive scientists, designers are on the road at peak hours. That is, they setting themselves up to make avoidable do not have enough supply to satisfy and sometimes very costly mistakes. In the demand. Consequently, customers addition, behavioural economics has the requesting rides at peak hours are likely added advantage, over other tools, of to be disappointed when no rides are strong empirical research. 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 hailing a ride (Figure 1). By increasing the attention the otherwise have been able to pick up. user has to give to the interaction, Uber is increasing Uber needed a way to incentivise drivers to turn on cognitive load, which leads to a higher likelihood that the the driver’s app, and thereby be available to riders, at user will attend to the relevant price increase.4 If the user peak hours. So Uber introduced surge pricing. Surge is attending to the price increase, they can avoid ‘sticker pricing is essentially a model that attempts to produce shock’ and opt out of the increase if they so desire. the minimum1 additional amount of revenue to pass on to drivers that results in the optimal (or near optimal) Problems to this approach and their behavioural number of drivers in a peak area during peak times.2 This economics solutions is a very reasonable solution to the problem and, despite Despite a laudable approach to the user interface for an avalanche of consumer complaints, even Uber’s Uber’s surge pricing, there was still a tremendous back- nearest competitor, Lyft, has adopted this approach. lash resulting in an ‘F’ rating from the Better Business However, there are a few significant challenges and Bureau that resulted in waning support, even from shortcoming with this approach. Some of which Uber drivers who benefit from an increased payout (Kerr, 2014 handled well and some where they missed the mark. & 2015). The cause of the drivers’ dissatisfaction was One critical component that Uber handled well was a primarily that their customers were dissatisfied. And as notorious user interface problem that plagues everything the only human faces of Uber, drivers feel the brunt of from end user license agreements (EULAs) to delete Uber’s deficiencies in customer satisfaction. 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, 1 The minimum is charitably assumed, it might be that it attempts to and the number is likely much higher, do not read EULAs produce rates below or at the maximum that customers would pay or and merely click the agree button.3 Uber should be at some other optimal point to maximise profits. Either way, for the praised for using an interaction pattern that does a great purpose of this article, it works out the same. 2 Nicholas Diakopoulos did some analysis that shows that it works job of providing transparency into surge pricing and reasonably well http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/ ensuring that users do not merely click ‘accept’. The way wp/2015/04/17/how-uber-surge-pricing-really-works/ they do this is by introducing friction in the ride hailing 3 Böhme, R., & Köpsell, S. (2010). Trained to accept? Proceedings of process by requiring the user to type in the surge pricing the 28th International Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - CHI '10. multiplier. For instance, if the current surge pricing 4 Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow [iBooks 1.2]. multiplier is 2.25, the user must type in 2 2 5 to continue p. 151, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Figure 1. An illustration of the Uber UI for accepting surge pricing. SURGE PRICING SURGE PRICING DEMAND IS OFF THE CHARTS! FARES HAVE INCREASED TO GET TYPE ( 2.25 ) MORE UBERS ON THE ROAD. TO CONFIRM YOUR FARE MULTIPLIER

MY FARE WILL BE 2.25x THE NORMAL RATE 2 2 5

$1.20/MIN $7.85/MILE TIMES THE NORMAL RATE $33 MINIMUM FARE 1 2 3 I ACCEPT HIGHER FARE

4 5 6 © Qualia 7 8 9 Touchpoint 7-3 19 Figure 2. An illustration of what showing just the current cost might CURRENT PRICING CURRENT PRICING look like. Notice that HERE IS THE CURRENT RATE THAT DRIVERS ARE MOST LIKELY TO ACCEPT RIGHT NOW HERE IS THE CURRENT RATE THAT DRIVERS ARE MOST LIKELY TO ACCEPT RIGHT NOW the user doesn’t get $34 $3 the sense that this is a PER MILE $0.60/MIN $3/MILE higher price, because $10 MINIMUM FARE $0.60/MIN $10 MINIMUM FARE the reference point has

ACCEPT FARE ACCEPT FARE been eliminated. CANCEL REQUEST CANCEL REQUEST

Figure 3. An illustration of what setting a reference point and CURRENT PRICING CURRENT PRICING HERE IS THE CURRENT RATE THAT DRIVERS future, over 60 minutes, ARE MOST LIKELY TO ACCEPT RIGHT NOW HERE IS THE CURRENT RATE THAT DRIVERS ARE MOST LIKELY TO ACCEPT RIGHT NOW forecasted costs might $ 34 $3 look like. $0.60/MIN $3/MILE PER MILE $10 MINIMUM FARE $0.60/MIN $10 MINIMUM FARE

PER $10 MILE

PER $1 MILE

MINUTES 5 15 25 35 45 55 PER $1 MILE

MINUTES 5 15 25 35 45 55 ACCEPT FARE

CANCEL

An initial and naive reaction to this situation is to — Scenario A: In addition to whatever you own, you have point out that raising the prices would necessarily cause been given $1,000. Now choose one of these options: customer backlash and that Uber only had two choices: 50% chance of winning $1,000 or get $500 for sure (1) bite the bullet and do just as they did or (2) don’t do — Scenario B: In addition to whatever you own, you have anything and accept the fact that sometimes there would been given $2,000.Now choose one of these options: be fewer drivers than needed to satisfy demand. But 50% chance of losing $1,000 or lose $500 for sure research in behavioural economics provides a third option. (Kahneman, 2011, p. 657) Speciﬁcally, the key principle at work here is ‘prospect theory’. When designed for, studies show that prospect It turns out that people by and large prefer the sure thing theory would allow the presentation of surge pricing in ‘A’ and the gamble in ‘B’, even though the sure thing in such that consumers’ gut reaction to it is more positive. both scenarios results in the same economic outcome, i.e., Daniel Kahneman, who won the Nobel Prize in 2002 for $1,500, and the gamble in both scenarios also results in prospect theory, succinctly captures the essence of it in the same outcome, i.e., 50% chance of $1,000 or $2,000. this sentence: “the effect of price increases [on purchase The reason for the inconsistency in people's behaviour decisions] (losses relative to the reference price) is about twice is because they don’t make economic decisions on the as large as the effect of gains” (Kahneman, 2011, p. 697). economic outcome (in the Uber example, the ﬁnal cost), Consider the following scenarios from Kahneman’s but on what the scale and direction of the change are book Thinking, Fast and Slow: from the reference point.

20 Touchpoint 7-3 CROSS - DISCIPLINE

By presenting surge pricing as a multiplier on top of a leave immediately or trade off a later departure time for a reference point, Uber is ensuring that they will always decreased trip cost. This has the affect of not only giving cause the consumer to perceive surge pricing as a monetary the consumer a perceived choice where it was not obvious loss. This, in turn, results in extremely dis satisfied before, but of allowing them to feel better about choosing customers, because they experience the change twice as the higher price as a trade off for the convenience of much as they would a change in the other direction. departing immediately. Moreover, since the price to leave One behavioural economics-based solution to this immediately is the reference point, the decreased cost problem is to invert the cost structure so that consumers over the next thirty minutes is perceived as a gain (think are given an inflated regular price,5 and are then given ‘discount’) rather than a loss, as it is with surge pricing’s a large discount in off-peak hours (Figure 2). One worry multiplier presentation, which would present the same with this approach might be that there will be a large price as, say, 1.2 times more than some base price. initial backlash to an across-the-board increase. But it is Finally, in the third case, the consumer will feel they important to note that Uber is not a parity product with are avoiding a loss and, remember, losses are twice other transportation options like cabs and buses. Uber as bad as an equal monetary gain. This feeling comes is not chosen primarily because it is cost effective, and about because, as the cost increases over the next thirty when Uber users are asked if they even know what the minutes, it signals to the consumer that they are avoiding price per mile is for Uber, nearly 90% say that they do a loss by requesting the ride immediately instead of not.6 This is likely because riders are not choosing Uber waiting. Again, the reference point is the current cost, so based on price, but based on convenience and service. booking now is perceived as a positive experience rather Another design based on behavioural insights – and than a neutral experience in the case of non-surge pricing perhaps a better one – is to change how the information moments in Uber’s current experience. It is important is presented, such that the exact same economic outcome to note that the reference point in the different cases is occurs, but the consumer does not experience the not the same base price, but rather the current market change in price as a loss. In fact, in some cases they can price. Using this approach avoids the need to present any experience it as an overall gain. The recommendation immediate ride as costing more than a reference point. here is to show the price at the current time and set that in the user’s mind as the reference point. From Conclusion that reference point, the app should then show future At the centre of service design are humans. Behavioural projected prices, say over the next thirty minutes (Figure economics is about accounting for how humans make 3). This can result in three possibilities: (1) the prices decisions and what affects their behaviours and ex- stays relatively the same over the next thirty minutes, periences. When designing services, each touchpoint (2) the price decreases over the next thirty minutes, or should be considered with the understanding of the (3) the price increases over the next thirty minutes. innate cognitive biases and cognitive shortcuts that the In the first case, the app is now signalling to the user target audience has. Just as in the case with Uber, the that the only trade-off in hailing a ride now, versus any perspective that behavioural economics provides to other time over the next thirty minutes, is the departure designing services will uncover significant shortcomings time. But, in case (2), a more interesting economic and often illuminate significant opportunities. decision happens, viz. the consumer can now choose to References: Böhme, R., & Köpsell, S. (2010). 'Trained to accept?' in Proceedings of 5 In fact, some customers purportedly state this as a preference. Kerr the 28th International Conference on Human Factors in Computing (2015) quoted a driver as saying: “I have had passengers who say they Systems - CHI '10. would be happy to pay a higher overall fare that was stable rather than Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow [iBooks 1.2]. New York: the fluctuating fares caused by surges.” Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 6 Of 165 respondents who had used Uber, 88.52% responded “No” and Kerr, D. (2014, October 9). ‘Uber gets an F from the Better Business 11.48% responded “Yes” when asked “Off the top of your head, do Bureau’. Retrieved August 30, 2015. you know how much the ride sharing service Uber charges per mile?” Kerr, D. (2015, August 23). ‘Detest Uber's surge pricing? Some drivers 2015, August 28. don't like it either’. Retrieved August 30, 2015.

Touchpoint 7-3 21 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, pur chasing Zach Hyman is a Design concert or airline tickets and even paying parking tickets. Taipei’s Strategist at Continuum. He is interested in service 7-Elevens’ service design strategy1 is driven by a focus upon self- design, and has helped develop products and service, creating space to relax, and a balance between franchisee- services around healthcare, transportation, mobile managed stores’ local market knowledge and licensee- owned phones, and education across seven countries. He received stores’ ability to experiment. a Fulbright scholarship to study innovation in China, and recently published Many are familiar with the 7-Eleven chain them room to relax amidst crowded cities Yangonomics, a book about 2 Myanmar’s informal economy. of convenience stores. For Americans, lacking public space. A joke in Taipei goes associations typically include oversized that, ‘if one were to throw a rock in any sodas, weak coffee and a panoply of direction in the city, one would hit a bank, junk food. Focused upon the quick, a real estate broker or a 7-Eleven’. Being primarily product-centric satisfaction home to over 4,000 7-Elevens, the city of of needs for time-constrained (typically 7.4 million has more 7-Elevens per capita car-driving) customers, the American than Seattle has Starbucks. model of 7-Elevens isn’t what comes to mind when one thinks of organisations Convenience-centred third spaces pushing the bounds of service design. Many of the diverse services in Taipei’s In Taiwan, however, 7-Elevens are 7-Elevens are facilitated through an ‘ibon’ challenging Starbucks’ and McDonalds’ dominance of the urban ‘third space’ market by transforming themselves into 1 ‘Interview with 7-Eleven Master Franchisee'. Franchise Malaysia, Web. 5 Nov. 2015. .

22 Touchpoint 7-3 CROSS - DISCIPLINE

machine, an ATM-like kiosk offering over 700 kinds of services through partner ships 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 left: Parcel storage area, adjacent to up for customers, to offerings like slices of fatty pork and photocopier and ibon machine multiple kinds of chicken feet. right: An employee helps a customer use Taipei 7-Eleven’s coffee beverage line, City Café, has become the store’s most profitable product line (Taiwan’s an ibon machine to photocopy 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 take- out windows, through which harried commuters can order and retrieve their coffee and morning meal with out 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 City Café express window at a 7-Eleven 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 2 Schonhardtmay, Sara. ‘7-Eleven Finds a Niche by Adapting to Indonesian Ways’.in International Herald Tribune, 29 May 2012: Print. Taipei’s International Airport’s 7-Eleven even boasts 3 Bitner, Mary Jo. ‘Servicescapes: The Impact of Physical Surroundings an attached food court (reminiscent of McDonalds’ on Customers and Employees’. in Journal of Marketing, 56(2), 1992, service environment), and specialises in a wide range of pp. 56-71. reading material, microwaveable meals and aeroplane- 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. appropriate snacks. 5 Mikoleit, Anne, and Moritz Pürckhauer. Urban Code: 100 Lessons for Understanding the City, Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2011. Print.

Touchpoint 7-3 23 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 List of Taipei 7-Elevens services (observed), to these more leisure interactions: a young man comes based upon Bitner’s ‘servicescape’ in to pick up a package and pay a bill (possibly a utility framework 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 franchisee- operated stores across the country. This service design strategy is ground-up rather than Foodcourt attached to Taipei International driven by any corporate ‘localisation playbook’ or strategy. Airport’s 7-Eleven 7-Eleven recognises that franchisees have local-level

24 Touchpoint 7-3 CROSS - DISCIPLINE

from the Noun Project, Project, Noun the from

from the Noun Project, Noun the from

Sergey Ryazantsev

by hunotika

IBON icon Terminal’ ‘Payment https://thenounproject.com/term/conversation/42559/ KISOK https://thenounproject.com/search/?q=kiosk%20machine&i=28824 by icon ‘Conversation’

Simpliﬁed process of a Taipei 7-Eleven’s laundry service insights into a community’s service needs, while those licensee- owned stores’ greater resources and ability locally-run stores can draw upon the resources and reach to experiment. In Taiwan and other mixed-ownership of the licensee to prototype their idea for a new service markets, this leads to a service design strategy that turns through 7-Eleven’s company-owned stores functioning as each 7-Eleven into a “community centre [providing] ‘service labs’ that test the idea in a variety of environments. all kinds of services instead of just being a convenience Related to the challenges of being a neighbourhood store". Rather than buying an affordable meal from a service hub, offering such diverse services in a single street vendor, visiting a laundry to drop off one’s clothes, store may lead to a poorer customer experience for stopping by a small grocer for dinner ingredients and customers with such diverse goals engaging with the then going to relax at a coffee shop, 7-Elevens in these same staff and service environment (not to mention markets are strategically aggregating these (and other) increasingly harried and thinly-spread staff). Indeed, the services within a ﬂexible servicescape, using ibon challenge of balancing service quality with convenience machines to relieve the burden upon staff and offering is summed up in a quote by a competing Taiwanese meals and seating to accommodate customers who convenience store owner, Alex Chao: “At one point, we want a ‘third space’ to relax in. This makes them an offered custom-made breakfast sandwiches cooked on attractive choice over other ‘single-function’ stores and the spot … but we had to stop that. People liked them so service providers, and reveals an interesting service much that the lines got really long. And then it was no design strategy, both for 7-Eleven’s convenience-focused longer convenient.”6 competitors, as well as a promising service design In countries with mixed licensee-owned and approach for 7-Elevens across other global markets. franchisee- managed stores, 7-Eleven’s service design strategy hinges upon balancing franchisee-managed stores’ entrepreneurial approach and insights with

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.

Touchpoint 7-3 25

FEATURE

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), that experience, this article summarises key insights from the Client Service Director. She has years of experience from Hellon sales team: how to sell service design to various clients leading creative agencies’ top management tasks and from large and small companies, in both private and public in consulting clienteles from various fields. Her strength organisations. is to support clients in challenges where creativity can make a difference. Why is selling service design design process is not simple to adopt for Laura Franck is Client Service important? companies as they have to shift away Director and has reached excellent results in growing Never in human history has technology from a technology or marketing focus Hellon’s sales. She believes developed as fast as it has in the past towards real empathy for their customers. that meeting client companies’ twenty years, greatly affecting the way Moreover, they need to figure out ways needs on a strategic level will secure the good co-operation we live, work and communicate and the to support their employees in turning leading to excellent results. way we act. empathy into inno vative services and Now we are reaching a tipping point, profitable growth. Mariann Parts is Client Service Director and has years of the corporate world is beginning to Even though it is relatively easy to experience in consultative under stand and react on their customers’ explain the benefits of service design, selling of design both in public needs for more emotional connections, the selling process can sometimes be and private sectors. Mariann specializes in finding innovative for a sense of belonging and for the challenging, frustrating or even impossible. ways of meeting client needs. need to bring the human back to the centre stage. We are entering the era of How do companies utilise service Pauline Ranta is Client Service Manager and has special ‘human-to-human’ business and service design? experience of local service development. Service design is a great Generally, there are three types of innovations. approach for this. However, the service challenges in organisations1:

28 Touchpoint 7-3 SELLING SERVICE DESIGN

— 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.

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 A design approach is well suited the latter two types2. and the organisations they are representing. There are two reasons for this: first, the clients with ill-structured and wicked problems tend to know there The Advocate is something wrong but they don’t know what to fix and The Advocate is familiar with service design, even an how to fix it. Second, as the unclear problem sometimes enthusiast. They strongly believe in this approach and leads to the need for a better brief, some service design they want to increase the use of design thinking in their methodology can be sold and utilised already in the organisation. As personalities, they often challenge the briefing phase to obtain mutual understanding of what more traditional frameworks, enduring and embracing the project should solve and how it should solve it. uncertainty. The mission of the advocate is to look for Collaboration between the service design agency novel solutions and service design is one of them. and the client often starts with a smaller service design Selling service design successfully to this profile is project. If successful, there is an opportunity to build a straightforward. They are already open to the bridge broader co-operation or an organisation design program. between disciplines and embrace the service design However, if the client feels that the project hasn’t reached process containing visualisation, agile prototyping and expectations, continuing the co-operation becomes more iterating. difficult and service design may become a ‘one-time As long as the Advocate gets approval from the top experiment’. management or is a part of the top management, the selling process tends to be defined by clear objectives Hellon collaborates in two different ways with and a common understanding of the brief. The biggest organisations: challenge for them is how they can utilise service design — Service design projects, typically tactical and even better across the organisation. rather short (2-3 months) aiming for incremental From the sales point of view, the client company improvements and quick wins 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 1 Rittel, H. W. J., & Webber, M. M. (1973). ‘Dilemmas in a General Theory from the other key decision makers within the client of Planning’. Policy Sciences, 4, 155–169. 2 Buchanan, R. (1992). ‘Wicked Problems in Design Thinking’. Design company. As the Advocate can sometimes be a loner in Issues, 8(2), 5–21. 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 often develop services and products in traditional ways primary objective is to involve all the people, including and are usually not so familiar with involving customers in the gatekeepers and the decision-makers during the sales their processes. Solvers will make decisions based on their process, in order to ensure a successful sale, implemen- belief of what approach will solve their problem the best. tation and customer satisfaction at the end of the project. With this proﬁle, you have to reserve much more time in the selling process for understanding their situation The Solver and strengthening the trust towards service design. Solvers can be directors from different parts of the orga- Even if the Solvers like the proposal and the methods, ni sation: from development, HR, marketing, customer they might struggle in actively engaging their internal service, accountants or even CEOs. The Solver’s mission stakeholders and developing customer-centric mindset. is to tackle the problem at hand and they are most likely In order to succeed in this ‘leap of faith’, the sales team to seek different approaches for this. need to support Solvers in building a ﬁrm trust in the From the service design sales point of view, this broadens service design process. The Solvers hesitate until they the number of competitors in pitching situations since the truly understand and trust the impact of service design. approach to solving the problem is not yet locked down. The entire selling process is often about creating Solvers are familiar with buying ready-made solutions security and trust between people. One part of the trust from traditional consulting and marketing services. They towards the agency comes from the recommendations

30 Touchpoint 7-3 SELLING SERVICE DESIGN

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 and it took us quite a while to re-frame the proposal previous projects as well as from trust instilling awards over and over again. And still, after signing the deal, there and recognitions. The agency brand is of course very was some uncertainty regarding the process and out- important when building trust. The other part of trust come. However, the project was really enlightening and is all about chemistry between the persons involved and inspiring. The fresh approach produced excellent results their emotional connection. that were far better than we expected. We also learned a Selling to Solvers needs constant education by the lot along the process.” Pauliina Rintamäki, Head of Cross agency throughout the selling process and often the Channel Business Development, TeliaSonera. briefs are built in tight collaboration with the client and end up being created by the agency itself. Summary Throughout the project, project management and We believe that all business is human-to-human business communication with the client are crucial for main- and that it is not processes, but people, who drive taining that trust and security, which were established emotional connection. The challenges in selling service during the sales process. After the successful project, design come from the fact that service design is not the Solvers are often enlightened about service design and its solution itself but an approach. We need to get better extended possibilities in their organisation. when communicating this to our clients, both to Solvers “The service design approach was totally new for us, 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 limited- Paula Giles is founder of We bandwidth world must achieve ‘cut-through’ quickly and directly. are Singularity. The company aligns strategy, service But how? design, customer experience, culture and change to assist companies in achieving accelerated value. Paula has A modest proposition end-to-end service experience across a distinguished executive This article proposes that to be credible all channels and touchpoints from a and management-consulting and successful selling the value of service customer and organisation perspective career working in large global companies and has design, a practitioner must be able to properly’. practical experience leading demonstrate how the outcomes and This will bring service design further sustained change and reform beneﬁts from these initiatives link to into the heart of the enterprise and in corporate and government settings. a company’s overall strategic purpose, become even more relevant to senior enhance its competitive position and help decision makers. Service design can it to respond to shifting industry forces. perform a central role in enabling This requires service design practitioners business innovation, improvement and to look beyond the design process itself sustaining a service-oriented culture. and take a ‘whole of enterprise/industry’ view to align their language with that Start where they are used by their client in the C-suite1. So, how to proceed? First, understand This perspective is fundamental if both the hidden and more visible drivers service designers are to fully deliver and forces in your clients’ world. Conduct the scope of their profession and ‘take a conversation that explores their an holistic approach that considers the personal motivations and needs as well as

their business context (refer to Figure 1). 1 C-suite refers to positions such as Chief Executive This will help a service design proposal Officer (CEO), direct reports and functional achieve further relevance and traction. heads such as Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), Chief Information A deft and client-focused service Officer (CIO), etc. designer is likely to uncover the unstated

32 Touchpoint 7-3 SELLING SERVICE DESIGN

Context Personal Business

Theme Motivational, Needs and Political Environment Strategic Operating Performance Drivers Forces Framework

Description The different needs for The political, power The external The performance power, achievement, and authority bases competitive forces and framework used to or afﬁliation that drives by which individuals regulatory framework measure results. individual behaviour exercise inﬂuence and that impact the entity Combination of make decisions. e.g., economic, social, long and short term environment, political. incentives.

Typical client ‘What is in it for me?’ ‘What is needed to get ‘How is this relevant to ‘How will this contribute questions ‘How will this help this proposition ‘across what is happening?’ to our company advance my career?’ the line’?’ ‘If I take this ‘How does this proposal performance e.g., ‘Can this help me issue on, who will I need help us meet our increase sales, reduce achieve my personal to get on board?’ regulatory conditions?’ costs, improve share goals?’ 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 2 Such as the ‘balanced scorecard’ construct that was developed by contribution it can make to improve company Kaplan, R.S and Norton D. P., HBR Publishing 1996 and proposed a performance? 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 Link business value and service design to Triple Bottom Line, Social License to Operate. An effective conversation about the value of service 3 Return on Shareholders Funds or Return on Equity (ROE). A measure that indicates the probability of financial return received by investors design at the strategic and business performance levels from company operations. Demonstrates that the company has 2 needs to reference a range of concepts . This will include earned enough to repay its shareholders. ﬁnancial ones that describe the underlying performance 4 Earnings before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortisation. generated from business activities. It may also include Essentially represents net income from a company’s core business operations. Often used as a measure to analyse and compare 3 shareholder value (e.g., ROSF ) and ﬁnancial performance profitability between companies by eliminating the effects of (e.g., EBITDA4). financing and accounting decisions.

Touchpoint 7-3 33 Strategic or business Service Design methods Expected Outcomes Indicators of success drivers

“What forces or issues are “Methods we use and how “The beneﬁts you can expect “The results and measures to you facing?” these help” to see from investing in this demonstrate outcomes” “What do you need to pay activity” attention to?”

Industry disruption Human centred design Services that are more: Revenue principles efﬁcient by making the New entrants Return on invested capital, optimum use of scarce Business Model Canvas Damage to company reputation resources. Brand reputation Fieldwork & Insights research Regulatory changes Services that are effective as Customer retention ‘Outside-in’ thinking they are valued by customers Shifting consumer preferences Customer advocacy (NPS) or and offer a positive customer Prototyping effort (CES ) experience. Journey Mapping Employee advocacy and Increased level of employee engagement score Staff Journey Mapping engagement, commitment and advocacy. Workplace reputation Co-creation Staff who are better equipped Customer satisfaction Back-stage, Front-stage and empowered. Time to proﬁciency Rapid prototyping Increased capacity to change Speed to market Design pod structures at pace and scale. 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 5 Net Promoter Score was developed by Reichheld F., (2003) in Harvard (CES)6 along with those used in customer satisfaction 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/ research. And, as people deliver services (in addition product/service to a friend or colleague?’ Those who respond with to digital channels), the conversation would show how a score of 9 or 10 are defined ‘Promoters’. Use of NPS has become a employee matters such as engagement, empowerment, common default measure despite recent criticisms and reservations. 6 Customer Effort Score was developed by Dixon, M., Freeman, K and enablement and creating a customer-oriented culture can Toman, N (2010) in Harvard Business Review and is based on responses be positively inﬂuenced by service design projects. on a five point scale to the question ‘How much effort did you Service design methods and frameworks should also personally have to put forth to handle your request?’. This concept was describe how they contribute to speed of implementation further developed in Dixon, M., Toman, N., and Delisi, R., ‘The Effortless Experience’ (2013) and proposed a new question using a seven point of a project or the organisation’s overall ‘agility’. scale ‘To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following Crafting a conversation that ‘covers all the bases’ statement: The company made it easy for me to handle my issue’.

34 Touchpoint 7-3 SELLING SERVICE DESIGN

and touches on the common preoccupations in the Read Touchpoint executive suite provides service designers with a compelling narrative about the value they can offer. Archive Online 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 310+ of service design methods, features and frameworks. This will require linking the value of service design artic

with more traditional drivers of company performance les (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 ae 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 Touchpoint, the Journal of Service Design, levels of engagement, skill and knowledge and better was launched in May 2009 and is the first able to provide services (either to internal or external and only journal dedicated to the theory customers) in a more customer-focused manner. and practice of service design. Published Finally, service design processes should enhance by SDN three times per year, it provides a your client’s ability to sense, shape, shift and change written record of the ongoing discussions more easily and quickly than competitors to deliver within the service design community. competitive advantage. Figure 2 provides a start for To improve the reach of this unique framing this conversation. resource, Touchpoint has opened its Archive (all back issues except the three Conclusion most recent) to everyone. That means In this article I have proposed frameworks to assist more than 310 articles related to service service design professionals demonstrate how the out- design freely available on our website. comes of great service design can apply to the context and measures that matter to executives. Enjoy the opportunity to search online Hopefully these frameworks and discussion points articles from our Archive by volume and issue, by authors or keywords. Full issues will enable service designers translate the best of what of Touchpoint may be also read on-screen they do to the very thing that matters to everyone – and on mobile devices via the Issuu website reducing complexity to create agile, customer oriented and app. and innovative businesses. 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 or ‘tapa’, using service design. Then motivate the client to Manager at Crossroad consulting. He makes good experiment with prototyping. Finally, be ready and in delivery ideas happen in different mode when the client is ready to order more. industries, from banking to logistics and retail. Master in Communication Sciences and Marketing. Improviser, Picture yourself in a restaurant, hungry. corporate decision makers get lost in runs on idea energy, adheres The waiter walks over to your table, but translation, but it is not the root cause. to lean start-up principles and is addicted to visual he does not hand you the menu. Instead management. he describes how every dish is prepared: Different ways of reasoning and cooking methods, ingredients and kitchen decision making Jurgen Tanghe is Service Design & Customer tools. This guy is clearly in love with Service designers and corporate decision Experience Leader at his ‘métier’. You, in the meantime, are makers speak a different language because Crossroad consulting. He now very hungry. Would you eat in such they approach situations in fundamentally advises companies on change and innovation. Master in a restaurant again, or recommend it to different ways. Let us ﬁrst make the Psychology and Business others? Probably not. assumption that a service designer is Administration. Lecturer and Phd Researcher at Yet, the waiter reminds me of someone. an entrepreneur, improving existing Delft University (the role of Someone who tries to sell a service design services or creating new ones. Renowned design in business strategy). approach to an organisation, a consultant research by Sarasvathy shows that Fascinated with human behaviour in relationship to or an internal collaborator. Anyone who ‘classical’ organisations make decisions business and design. has ever participated to a service design by ‘causation’: analyse a market, predict a session can share the creative approaches, goal or a return and choose the means to productive outcomes and high energy. achieve it. Entrepreneurs do not predict Service design advocates rather surf on their returns. Instead, they start with a this positive vibe, than address their limited set of means (their personal needs, (internal) client’s challenges. However, their ideas and their network). Along their the love for their discipline is one of way, they select between possible effects the reasons why service designers and that can be created with that set of means: service offerings, client experiences

36 Touchpoint 7-3 SELLING SERVICE DESIGN

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.

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. and organisational structures.1 This approach called We introduced service design to a toy retailer with ‘effectuation’ is very similar to a design process. over 180 stores in seven countries. We tackled four Other research shows differences between entre- relevant challenges (feel welcome, find your choice, pay preneurs and commercial bankers in perceiving and and after-service) with 191 store managers in 25 teams. managing business risks. Presented with five investment In a half-day session, participants left their usual role challenges, entrepreneurs started from “… a best worst- behind (using customer personas) and identified over case level of risk and then tried to increase the returns. 50 strengths and weaknesses in the current customer Bankers picked an aspirational level of return and tried to experience (journeys). They developed 25 ready-to-use reduce the risks. In this ‘conjunctive decision procedure’ service interventions (storyboards).5 also used by management committees, anything lower than a pre-specified critical return is considered a loss.”2 The benefits of a ‘tapa’: This risk-aversion contrasts heavily with design principles. — A wide array of customer insights (making team knowledge explicit). Organisations require both causation — Predictable outputs: a precise number of journeys and effectuation and storyboards. Causation is very valuable in dealing with challenges — Worst case, the loss is small (3.5 hours). in mature markets: process quality, incremental inno- The management, a bit sceptical at the start, is now vations and continuous improvement. However, when willing to experiment further. organisations want to pursue new opportunities and create breakthrough innovations, they had better do this Step 2: experiment with new flavours the way entrepreneurs do. After an organisation has had its first taste of service First of all, entrepreneurs generate more alternative design, it can experiment with pilot projects and create solutions (and even more problems to solve) because new services through active prototyping. It takes some they explore a larger ‘cognitive problem space’. Whereas getting used to making-not-meeting and dealing with managers choose a solution based on financial, legal and ethical considerations, entrepreneurs also consider personal aspects and values. The former look for solutions 1 Sarasvathy, Saras D, “Causation and Effectuation: Toward a Theoretical within their responsibilities, the latter extend this view to Shift from Economical Inevitability to Entrepreneurial Contingency’, The Academy of Management Review, Vol. 26 N. 2 (2001). 3 external solutions. 2 Sarasvathy D.K., Simon H. and Lave L, ‘Perceiving Business Risks: Second, their effectuation approach allows entre pre- differences between entrepreneurs and bankers’, Journal of neurs to “… experiment with many strategies and with Economic Behavior & Organization, Vol. 33 (1998) more ideas at lower cost, create strategic alliances and 3 (id. 1) 4 (id. 2) 4 exploit unexpected contingencies.” 5 Brown T. and Martin R., ‘Design For action’, Harvard Business Review, Effectuation infuses organisations with entrepreneur- Sept. 2015

Touchpoint 7-3 37 ‘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 Entrepreneurs Corporate Managers and creates a desire for more.

After an applied service design training that we hosted Risk start with Management aspirational revenue for various governmental services, participants were motivated to reflect on the service quality and the ex- then perience they wanted to provide. This led to a number start with then lower acceptable increase risk of service design briefings and workshops. A one-day risk revenue conference allowed to reach even more people. Eventually, with the support of the internal quality department, at least a dozen government agencies defined innovation use existing allocate means … Decision means … and customer orientation projects based on service design Making practices and thoroughly changing existing services.

Step 3: order more A recent project at a large financial institution has … create various … to achieve effects predefinied effects 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 Effectuation Causation 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 Reasoning and decision making ‘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 2. Despite an effort of over 200 man days, the project the indicators. The project was put on hold. How could kept the ‘experiment’ label. Instead, when you rollout, we have been more successful? get in delivery mode and communicate accordingly. It’s much more difficult to pull the plug on a company 1. Thrilled to move on, we didn’t anchor the good results project than it is on an experiment, especially when of the prototype within the organisation. So, once you are working in a constantly changing environment. you have gained insights on the potential of a new or improved service, build a business case and have 3. We performed the rollout from outside the it validated. Choose your metrics carefully. Don’t organisation, as a subcontractor. But it’s difficult to promise X% more revenue. It is usually too difficult to steer if you are not in the car. Instead, work with a demonstrate a direct short term impact, (this is called mandate, a project governance and an (accountable!) ‘causal ambiguity’ in strategy research). Instead, think sponsor. Be at the table where the decisions about of directly observable results like first time conversion: your project are made. This allows you to manage improve a specific measure in customer satisfaction expectations, to frame field feedbacks correctly and to survey, not the overall satisfaction. proactively deal with resistance.

38 Touchpoint 7-3 SELLING SERVICE DESIGN

Service Designers Corporate Managers

start with aspirational revenue

Order then more start with then lower acceptable increase risk risk revenue 3

use existing Experiment allocate means … 2 means …

Taste 1 the tapa

… create various … to achieve effects 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 play- ground, 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.

Touchpoint 7-3 39 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 Here at Healthwise, our mission is to vision or goal of late has been to join all of Manager at Healthwise. help people make better health decisions. this limited information into farsighted She is interested in service We aim to broaden the limited view models that enhance how our products design thinking and visual communication. that people face when they seek good integrate with the health system, help health information. Over the years, we’ve evolve the system to ﬁll gaps and help Jason Hessing is a User discovered how we must design with bridge the separate parts of the system. Experience Strategist and Senior Interaction Design a detailed understanding of the whole This requires service design. And while Manager at Healthwise. He health system in order for a part of it to be our user experience practice is solid, thrives at the intersection successful. Consider a patient in a hospital service design is new to us all. We need to of behaviour change, holistic design and digital who doesn’t receive information because see beyond a single team: to see the whole ethnography. a printer is too far away, or a daughter organisation practicing service design. who is caring for her sick father and who We’re incorporating our shift to service Becky Reed is the Vice- President of User Experience struggles with tough decisions when design incrementally. Lots of small sells at Healthwise. Her passions information is trapped in an online system versus the usual ‘big sell’, which often include design strategy, accessibility and health IT. she can’t use. For us, the value of the frays under pressure. We’ve seen good information doesn't matter to the patients things emerge into something great, one We’d like to thank Pat Truman if they can’t access it. step at a time. for her editorial guidance. One of the biggest challenges we face Journey with us on the path of service internally is this: each of us carries around design in our organisation. You’ll learn in our heads limited bits of information to know when your organisation is ready about the whole and we make our for what, to adapt your approach based decisions about our separate deliverables. on your organisational culture and to It’s myopic. We need wider vision, no pun implement with the whole organisation intended, to match our mission. So our in mind.

40 Touchpoint 7-3 SELLING SERVICE DESIGN

1. Organisational readiness is everything with their teams and offer ideas in ways that pertain to these groups. This outreach will help align the work to Align with your organisation: organisational priorities. Your change coalition will get Our first projects arose from folks deeply aligned with folks excited, curious and comfortable. the priorities of our organisation who had a problem to solve and saw value in the service design examples we Find small ways to try it out: described. It seems odd to suggest that a design discipline that focuses on the ecosystem can fit – and win – in a small, confined Tips for finding where your organisation is aligned: problem space. There are benefits to breaking down big — Pay attention to the direction that your organisation is problems into small project requests. Small things: taking and the strategies its leaders are using. Examine — are easier to say ‘yes' to (and to budget for and fund), the traditional deliverables of business: strategic plans, — bear less organisational pressure, backlogs and organisational goals. — lead to small wins, which build trust and credibility. — Listen to conversations. Apply your ethnography skills toward understanding what troubles and excites your Starting with tiny opportunities to try service design out leaders. develops confidence. It may well mean occasional failures — Draw an initiative map (similar to a stakeholder map) along the way, but that is natural. Help your stakeholders to chart out your organisation’s initiatives (Figure 1). see that finding opportunities to practice will develop Then look for connections (Figure 2). If service design your organisation’s service design skill and muscle. can support a number of other initiatives, now is a good time to act. 2. Localise to your organisation and your colleagues Build your change coalition: We’ve experimented with several models of advocates Use the common language, and tell stories: and practitioners. Success came when: At the risk of watering down our common language (front — We empowered a champion, i.e., someone with owner- stage, back stage, actors, ecosystems, blueprints, etc.), we ship around launching the idea within our organisation. have found more interest from our stakeholders when — We empowered an ‘intra-preneur', i.e., a person inside we localise to our organisation’s context. We are a health our organisation who has an entrepreneurial spirit. information company. So we localise in that direction. Arm yours with a 'license to try’, with ‘duct tape and twine’ or whatever minimal resources they need to run Storytelling helps. Connecting with people and their some experiments. goals is paramount: build that into your story. Start — We rallied influencers, i.e., folks who spread service by describing one of your organisation’s challenges. design ideas and support from their areas of the Concretely illustrate (with pictures) your idea. If it’s too organisation. Offer a clear picture of what you want abstract or dense, people won’t see what you want to do. to accomplish, so your influencers can quickly learn In the words of Mike Davidson of Twitter, “a prototype and share with others. is worth a thousand meetings.”

Your champion will advocate to prepare folks for up- Give folks room to explore: coming progress. Your intra-preneur will fill whiteboards, Starting our discussions around an organisational need meet in small groups and find new ways to prove the where service design can help has worked well only value of service design. Your influencers will connect because we were open to other ideas about which project

Touchpoint 7-3 41 Figure 1: Map your organisation’s EXTERNAL external and internal initiatives

INTERNAL

succession innovation planning accounting rebranding

CORE meaningful use population product health consolidation continuous service deployment design

wearable tech

EXTERNAL Figure 2: Identify and draw in the connections between initiatives. INTERNAL

succession innovation planning accounting rebranding

CORE meaningful population product use health consolidation continuous service deployment design

wearable tech

42 Touchpoint 7-3 SELLING SERVICE DESIGN

to start with. Having a stakeholder ask ‘Oh, can we try it sufficient attention to feel traction. So before your next on …?’ is an exciting starting place versus trying to ‘pitch’ step, reassess: what does your next small step need to your idea as a better one. reinforce? Is it time for something new, or do you need to invest in what you just did? Either way, be sure to Fit within established processes: celebrate small learnings and wins, and make everyone How is work done in your organisation? How does feel very good about progress. information flow? Who interacts with whom? If you have a functioning project management process, understand Think ‘multi-channel’ and ‘multi-source’: it and follow it. Going with the flow can lower barriers. There is something magical about hearing of something Sometimes you can help people see how their portion of within a short time frame from multiple sources. Help the flow has downstream implications. Service design your service design ‘snowball’ by increasing the number becomes a bridge between established processes. and quality of touchpoints that your prospects have with your service design efforts. Respect how people interact with change: People can feel uncomfortable with change. How can 5. Sold! you create safety? How can you reward trying something new? One of the hardest things to adjust is our desire Tapping into organisational behaviour and taking small to introduce too much too soon. Sharing key concepts steps, we’ve helped our company realise a lot of improve- and getting folks exposed is much more important than ments and successes. See for yourself. Take small steps detail. When we moved too quickly, we saw the cues that that allow you to experiment, build on successes and folks weren’t ready: no movement, passive discussion and learn from failures. Create champions. Get folks thinking flat-out confusion. about and learning how to use service design. And discover that the service design win for your organisation 3. Give service design away 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 true needs of our client’s customers: customer understanding is Partner of True North, was active in the Belgian the essence of our profession. It’s time to apply those techniques advertising industry as an executive at BBDO. He co- to our own efforts at winning new clients. founded True North to help companies grow. With our backgrounds as service design Practice what we preach in order Christophe Leuckx, Managing Partner of True North, is a practitioners, we should be able to be the to be successful BBDO-alum and long-time best sales team in the world as successful Despite this sounding anecdotal, it out- practitioner of user experience selling hinges upon empathy with lines the true problem: we are good at methods, touchpoint planning and the like. prospects, our core business. However, practicing service design for our clients, being a domain expert does not guarantee but we often fail to practice it when we Maarten Aelvoet, Business perfect practice when it is needed most. need it most. Over the years, we have Designer at True North, founded a big data start- Over ten years ago, I started working concluded that there are three key up that collected customer for a digital advertising agency. Our approaches to improve the sales process. insights. His background helps website was mediocre at best: nothing Not surprisingly, they are directly linked customers listen to the voice of theirs. True North works compared to the award-winning projects to the practice of service design itself, and for Lunch Garden, Baloise, we launched for our clients. It took us were also named by the authors of This Liberty Global, KBC, among three years to ﬁnally bring our own is Service Design Thinking: being ‘user others. digital presence up to the standard of our centred’, applying ‘sequencing’, being ‘co- client work. It was only when we started creative’, being ‘holistic’, and ‘evidencing’. dealing with our own site as a client project that we made a difference. Nobody wants service design … Selling service design is hard, because it sounds like hard work for our buyers.

44 Touchpoint 7-3 SELLING SERVICE DESIGN

Uhm... Do we speak the same language?

Most challenges we tackle involve more than one touch- tend to mimic our prospects’ organisations. Rarely will point. And the service concepts that we improve are only you find an internal contact who is thrilled to involve his as effective as the weakest touchpoint of which they are colleagues as it incurs budget discussions, manpower composed. Suppose you were tasked to have a look at an hassles and turf wars. The tension we contain in our improved user experience of a prospect’s website, let’s workshops to turn opponents into advocates are the same say one touchpoint. ‘Sequencing’, a principle of service tensions we choose to ignore when we are in a sales cycle. design, helps us identify all interrelated actions to make We suggest using stakeholder exercises during your sure we do not overlook a pitfall or create a shortcoming prospecting phase, together with your contacts, to reveal that might impact the success of services offered. For the the required parties involved and create quick empathy prospect’s website project, it means that the website needs maps for each stakeholder. It has helped us to find the a technical upgrade, the retail personnel might require right arguments to persuade the organisation rather additional education, the logistics department might be than the individual. We consider our contact to be our summoned to update its procedures, etc. Almost all the internal ‘coach’; our source to manage the sales process time a ‘holistic’ view is required. We noted that this is when from the inside. the real challenge for our contacts we are selling to starts. Our marketing contact needs to find his way up to the Nobody buys service design... sales or – heaven forbid – the IT director. Our clients have Our interventions are merely a means to an end, and we problems that require ‘co-creation’, but our processes of should start treating it that way. We’re no end, we are, at selling are often siloed rather than shared, because we 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 multi- billion- 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 SELLING SERVICE DESIGN

project, understanding the ins and outs of the business “The role of the service designer is challenge. Only after we have shared our initial thoughts changing. Yes – we are designers, but on the challenge do we answer the ‘how?’ question. We share the business impact of the cases we co-created we are also facilitators and teachers, rather than explaining the process that took us there, conflict managers and we have to learn and we advise to gauge our performance by looking at the language of our clients. They have the impact of our work more than our methodology. already learned our language.”1 We should stop selling service design… Birgit Mager, Professor of Service Design Our clients want to buy a guarantee of success. Our at Köln International School of Design. 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 Our methods are different, but our objectives are challenges. Hence, to be impactful in the end we must the same. Service design firms believe in: the power create buy-in at the highest levels of our client’s company. of customer understanding instead of spreadsheet Part of doing that is being able to understand and speak under standing, looking at the bigger picture instead of the language of upper management. the individual touchpoints, involving all stakeholders But far more important than speaking their language, instead of only the directors, a holistic view rather than we must deliver proof. The more anecdotal and empirical a purely digital focus and prototype validation instead that service design is, the less convincing it will be for of intangible business cases. those used to basing decisions on spreadsheet calculations. We hope the lessons we have learned over the years ‘Evidencing’ is, therefore, the fifth principle of service help you to persuade your customers about the value of design that should be applied when selling service service design. By applying the customer-facing methods design. Without proof, people tend to buy from you use to your prospective clients, you have a better companies that guarantee a sense of certainty: guided change at addressing their real needs and winning their by fear, uncertainty or doubt, it seems wiser to choose business. a potentially inferior solution – often more expensive – instead of betting on the unproven risk of service design. 1 Mager, B. 2015. Emerging Issues and the Future of Service Design We handle the evidencing requirement by including [Online]. 17 November. Keynote speech presented at Service NPS tools, customer satisfaction surveys or quantitative Experience Conference 2015, San Francisco, CA. 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.

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 America’s third-largest design workforce1,service design remains Chris Ferguson is the CEO of Bridgeable and leads strategy a new phenomenon here, and across Canada. and design projects with some of the world’s largest and most innovative organisations in Canada, the US and Signs of the changing seasons Canadian firms are planning, organising, Europe. His work with the Now, encouraged by the performance and executing internal service design team at Bridgeable has been of market-leading corporations and projects and programs. We interviewed honoured with numerous awards and he writes and start-ups, Canadian firms are beginning seven senior executives from top-tier presents regularly about to turn their attention to an often- Canadian organisations, from healthcare the intersection between human-centred design and neglected piece of their operations: to retail to financial services. We wanted business strategy. He holds building a strategic design capability. to hear first-hand how they were evolving degrees in biology and In some of Canada’s largest companies, their operations to respond to this new entrepreneurship. departments beyond marketing are era of customer-centricity. Katherine Monteith is a Design taking an active role in understanding What we observed is that Canadian Strategist at Bridgeable and and improving their services from the firms have begun to implement the tools works hand-in-hand with clients and project teams perspective of customers. The public and practices of service design to tackle to uncover rich customer sector is following suit. In rarer instances, their organisation’s toughest strategic insights and develop strategic, teams of practitioners are popping up priorities. At the same time, it’s clear accessible solutions that drive business value. She has more within organisations under the banners that these pioneers still lack a consistent than eight years of experience of: ‘customer experience management’, approach and vocabulary. Additionally, leading research and brand ‘design strategy’ and ‘service design’. how, why, when and with whom their strategy programs for clients across five continents and in Recognising this shift, we set out methods are applied varies significantly. multiple industries. Katherine with the leaves beginning to change in holds an International MBA Moving from design thinking to from IE Business School, and a the Autumn of 2015, to examine how BDes from York University. design doing For Canadian businesses willing to jump 1 Martin Prosperity Institute, The Place of Design: Exploring Ontario's Design Economy, (March in, the application of service design is seen 2009), p. 19

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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 Spectrum: design of discrete service difﬁcult to implement. “Many years ago we established to design of service system 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 across sectors, as well as their last inter actions with to solve much more complex problems that are not us. So it's important to look at design as managing an easily defined. These initiatives look at the interactions ecosystem of experiences, across channels, across roles that exist across a wide variety of stakeholders, both and across products,” said Lucie Cousineau, Director of internally and externally. Customer Experience Design and Innovation at RBC. Organisations like Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) are Some organisations are defining the ‘ecosystem’ even considering the scope of desired impact (and therefore more broadly to expand beyond the walls of their own the scope of its projects) more broadly, to include a larger operations. This is no easy task, especially in industries system of multiple channels, products, and business that are highly regulated. But Roche Canada proves that units that touch the customer. “The biggest benefit to the it is possible, and that it’s worth the effort for the benefit service design approach is that it creates client empathy of the customer (or patient in their case). “If we discover and clarifies customer expectations based on their there’s a series of diagnostic tests that are supported ultimate goal. Consumers expect seamless interactions in one institution and not [in] another, we can connect and don’t really care about our organizational challenges. those two institutions to start talking about how one Their expectations are shaped by their experiences 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 a short term financial viewpoint can be difficult,” said aren’t able to solve the problem,” said Anne Elsley-Swan, Roche’s Anne Elsley. “It's too easy to say it's taking too Vice President of Customer Strategy at Roche Canada. long and that we’re distracted from our core business.” Multi-stakeholder collaboration means truly putting Interestingly, this sense of urgency to see results is often the user at the centre of the solution, and determining at odds with an organisation’s natural hesitance to put which organisations need to come together to improve prototypes in market quickly, test them and iterate rapidly that user’s experience across the system. Josina Vink is on the fly: a key element of the service design process. a former strategist and service designer at the Mayo Clinic “People want perfection, and internally we get caught and the Center for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) up with that. The notion of pushing out code that’s not in Toronto. She defined “the notion of the system and the perfect and fixing it on the fly is not common,” said James collection of services” as a means of “moving beyond one Gray-Donald, Vice-President of Sustainability at Bentall organisation and one service experience to really look Kennedy, one of North America's largest commercial real at the movement of one individual service user, through estate advisors. To get those quick wins with big results, multiple services across service sectors.” For example, sometimes a bit of calculated risk-taking is required. “in mental health, we were bringing together people But for leaders who are willing to (or interested from housing, healthcare, justice and social services, and in) looking beyond short-term results, service design beginning to map how people were moving through the can play an even more interesting role. There are full system, what the key problems and pressure points organisations that are using service design to identify were and what some of the key leverage points within the new areas of focus or future opportunities beyond the system were to be able to make changes. Then we were scope of their day-to-day business challenges. This working with that whole collection of individuals to make future-focused approach is often coupled with scenario changes across organisations.” planning: it applies a customer-centred lens to the All of these approaches are important in the advance- definition of future business opportunities. It can also ment of service design as a practice. Tackling more expand well beyond the business sphere to begin to look narrowly defined business problems in the short term at larger change drivers that exist in the market and in serves to create ‘quick wins’ and to illustrate the benefit more complex ecosystems. The Government of Alberta of a service design approach. As confidence in the tools, is using this approach to help define priorities for the language and methods of service design increase, there province. “We do a lot of scenarios work to engage will be more opportunities to engage in larger systems executive teams around some of the big drivers of change thinking, applying service design to solve more systemic that are impacting our system of healthcare here in social and business issues. Alberta,” said Oksana Kachur Niedzielski (Specialist), and Jonathan Veale (Director) of the Strategic Foresight 2: ‘Quick win’ or long-term strategy? and Innovation Unit at the Ministry of Health with the How quickly does an organisation need to show results? Government of Alberta. “We deal with huge volumes The definition of the time horizon can greatly impact of information and complex, contradictory perspectives an organisation’s confidence in applying service design. and data points. We need a way to add structure and Organisations often start out by tackling a shorter-term form to this information to make it more manageable initiative that can quickly and easily demonstrate results. and coherent so that we can make informed, reasoned “One way to sell service design internally is to look for decisions or provide advice to the elected government to the low hanging fruit. Fixing an existing opportunity that make sure they’re successful.” Service design is proving is already known, rather than finding new opportunities,” to be a powerful approach to provide human context and said RBC’s Lucie Cousineau. structure to the design of ambiguous and complex systems. However, there are limitations to the ‘quick win’ approach. Often, the service design process itself is 3: How will you measure success? longer than a typical business strategy and analysis What gets measured gets managed. Most of the orga- process, and requires a greater investment in time, nisations we spoke to believe that there is value in resources and money. “Trying to sell that model with determining clear KPIs for any service design project.

Touchpoint 7-3 51 Typically, in order to gain internal traction, those 4: What are you trying to achieve, really? KPIs are aligned with what is already important to the What should a service design project’s output be? With business. If a firm’s most important measurement is much of service design terminology and practices a Net Promoter Score, a service design project should historically rooted in product and interaction design, the demonstrate an ability to positively influence that expected output is often an improved or new product, number. “Whatever metrics have been defined for the feature or application. And while this is a good place to initial business problem you’re trying to solve should be begin, most firms we spoke with recognise that this view the key metrics,” said Canadian Tire’s Anthony Wolf. falls short. Anthony Wolf confirmed, “a product-focus is However, is tracking traditional ‘hard' business metrics not enough. For example, at Canadian Tire we did work enough to capture service design’s impact? “It’s not just in our paint department. We know that the selection of about the business and black-and-white numbers in the the paint itself is only a sliver of the overall experience. short term,” said Anne Elsley. Sometimes it’s necessary to So if you’re only looking at that, you’re missing all the move beyond those standard measures, or even redefine richness of insights around the customer: who’s shopping, them. At Roche Canada, she said, “we built [our patient- the state of mind that they’re in, what they’re looking for, centred strategy] into our balanced scorecard, so all what they’re expecting, the decisions they’re trying to company efforts were behind launching it as a strategic make. It’s like having super blinders on and ignoring most imperative. We looked at changing the traditional of what your customer is trying to balance.” business measures: can our sales be measured in patient These blinders are not uncommon. We often see lives? Can our process quadrant talk about better insights prospective clients come with a request for a redesigned to patients?” website or a new app. But before we engage in a project, The application of service design is, by definition, we always ask, “What is that new website or app trying intended to introduce a more qualitative and human to do? What problem is it solving, or what need is it perspective to traditional business thinking. Net Promoter fulfilling?” If all an organisation really wants is a new Scores are fine, but service design uncovers the ‘why’ skin on an existing website, then service design is behind the score. Sometimes this leads to a new product probably not the right tool. If an organisation wants or innovation, but sometimes it means choosing to walk to truly understand its customer’s experience as they away from something that your customers tell you doesn’t interact with the company (the good, the bad and the work. For service design to be successful, firms must ugly), and how the organisation’s website fits within a be comfortable with both outcomes. Even as it provides much broader context of multiple channels with which value to the business, “how do you measure what you the customer is interacting, then service design is chose not to do as a result of the process?” asked TELUS’s exactly the right tool. Judy Mellett. Using service design to understand the complete It’s clear that several organisations are already customer journey is incredibly useful for organisations beginning to identify these less quantifiable, human- that want to deliver a better experience. Even if the final centred indicators. However, there’s no clear consensus output is a new website (or product), it will be designed on the best way to track them. And it becomes even less with the totality of the customer experience in mind and clear when you move beyond tracking the outputs at the grounded in the internal people and systems that make end of a project and begin to look at tracking the process it tick. And beyond website or product design, there are of the project itself. As Josina Vink argued, “we need opportunities to redefine the complete system of service measures for outcomes but we also need to evaluate the delivery for firms willing to take on that challenge. process.” How do participants feel throughout? Do they feel engaged or sidelined? Is the process creating positive A prototype for leading Canadian organisations or negative attitudes? These more abstract, process- Answering these questions helps firms to find the right oriented metrics become more important the more a firm balance for their organisations, and to apply service is trying to manage for future engagement and long-term design appropriately on a case-by-case basis. No firm organisational (or brand) loyalty. 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 Lessons in service design from Canadian that can be achieved. early adopters

Touchpoint 7-3 53 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 first spread the word about the impact that great services can last decade, using design to help people and brands to have on businesses. provide better services. He leads innovation and service design projects as founding partner of Livework in Brazil, How to sell service design? we feel is determined by the sum of how is the author of the best- As someone who had to develop the those relationships happened. Keep this seller Design Thinking Brasil market in Brazil from scratch, bringing information for now: it will all add up later, and teaches at renowned universities around the globe. the first service design consultancy in the I promise. world to Latin America, I have been in the position to ask myself this question over Service (design) awareness levels and over again. How should we approach If we remove ‘service design sceptics’, we organisations? Or better yet, how to might say that there are three types of attract them? My answer has changed business leaders inhabiting our planet: quite a bit over the past years, and now I 1. The ones that are already convinced of think that if we want to make the design the value that service design is capable approach ubiquitous, we might want to of bringing to their organisations, so stop talking about it for a while. that’s basically what they are already looking for in the market. People and organisations 2. The ones that know the importance of Throughout our lives, we are constantly providing great services but haven’t interacting either with people or heard of service design yet – and organisations. Sometimes, we interact therefore experiment with many with a person who represents a specific approaches and tools. organisation. Other times, we use some 3. And, finally, the ones that just don’t care organisation’s machines in order to about the experience their clients have at interact with people in our personal all, as long as they get expressive bottom circles. At the end of the day, the way line results by the end of the year.

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As service design practitioners, the way we approach Some people don’t care! each of them and our arguments should be completely Although the latter, the ‘pull’ strategy, is still the best different. 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 Service design sceptics aside, and should, therefore, only be convinced about the organisational leaders can be classiﬁed importance of delivering great services. Later, in the long run, they will get to know and value service design but, in either one of these three categories. in the beginning of this journey, it is important to stop Up until now, most of the arguments talking about tools and methods and start delivering used by service design professionals simple messages about great services and their impact. Let’s think of the great service experience as the ‘why’ have been targeting the top two. 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. ‘Push’ versus ‘pull’ strategy For a long time, service design consultancies, in order to What comes next? get new projects, tried to sell methods and tools, bragging Developing new methods and tools and writing case about their own processes and how they lead to great studies has proved their worth in attracting people who results, in a sort of push strategy (service design turns have already discovered service design and are now into great results). The idea was simple: organisations learning about its value. I don’t think that we should will choose the consultancy with the best professionals stop doing that. It is a short-term strategy to close deals and the most impressive methods and tools. Many with people who have come a long way in understanding consultancies have realised now that it is much better the ultimate goal of businesses. But we should go earlier to do the exact opposite: show the kind of great business in the service design journey of some potential clients. that can be generated through the use of service design. We have to get those businesses that are dealing with It has become mainly about the results, not the process. customers every day without realising how important

Touchpoint 7-3 55 © Paola Mânica, from Livework from Mânica, © Paola

Sometimes service experiences are awful they are on-board. What they need at this moment are because the organisation isn't even aware not tools, but powerful messages on the benefits of ‘serving well to keep on serving’ (and not going out of of the relationship between delivering business). great experiences and getting better business results. 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 people- centric 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 re- thought 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.

Touchpoint 7-3 57 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 will help you become buyable. In this article, we share critical and CEO of Transformator factors for understanding your clients, and show how to act as Design. Daniel has delivered over 300 successful projects service design consultancy when selling your expertise. in the last 16 years. He’s a board member, columnist and frequent keynote speaker on the topic of customer This article isn’t all about becoming it. This is always the starting point. When experience, service design buyable, but let’s start by ticking off the someone with an established deliverable, and service innovation, and author of the book Customer basics needed to get hired: deadline and budget gets ownership of Experience - Why some — Packages of different sizes a problem, a project can be initiated. organisations succeed … — Understandable deliverables You, as a consultant, have to be a nanny and others don’t. — Content in every step you sell and embrace the problem with them. By Anders Landström is — Appropriate price taking a genuine interest in the client and Senior Service Designer at their customers, you can dive deeper into Transformator Design with broad and international It also has to be very clear how the client the situation. We’ve found that looking experience. He manages can make use of the result. The more over small prestige battles and adopting customer-centric projects abstract and strategic the project, the a holistic perspective of the client works at both strategic and hands- on levels for clients from more structured the package needs to be. as a successful strategy for building great all business sectors and You can’t sell a future solution or idea, working relationships. industries. With a back - but you can sell a trustworthy and proven ground in industrial design and change management, process for developing solutions. One prospect, but two agendas he successfully creates You need to know who the buyer is — impact for both clients and customers. Be the nanny both the person/group contacting you, Selling is always part of a problem solving and their organisation. You need a deep – or opportunity seeking – process understanding of each to become buyable: between two parties: the problem owner and the solution provider. The person: The problem owner has an issue When has the purchasing client done important enough to pay someone to solve 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.

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

Far too many organisations are willing to buy service © Illustration: Per Brolund Per © Illustration: 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 are they themselves measured? What do they want to and joy-killing. While, for people who want to make achieve within their organisation, or even their career? real change, not discussing implementation comes off What is the dream scenario that this project will help as fluffy, unrealistic dreaming. Know your buyer from them achieve? Will they take any risks when doing or not this angle and you can adapt to communicate the most doing this project? buyable proposal. For those that want to create real change, key figures, numbers of results and detailed The organisation: effects are extremely powerful. What does the organisation want to achieve? What’s the strategic plan? What counts in the organisation? How The mindset of the client organisation do employees become heroes? Who will win from doing Understanding the dominant mindset of a prospect this project? Who takes a potential risk, and are there organisation will deeply influence your proposal. We’ve any losers? Losers could be those who fight for the same found that people in organisations are driven by: budget. — Creating success stories – usually focused on higher earning, market share, etc. A difference in the needs and driving forces of the two — Not making any mistakes – usually focused on parties shows an organisation’s potential dysfunction. efficiency and cost cutting

Touchpoint 7-3 59 Often, we encounter the latter in mature industries with Learn to love the ‘NO’ high competition. However, this focus can change over You also need to be sure you have the right counterpart. time, sometimes very rapidly. A new C-level leader can Does the person you’re in touch with have the mandate to change things overnight. Additionally, mindsets shift make the buying decision? Too many times we’ve spent during different periods of the year. Year in, year out, a lot of time discussing with people who didn't have the we’ve found that Quarter 1 is about income and future- mandate to buy. Selling isn’t always about getting a ‘yes’: oriented possibilities, while Quarter 4 is all about it’s just as much about getting a ‘no’. The ‘no’ will free up cutting costs. time for you to focus on other prospects.

The three-legged stool Sell business wellness, not heroin When talking with an organisation about your proposal The client usually needs to create an overview of what you have to grasp their situation and the value your they buy. Therefore, it’s important to let them see an service can offer. This depends on three factors: ending to your relationship, and the possibility that 1. Is it important for them? they’ll take ownership over the process. As a consultancy, 2. Is it complicated to solve? we constantly strive to educate and empower our clients. 3. Is it urgent to solve it? In doing so, we create a win-win situation: our work gets implemented, and the client organisation embraces If all three are consistent, the project will have a high trans forming their organisation to better meet customer value for the client and they’ll be interested in buying. needs. If any of them are not valid, lower the cost or drop your At Transformator Design we’ve developed Custellence, project and return when the situation has changed. a digital tool that enables its users to create dynamic

Service map made in Custellence, a digital dynamic customer journey tool.

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customer journeys and to lead change management. In this article, we’ve described a few critical factors for Delivering customer insights and journeys in Custellence understanding clients. They’ve certainly helped us on our ensures the client has a delivery that facilitates initiation journey from two designers in 1998 to a renown service of their work from a common ground. It further builds design agency today. To tie it all together, we suggest the organisation’s capability to have a live customer- that applying service design methods to your own selling centric approach, where initiatives and projects are process will make you more buyable. The customer- launched continuously. It’s open for everyone, from centric approach is often forgotten as a selling tool. Let’s clients who want to work independently to competitors use the good advice we give our clients to sell our own who want to strengthen their position in a local market. services and develop our business. As service designers we have unique superhero powers: understand humans, Simplicity leads to success innovate based on these insights and visualise it. Let’s use Regardless of the type of buyer, the stories you tell need them for a good purpose! Good luck! 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.

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 executing service design projects refers to methods and tools evaluation and user experience (UX) testing plat form. Digital that are difficult to implement in a real context, particularly coach and Mentor. Master of where there is a lack of knowledge of service design basics. advanced design and Human- computer interaction (HCI) Findings and learnings from typical client cases motivated the PhD student. Santiago, Chile. creation of a framework for selling service design that we present Rodrigo Gajardo is a Designer, strategic design, ethno graphy and discuss in this article. and public services Consultant, Professor and Researcher. Master of advanced design. Founder of EstudioDIES.com, Selling service design requires a lean building a value proposition based on the a strategic design consultancy firm. Santiago, Chile. mindset, where each step of the process company's context and business goals. –research, define, design, test, execute – can be a milestone and a project at the Context and motivation same time. We explore current challenges As a quick summary from a typical facing consulting teams and propose a project, the potential client came with framework for approaching and selling a very specific request: a fast-growing service design to an organisation based on financial business that needs to automate a maturity model. its processes in order to get the most out of the sales funnel from website This article is relevant to service design conversion to optimisation and lead practitioners, both from consulting generation. A simple conversation on firms and client side, who struggle with some basic topics related to customer engaging organisations in service design experience, reveals that actually, from a processes. The proposed framework is client perspective, the post-sales activities an instrument for assessing the maturity are not supported by a clear protocol, level of service design adoption and 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 hierarchical corporate culture, it is maybe especially the creation of a framework for selling service design that important in Latin America: talking to the right person we present and discuss here. is fundamental. The right person is someone who understands the need for a change and has the proper Whom to talk to on the client side internal power to impact on decisions and resources for Innovation, marketing and customer experience depart- future projects. We will call this person a ‘sponsor’ and ments are likely to adopt service design practices because we will detail the importance of identifying who is the they usually have customer experience in their DNA. best decision-maker to talk to. Additionally, customer experience and innovation departments might have had some contact with design The framework thinking, probably the most-used concept when it Understanding business goals will help you find a direct comes to innovative problem-solving methods and tools. relation between customer experience and service design Surprisingly, the approach of selling service design from a business perspective. Customer research is a great as 'innovation' is not exclusively related to developing starting point, in the sense that executives are familiar countries. The Design Council mentions it as a current with concepts such as ‘market research’ or ‘focus groups’. practice in UK in a recent report 1. Having a mental reference helps them to understand the An ideal sales cycle for service design starts from a value proposition and how the results of a service design first contact with an organisation that has an identified project will generate new business opportunities or solve problem (it is always much more expensive to evangelise a problem. From the very beginning, the approach has to or to make them see they have a problem). Because of 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 1 Design Council, 2012, Scoping Study on Service Design: partner for the execution of a first project. An ambitious https://www.designcouncil.org.uk/sites/default/files/asset/ document/Scoping%20Study%20on%20Service%20Design%20 CEO will easily accept investing in data, but managing Final_website%20summary_v2.pdf a service design project on a daily basis requires that

Touchpoint 7-3 63 the initiative be engaged, requires that it communicate clients with vendors depending on the personas identified and drive relevant adoption by the entire organisation. during the research period. It should not be only a matter of an executive board. On the other hand, in order to have an accurate and close Practical issues when selling service design follow-up, the consultant needs to be in permanent contact Co-creation, co-design and participatory design are with one counterpart who should be in charge of the clearly value-added activities in the new paradigm of execution and have the empowerment to take decisions. project management and innovation. Nevertheless, Evangelise service design as a process that goes way involving the internal stakeholders still presents some beyond a specific project and propose a lean roadmap in issues, especially in terms of defining the process and the order to get from step zero (no idea what service design tools to be used, but probably the most important aspect is) to adopting service design as a mindset to design is understanding that doing service design requires a meaningful experiences. different mindset that conveys changes in the way of working. Based on previous experience, facilitation should go way beyond open-design where no specific Get a sponsor in the organisation and actor is responsible for design decisions. an internal partner for the execution Working with intermediate deliverables or several small projects has advantages, but could also present of a first project. disadvantages. In an ideal scenario, service design external practitioners could use the first research findings in order to propose a series of working plans, Develop internal capabilities through mentoring based on design proposals considering the customer and coaching. Adopting service design and driving journey and service blueprint mapping. However, in organisational change through service design is a matter a more realistic scenario, companies interact with of articulating strategic vision with practical capabilities other stakeholders – as digital agencies, marketing that need time to be developed. In this context, a first consultancy firms, IT providers – therefore, the service project can help to initiate an organisation with the design firm can not anticipate or control. The existence service design approach. Afterwards, given limited of these other potential providers will potentially situate resources, future impact can be driven by empowering the service design firm in a more competitive context for the internal team with service design tools and methods. the next step: execution. Showing meaningful insights and getting small results Some tactics will situate service design firm in a more should be a focus in this first project. Insights can be favourable position when the time comes to decide who easily converted into ideas, but connecting these ideas will implement: with the executive board agenda is a bigger challenge in 1. Keep the control, proposing and executing initiatives terms of transforming conceptual design into tangible with other partners of the service design firm. projects with a budget for prototyping. Meaningful 2. Give the control to the client, collaborate with other insights are generally related to a core business challenge existing providers and maintain a facilitator role. or problem. Converting them into small results is a key factor to gain credibility and this is what makes a service There are pros and cons when deciding if a consulting design team – internal or external – strong enough in firm should be involved in project management. Some order to get future resources to implement a second or pros: assure initial design proposal goes live and increase third project. In the context of the mentioned project, one client loyalty. On the other hand, the cons are related to of the first deliverables was a tool for matching potential 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 fast- growing 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.

Touchpoint 7-3 65 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 and founded the Mobisol company in a Berlin garage. connect human-centred design with sustainable energy provision. She joined the solar-energy company Mobisol We worked toward developing an offer real people at the centre of inquiry, and in its infancy to manage the pilot phase in Tanzania. that is both appealing and affordable for it can be quite a culture shock to discuss Alongside managing Mobisol's households living at the so-called ‘base ideas based on a limited set of in-depth customer experience, Klara of the pyramid’, and encountered many interviews or insights from extreme joined the Microenergy Systems research program challenges, in addition to the expected users. To convince the team of the value in 2013, investigating service technology appropriation: weak physical of qualitative research, we investigated design in the BOP/energy and institutional infrastructures; lack household routines and energy-use context. of skilled staff in rural areas; and the cases by using home visits and cultural great cultural distance between future probes. Pictures showing what our rural customers and us. We then came across customers really do with the electricity service design, and saw that it could be greatly surprised the tech team, but just the right approach to accomplish our also gave them inspirations for future aim: if we managed to put it into practice. developments. Research showed that This article intends to put forward three some users charged not only their own tactics that helped service design take root phones, but had set up a frightening in our engineering-driven organisation. arrangement to charge them by the dozen, thereby generating extra income. This led 1. Bring development closer to real to the development of a highly efficient needs multiple phone-charger, which can be Common in many companies, but directly connected to a solar-panel system. especially in those driven by (German) Nowadays, all employees reflect on how engineers, is a decision-making process their actions influence actual customer based on unambiguous facts. Service experience and readily incorporate new design goes beyond aggregates and puts insights into their work.

66 Touchpoint 7-3 SELLING SERVICE DESIGN

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 back- office 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. Uncover actual user behaviour to inspire This reduces their workload immensely and at the same future developments time allows us to get richer insights about customer pain points and ‘wow’ moments. Today, Mobisol is a company with 350 employees who 3. Stick around for implementation together provide electricity to more than 30,000 East- Customer journeys or service blueprints are great African households under a pioneering business model. ways to propose a new or optimised service concept. The aim of this article was two-fold: first, to show However, the path from idea to reality is usually that it is possible to ingrain customer experience into plastered with obstacles and a new service design will the DNA of an organisation even if it is run by energy only materialise outside the meeting room if you also engineers. Second, to contribute to the emerging area collaborate with the operational team. What has been of ‘transformative service research’ by highlighting the shown to be very helpful as a first step at Mobisol, was potential of service design beyond simply turning ‘okay’ adding another row below the scenario we created: in services into great ones. By “putting an emphasis on here, we detailed all that is necessary to realise each understanding the consumer, envisioning new service change. Together with the team, we broke down the experiences and prototyping them,” 1 service design new concept into well- defined work packages. This can really make a difference and create solutions that resulted in concrete action items for hardware and previously seemed impossible. software developers, the marketing guys or our quality- assurance team. This canvas then turned into a living 1 Anderson, L. & Ostrom, A.L. (2015). ‘Transformative Service Research: document that was adapted to issues arising during Advancing Our Knowledge About Service and Well-Being’ in Journal of implementation on the fly. Service Research, 18(3), 243-249.

Touchpoint 7-3 67 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 the case for keeping both the employee and the customer sides is a strategist, facilitator, and sense-maker who of the equation happy? has directed projects for leading companies, non- profits, cultural institutions, and universities. Solving We know that engaged employees provide companies and airlines with negative space, operational, and better service and have higher retention, scores. Many hospitals continue to provide organisational problems higher productivity, lower absenteeism unsatisfactory patient experiences as gets him up in the morning. Thinking about the future of and fewer mistakes. As for customers, measured by HCAHPS (Hospital work and learning keeps him satisfied customers use services more Consumer Assessment of Healthcare up late. frequently, spend more, promote brands, Providers and Systems), with a 2014 Victor Nwankwo, M.D., is a hang in through crises and provide input national average of 71 out of 100. physician who received his that makes products and services better. This problem cannot be solved by training at the University This is what the fields of service marketing looking at the customer side alone, for no of Illinois in Chicago. He is currently Managing Director and service management call the ‘cycle other reason than services are co-created at the Dr. DCN Memorial of success’.1 between customers and providers. It is Foundation as well as a Trainee at Weill Cornell Medicine’s The problem is, many organisations also a problem that applies to all types Clinical Translational Science are instead stuck in cycles of failure: of companies because all companies are Center in New York City. He most employees aren’t engaged and in the service business, whether they is as much a programmer as 2 anything else. many customers aren’t satisfied. Gallup recognise it or not. Of late, service design indicates that, of the American work- has focused too much on customers. force, only 31.5% are engaged (they are “involved in, enthusiastic about, and 1 Lovelock, C. H., & Wirtz, J. (2011). Services committed to their work and work- Marketing: People, Technology, Strategy. Upper place”), 51% are not engaged (neutral), Saddle River, N.J: Pearson/Prentice Hall. See for 17.5% are actively disengaged (working example p.286. 2 This is based on the concept of 'service dominant against the interests of the organisation). logic' cf. Vargo, S.; Lusch, R.: 'Evolving to a new Likewise, many companies have dismal service dominant logic for marketing'. Journal of Net Promoter scores, including cable Marketing. Vol. 68 (January 2004)

68 Touchpoint 7-3 SELLING SERVICE DESIGN

This article argues for approaching service design as an is expected of me at work” and “the mission or purpose organisational development activity, one that engages and of my company makes me feel my job is important.”5 develops providers in order to create cycles of success. In Gallup’s analysis found that firms in the top quartile of our view, ultimately what needs to be designed isn’t really engagement had 25% less turnover, 37% less absenteeism, the service: it’s the way people will work. 21% more productivity, and 22% more profitability as We will make this case by reviewing existing literature compared to the median. that links employees and customers, by demonstrating There are also several indices that correlate employee this relationship through brightspot’s own analysis and satisfaction, engagement and/or loyalty with that of by providing a simple methodology for demonstrating customers. In 2014, the Answers Corporation combined how a service design process that develops employees data from their American Employee Study and their pays for itself. Experience Index for over 40,000 customers of U.S. retailers to show a relationship between customer What the literature says about employee and satisfaction and employee engagement, with the top customer engagement retailers including Advance Auto Parts, Ann Taylor, A large body of research concerns the relationship between Apple, Barnes & Noble and Costco. Bassi, Frauenheim, employees and customers. For instance, Bernhardt McMurrer, and Costello created the Good Company et al., 2000, Koys, 2001 and 2003 and Harter et al., Index that evaluates Fortune 100 companies across 3 2002. Studies generally take one of three approaches: dimensions: employer, seller and steward. empirical analyses of an organisation, meta-analyses within/across industries or indices linking employee Comparing employee vs. customer rankings and customers. The first typically relates employees To see the employee-customer relationship for ourselves and customers by surveying both and then examining and to lay the foundation for a future assessment tool, business outcomes like profitability, stock performance, we compiled rankings from three employee ratings or customer retention. For example, in hospitality, and three customer ratings for an exploratory analysis: Salanova, Agut, and Peiró demonstrated that employee Glassdoor.com 50 Best Places to Work, Career Bliss’s 50 engagement predicts service climate which predicts Happiest Companies in America, Fortune’s Best Places to employee performance and, in turn, customer loyalty.3 Work, American Customer Satisfaction Index, Tempkin In retail, Wangenheim, Evanschitzky and Wunderlich Net Promoter Scores and the Brand Keys Customer demonstrated the link between employee and customer Loyalty Engagement. Of the 623 companies that appear satisfaction, even for employees who are not in contact on these six sources, 36 had both employee and customer or very rarely in contact with customers.4 scores, so we focused on these for our analysis. Because Meta-analyses demonstrate a correlation between different sources had different scoring scales (e.g., a good employees and customers by looking at large data sets net promoter score might be in the 60-70% range while on how employees and customers feel relative to how Fortune’s Best Places to Work are ranked 1 through 100), the organisations perform. For example, Gallup’s 2012 we converted each to a relative integer rank between meta-analysis combines 263 research studies across 192 1 and 36 to create a non-weighted composite rank for organisations in 49 industries and 34 countries, including comparison testing. 49,928 work units and nearly 1.4 million employees. It Comparison testing determines if there is a correlation builds upon their ‘Q12’ instrument with 12 questions between the rankings: if there is a strong correlation we determining employee engagement such as “I know what can expect a company that ranks highly in one domain to achieve a similar ranking in the other. Figure 1 shows

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 5 Harter, J., Schmidt, F., Agrawal, S., Plowman, S. (2013). 'The Applied Psychology, 1(6), 1217-1227. Relationship between Engagement at Work and Organizational 4 Wangenheim, F. Evanschitzky, H. & Wunderlich, M. (2007). 'Does the Outcomes: 2012 Q12 Meta-Analysis.' [Online] Retrieved October employee–customer satisfaction link hold for all employee groups?' 25, 2015, from http://www.gallup.com/services/177047/q12-meta- Journal of Business Research 60, 690–697. analysis.aspx

Touchpoint 7-3 69 70 contribute to the employee-customer relationship? relationship? employee-customer the to contribute type or service size organisation type, by industry differences how might for instance, outliers: the explain to needed is investigation Further rankings. customer on return the without employee rankings high have that outliers are Universal NBC and Facebook, McAfee employee Conversely, scores. commensurate Adobe, without ratings customer high achieve that outliers Apple and are eBay Hyatt, Nordstrom, correlation. of the strength reduce the signiﬁcantly that groups However, outlier line. trend two the there along all are Southwest) USAA, (e.g. Google, loyalty customer positive employee and engagement high both with associated commonly companies the and diagonal the along trend shows aclustering inspection visual correlation, (rs =0.0499,engagement P=0.7724). customer employee and engagement between correlation positive weak avery revealed correlation Spearman’s A ranking. composite customer the against ranking composite employee bythe plotted companies 36 the customer ranking customer employee ranking against the composite Companies plotted by the composite Customer Ranking Worst Rank Worst While the results may not demonstrate a strong astrong not demonstrate may results the While Best Rank 36 26 Touchpoint 7-3 16 21 31 11 6 1 36 PayPal eBay General Electric General Hyatt 31 Orbitz Nordstrom Nokia Citigroup Toyota 26 Yahoo! Wegmans Nationwide Insurance Nationwide Costco Employee Ranking Ford 21 Nike Chrysler LinkedIn Apple Bank of America 16 WellPoint (Anthem) DirecTV American Express Farmers Insurance Farmers Southwest 11 Fedex Fidelity Investments NBC Universal NBC Microsoft Marriott 6 p (rho) =0.0499 McAfee Nestle Facebook Best Rank USAA Google Adobe 1 Intuit 6 6 to employee engagement employee to contributors common most the development, use we can service. the people providing the develop to opportunity an as design service approaching by happen only can But this customers. delight and support that deliver services they while of belonging asense creating and for growth opportunities offering employees apurpose, to connect jobs that providing happy: equation sides of the keep both can design service Good being foisted upon them from the top down. top down. the from upon them foisted being of it instead achange, opt into and future own their shape to employees achance gives also that process design aparticipatory through reinforced be can count opinions their that people asense giving Forprocess. instance, quality to acommitment Sharing best your todo equipment and tools the Having applied to and listened is that input Providing and development growth employee in Investing reward and recognition with coupled expectations, clear Setting organisation larger the and to ateam belonging of asense Creating purpose to alarger Connection McGonigal, Daniel Pink, and Teresa Amabile Teresa and Pink, Daniel McGonigal, Jane as such thinkers as well as Studies Employment for Institute The and Research, MSW Watson, Towers Gallup, as such organisations include factors engagement employee common on Sources Factor Engagement Employee To think about service design as organisational organisational as design service about To think help can design service How 6 to structure the service design design service the structure to of the service design process design service the of part as standards performance and values shared Developing needs infrastructure and tools the to identify blueprints service Using creation co- and input for process aparticipatory Creating training) formal via (and process the during skills new Learning mechanisms reward developing and metrics performance clear setting needed, roles the Deﬁning experiences shared create and team the tobuild process aparticipatory Leveraging organisation the of philosophy and purpose vision, Creating Characteristic Design Service SELLING SERVICE DESIGN

To see how this kind of employee engagement-driven (operational expenditure) would be about $500,000 service design process would work, let’s consider an and the space enhancements would be about $2.3M example of five walk-in urgent care centres that want (capital expenditure). So, the payback would be about to improve their patient experience and renovate their 3.75 months for the operational expenditure and 17.25 check-in, triage and waiting areas. We would structure additional months for the capital expenditure. this as a bottom-up participatory process of staff working To make their own case this way, practitioners can groups, apply the same tools to staff and customers and look at a variety of factors on the customer and employee pair staff with embedded external experts for training sides of the equation, as shown in the table below: in real-time. Initial research would mine transaction and satisfaction data as well as gather new data through Costs Revenues interviews, observations and service safaris. From all of these, we would create a shared purpose and vision, Staff Facing Costs Staff-related Cost Savings customer/staff personas and customer/staff journey — Service design consultation — Reduced turnover maps. We would then prototype new ideas for the check- — Training — Reduced absenteeism — Implementation coaching — Reduced inventory in experience. Service blueprints would then identify — Staff time in meetings, shrinkage (theft) the staff actions, infrastructure, skills and performance workshops, etc. — Reduced quality defects metrics. To complement the staff develop ment from a — Space, furniture, and — Reduced safety incidents participatory process, a staff training program would technology — Increased productivity be designed and delivered along with coaching on Customer Facing Costs Customer Revenues implementation as the new services and spaces go live. and Cost Savings — New digital tools/ — Increased profitability How to make the case for service design platforms — Increased spending/ If we think about service design as an activity that develops — Marketing share of wallet employees, then we can make the case for it based on two — Space, furniture, — Reduced cost of acquisition and technology — Increased loyalty/ facts: first, there is a link between employee engagement reduced turnover and business outcomes and, second, employee time costs — New Customers money. So, the time you save service providers through improvements like reduced absenteeism, reduced turn over and increased productivity can offset costs associated with Conclusions developing people as well as the costs for space changes, We’ve shown how employee and customer engagement technology, marketing and so on. are related and linked to business outcomes. To Detailed business cases can be created that look at the capitalize on this relationship, service design can be a current conditions in comparison to the future state and way to develop employees in order to satisfy employees determine whether and when benefits exceed costs. But, and customers alike. This way, service design pays for to make the case simply, you can determine the annual itself with the cost savings and revenue gains offsetting staffing costs, then estimate how much those costs could the design and implementation costs. Then we have be reduced annually through the service design process happy employees, happy customers, and happy service (based on your previous work or other publicly available designers. data like Gallup’s), and then calculate how long it will take for those cost savings to offset whatever you spend to achieve them. 7 For each location, assuming 80 operating hours per week and a staff of 2 physicians, 2 clinical assistants, 2 operations managers, and 4 For our example of five urgent care centres, staffing customer service representatives 7 costs might be around $4.5M per year on around $16M 8 For each location, assuming 360 visits per week at $172 per visit, using revenue.8 If we were able to improve the organisation averages from the Annals of Internal Medicine Report, adjusted to from average to top quartile performance, that would 2015 dollars: See Mehrotra A1, Liu H, Adams JL, Wang MC, Lave JR, Thygeson NM, Solberg LI, McGlynn EA.(2009). 'Comparing costs and be about $1.6M in annual savings relative to these costs. quality of care at retail clinics with that of other medical settings for 3 The service design, training and implementation process common illnesses.' Annals of Internal Medicine Sep 1;151(5):321-8.

Touchpoint 7-3 71

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 service design teams throughout all stages of the service design Christiane Rau is Professor of innovation management at the process. Reviewing the current market, we have identified 21 University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria and Founder software tools that are currently available and that we think are of cœur innovation. She is active in research, teaching, particularly useful for different circumstances that can arise in and consultancy in the service design projects. fields of strategic innovation management, service design and customer co-creation. Setting the stage systematic analysis, we are able to share Anna Zbiek is currently a Research Assistant at the When service design teams consist some insights about software tools for University of Applied Sciences mostly of Generation Y members, they service design and provide an overview Upper Austria. She conducts often expect that software exists to of software tools currently available on research in the fields of customer experience and support their activities: ‘Is it really the market. For each of the software tools, digital methods of service necessary to keep flipcharts with persona we provide a short description, as well as design. She gained experience descriptions?’; ‘How should we capture a summary of features for collaboration. in the field of design working for Fraunhofer Center of our interview data?’; ‘How can we create Additionally, we recommend phases in Applied Research on Supply digital mock-ups to let prospective which the tool might prove particularly Chain Services SCS, Polytec customers interact with a new website?’; beneficial. Holding AG, and Mazda Motor Europe. ‘How can we consistently communicate As pricing models differ, the prices early service concepts to customers in of the tools are categorised based on a various focus groups?’ common use case: three service designers In recent years, we discovered one work on a project for three months. tool after another that helped to improve They want to work with the given tool our collaboration and that opened up collaboratively and want to be able to new possibilities for gathering insights integrate around 20 users throughout (e.g. mobile ethnography). This made the process. Clearly, this project-based us wonder if other, potentially more perspective favours particular price powerful, tools exist. After conducting a models (e.g. those providing free trial

74 Touchpoint 7-3 TOOLS AND METHODS

versions for up-to three users) and put others at a dis- Using the application ExperienceFellow, customers advantage (e.g. those only offering one year licenses). capture their experiences with a particular service We find that three particular types of software tools on the spot, without having to stick to preconfigured for service design are currently available on the market: touchpoints. The users track touchpoints and document (1) tools using pre-configured templates; (2) tools for these with text, audio, photo or video, providing gathering and analysing mobile ethnographic data; and the service designer with a valuable glimpse into (3) tools for designing service mock-ups. the customers’ perspective. In the background, the Experience Fellow application is used to analyse the Exploration phase qualitative data. While tools exist for each phase in service design, a clear majority of tools are aimed at the so-called ‘exploration’ Creation and reflection phase phase. One of the greatest challenges in a service design During the creation and reflection phase, creating early project is to get a holistic understanding of the context service prototypes and refining them iteratively within of a service and its prospective customers. We find that a the team and with prospective customers is essential variety of applications exist that support the visualisation to developing winning services. Table 3 provides an of the output of well-known methods such as personas, overview of software tools to design service mock-ups, stakeholder maps or customer journeys. Platforms, such in particular tools to create mock-ups of apps and wire- as smaply, provide templates that can be filled out online frames as well as videos. or printed out (Fig. 1). In recent years, the demand for designing web services Similar tools are available in this area with slightly has risen steadily. Service designers have reacted to this different functionalities. In Touchpoint Dashboard, it demand and have extended their portfolio to offer online 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. Customer Journey created with smaply

Touchpoint 7-3 75 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. Brain- Reactions 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 Ethnographical research with prefer conventional software solutions such as Power- Contextmapp Point 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 service design where appropriate. Tools such as Axure security systems arise. In any case, it is advisable that and Balsamiq provide easy-to-adapt mock-ups for the service designers check the data security policies of development of interactive prototypes of websites and the software providers and consider their clients’ data web applications. These visualisations are the basis for security requirements before selecting a software tool, the actual programming later in the process. Interactive in particular when it comes to web services. prototypes for smartphone apps can, for instance, be designed using FieldTest or InVision. Gathering feedback To sum up, our review identifies a variety of template- on prototypes quickly is also critical. InVision enables based tools that can increase the efficiency of well- users to connect with the project team and provide known methods. Platforms for mobile ethnography can feedback. help to deepen understanding of customers by enabling To explain complex services and to convey the on-going communication bridging spatial and time emotional aspect of a new service concept, we find constraints. Various tools to create service mock-ups VideoScribe particularly helpful. With VideoScribe, can convey a vivid understanding of future services, designers can create animated video stories using an thereby enabling better customer feedback. None of the included image database. In the final scribble videos, a presented tools can replace collaboration in real-world hand draws the assembled images while the concept or, settings. Nevertheless, deliberately combining offline in this case, the service is explained. Those who do not world and online support increases service designers’ wish to rely on the images included in the platform’s efficiency and takes collaboration with customers to a database can create their own images and upload them. whole new level.

76 Touchpoint 7-3 TOOLS AND METHODS

Software tools for service design using pre-conﬁgured templates

TYPE OF SOFTWARE COLLABORATION PHASE

SHARE LIVE TRACK CHAT/ CHAN- PRICE DESCRIPTION FORUM GES FOR USAGE* web platform web app desktop app mobile edit view/try comment Exploration Creation Reﬂection Implementation

• Templates for service blueprints and other service design, business and project Canvanizer management purposes are Free www.canvanizer.com available online • Templates can be downloaded for print out or ﬁlled online

• Templates for 40 types of Platform: Creately diagrams, including ﬂow charts, € www.creately.com business models, data base Desktop: diagrams €€1

Cacoo • Templates for various diagrams Free1 www.cacoo.com

• Templates for user stories and customer journey maps • Tasks can be deﬁned for each FeatureMap stage in the story or map Free www.featuremap.co • Combines customer journey development with project management tools

Lovely Charts • Templates for different types of € www.mylovelycharts.com diagrams

• Templates for Business models, action plans (organise Rapid Modeler/ implementation phase) Rapid Scanner • Templates can be downloaded €€€2 www.app.rapid - for print out or filled online modeler.de • Feature: RapidScanner App (offlined filled templates can be digitalised)

• Templates for customer journey maps, stakeholder maps, and smaply personas € www.smaply.com • Templates can be downloaded for print out or ﬁlled online

• Templates for customer journey maps Touchpoint • Features to analyse and present Dashboard customer journey maps €€€3 www.touchpoint- • Offers customized views of dashboard.com information for different stakeholders

*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

TYPE OF SOFTWARE COLLABORATION PHASE

SHARE LIVE TRACK CHAT/ CHAN- PRICE DESCRIPTION FORUM GES FOR USAGE* web platform web app desktop app mobile edit view/try comment Exploration Creation Reﬂection Implementation

• Platform on which customer tasks can be posted and managed • Customer task can include to gather mobile ethnographic data Contextmapp (video, audio, photo), answer €€€1 www.contextmapp.com questions (multiple question types supported), and can participate in online discussions • Data can be analysed in the backend

• Ethnographic observation system on which customer tasks can be posted and managed • Customers document the ethOS app completion of the tasks with €€€4 www.ethosapp.com video, audio, photo, or text and can participate in online discussions • Data can be analysed in the backend

• Supports customers to capture touchpoints during a service experience ExperienceFellow • Users can document individual www.experiencefellow. touchpoints via video, audio, €€ com photo, or text and evaluate them • Information can be summarized, analyzed and displayed grahically in the backend

78 Touchpoint 7-3 TOOLS AND METHODS

Software tools to design service mock-ups

TYPE OF SOFTWARE COLLABORATION PHASE

SHARE LIVE TRACK CHAT/ CHAN- PRICE DESCRIPTION FORUM GES FOR USAGE* web platform web app desktop app mobile edit view/try comment Exploration Creation Reﬂection Implementation

• Using drag&drop to create mock-ups of websites and apps axure in different styles as well as €€€5 www.axure.com personas • Different templates can be used

• Using drag&drop to create Balsamiq mock-ups of websites and apps €6 www.balsamiq.com in comic style

• Creating mock-ups for websites and apps • Layouts have to be designed InVision using other design software €€1 www.Invisionapp.com (e.g. Omnigrafﬂe or Adobe Photoshop) • Advanced collaboration functionalities

• Creating mock-ups for websites • Example webpage to get an Mockingbird impression €7 www.gomockingbird.com • Pre-designed elements can be placed by drag&drop

• Creating mock-ups of websites and apps Moqups • Pre-designed elements and €1 www.moqups.com own images can be placed by drag&drop

Pixate • Creating high ﬁdelity prototypes €2 www.pixate.com of apps

• Creating ﬁlms in comic style • Images are directly lined up like a cartoon GoAnimate • Choose a theme, background, €€8 www.goanimate.com and characters by using drag&drop, adapt them, and assign actions • Use templates or own images

• Creating ﬁlms and animated presentations in comic style PowToon • Choose animated characters, €€1 www.powtoon.com background music, templates, adapt them • Use templates

• Creating ﬁlms in whiteboard style VideoScribe • Images are drawn by an €9 www.videoscribe.co animated hand while watching the videos • Use templates or own images

Wideo • Creating animated presentations €10 www.wideo.co • Use templates or own images

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 optimal tools and methodologies for creating a storyline, a story at the University of Lapland. She is currently directing structure, and a service concept pitch. several international service design research projects. Her research interests include areas of social and arctic Using movies as a concretising tool to achieve this. They can be combined design. A moving image carries meaning and with the development of services to better

Mira Alhonsuo works as a content in a way that written reports concretise – for both a company and a Research Coordinator for simply cannot. It incorporates visual, potential new user – the beneﬁts of a service design projects at emotional and aural levels of a service new service design or concept, thereby the University of Lapland. Her research interests include experience. In this article, we present providing anticipatory knowledge. A service design methods, how a movie can be used as a service story (script) can also create and reinforce process visualisation and development tool in order to develop, strong emotional experiences. This makes public service development. test and prototype a service. it possible to create a more outstanding Heikki Tikkanen works as a Services today are developing at service experience for customers, one Designer at the University an ever-increasing pace. As a result, that takes the best advantage of multiple of Lapland. He uses video and audio material in service new means are required to represent media channels. designs for business. His these service experiences visually, to This article covers cinematic expertise area is Audiovisual share foresight knowledge on service scripting tools using case studies from Media Culture. development within a company and two companies, KONE and Pentik, to with the company’s stakeholders and to demonstrate the process of making acquire user information through social a service design movie. Tools and media and other new media channels. techniques are based on research and Moving images, sound and storytelling development done in two research are concrete elements that can be used projects funded by Tekes, the Finnish

80 Touchpoint 7-3 TOOLS AND METHODS

Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation: the movie. While editing does take time for beginners, Humanizing Service Experience (HumanSee) and Need after few practice rounds, you will become familiar with for Speed (N4S). the editing applications and learn new tricks. By using With Pentik, the service design movie was used to user-friendly applications that enable easy editing, even communicate and sharpen the company’s brand values, novices can create polished movies. demonstrate good practices that strengthen sales and to demonstrate new service concepts in action. The 1. Define your goal aim of the movie-making project was business develop- In a short film, you can only communicate one message. ment. The video was produced by the design team but What is the one and only point of your story? What is facilitated by a professional video producer. In this the main point that you want to convey? What do you case, the design management approach had the most want the viewer to do right after seeing the movie? It is value for the company. The movie-making process important to consider these questions before you begin was constructed around preliminary fieldwork, which filming and keep it simple. included interviews and workshops with the company management, and shooting the film material at a factory. 2. Define the roles The preliminary preparations were a valuable part of the What kinds of roles do you need in your movie? For process. The movie was produced in a two-day workshop. whom do you want to create empathy? Whose point of On the first day, a storyline was created and the script view do you want to share? How you can present the was completed. On the second day, the film was shot and characteristics of your role or persona in the movie? edited. During the editing process, online picture and sound databases were used to quickly locate the material 3. Plan your story needed for production. In this case, the movie-making Give the movie a simple and clear structure: a beginning, process involved a more strategic approach and aimed to middle and an end. Each of these parts serves a unique help in brand management. purpose in engaging the viewer with the service you In the case of KONE, the process was more about are portraying. Also remember to consider the ‘before’, developing a new design tool for the service design team, ‘during’ and ‘after’ phases of your service. 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 Basic structure of a short service design phones or tablets. Also, you needn’t spend weeks editing 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. service scenes. Cards can be utilised in Visualisation is one of the key elements in service design, prototyping and scripting of service. 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.

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 doesn’t need to be chair. It can also

82 Touchpoint 7-3 TOOLS AND METHODS

be, for example, a car, a dispenser, a shopping cart or an Examples of service concept videos exercise machine. SANO service concept video by Federico Zoppei, 6. Get the right equipment in order Helena Galeeva and Varvara Borisova: Before you begin, download a movie-making application https://youtu.be/UyGh7JntclE 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 F-secure doc & loc service concept video be credible. In such cases, you can choose to create the by Titta Jylkäs: https://youtu.be/2CV0ImQhNks 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, movie- making 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.

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 Jesse Grimes: The topic of the previous unpredictable outcomes. We also make a to bring customer insights and issue of Touchpoint was on the growth point never to work alone and come back empathy to the heart of all of in-house service design capabilities, new service development. with a readily-solved case. We are always and I'm aware that you've been involved part of a multidisciplinary team and in setting this up such a capability within involve everyone in customer research, your current employer. Can you share interviews and analysis. This helps to some of your experiences so far, and penetrate the service-design methods advice on those who may be going down further into the organisation so that the same path? they become useful and everyday tools for anyone wanting to take a customer- Ulla Jones: The challenges we face are centric approach. often related to the way projects are When building an in-house design- constructed. The outcome is set before a team, first make sure your company is project begins, most money is allocated truly ready. Designers will challenge your to the technical solution instead of status-quo, ask difficult questions and creating and testing the business case, challenge the ‘Hippos’ (highest-paid- and sometimes it happens that if the person’s-opinion). Is your company ready customer insight leads to an unfamiliar to lose hierarchy, take risks and test out direction, the project is repackaged into a new things at a continuously growing traditional banking or insurance case. pace? If you answered yes, then by all To fix this we try to involve ourselves means, go for it! But remember to have a as early in the project as possible so that contingency plan, so that the designers we can help to formulate the project you hire will have a room to grow and description to allow new discoveries and develop along with your company.

84 Touchpoint 7-3 PROFILES

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 am a landscape architect and consumer economist by I know it's a cliche but unfortunately there is no short training. Early on in architecture I was disillusioned cut if the leadership is not ready to take on new methods. by the profession’s general lack of interest in the users. Luckily the start-up scene has sped the things up a bit. Architecture was more about light, shadows and masses. There are small disruptive businesses mushrooming I wanted a career that was more closely connected everywhere and big companies are starting to feel to people. Consumer economics is a hybrid degree the effects of these niche-services eating away at combining business studies with sociology, that focuses their revenue. Big company executives are doing their on people’s behaviour as consumers. home work and investigating what makes start-ups so When I made the leap from architecture in 2005, I got successful. Suddenly iterative, agile and explorative a lot of questions about what sort of career I imagined methods are something to take seriously. So it is to have with these two seemingly different degrees. A definitely a good time to be selling service design. year later I did a minor in International Design Business However if the industry you’re working on is not Management (IDBM) at Aalto University and I had my under ‘attack’, the executives usually have other pressing answer. I discovered design thinking and human-centred issues to deal with than preparing for disruption. In methodology and I was sold. Since then I have applied those cases, selling customer experience and service human-centric methods in all my work and gradually design can be more difficult and I would not start educated the people around me to see the value and by proposing a big strategic re-envisioning project benefits of this approach. that doesn’t have any concrete outcome. Internal I think that a designer should have a wide perspective stakeholders need success stories and pilot cases to and an ability to look at things from multiple angles. build their understanding and trust for an approach It definitely helps if you’ve studied a few different that to them may seem new and ambiguous. disciplines and schools of thought, because you know I would advocate to include as many people from the for a fact that there is never just one truth. I am happy company side as possible in the early research stages, to see service design becoming an actual degree especially in customer interviews and visits. The most programme and more widely recognised profession, rewarding thing is when your company’s sceptical, super- however I would still advocate that people studying results-oriented sales-shark shares how he just made to become service designers would learn widely about a successful sales pitch that was completely based on business and technology and human behaviour. I think the consumer insights he has picked up while attending the richness of service design is its multidisciplinary consumer interviews. When a service design project nature and interest in human behaviour in all its delivers benefits beyond the core goal of the project and irrationality and quirks. 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.

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 are suddenly all into design; and met a few really interesting contacts service design event organised during Tarja Meristö, Laurea principal in the event and we will continue the popular and traditional Helsinki lecturer and business futurologist, discussing a possible co-operation. If Design Week and was part of its who presented a visionary concept the event could be improved, it would official programme. That shows a of how future trends and numerous be having even more time for casual late, but definite, expansion of service uncertainty factors can be built into networking.” said partner Elisa design beyond the traditional areas of various scenarios and utilised during Tiilimäki from Respondeo Ltd. product and industrial design. the service development process. The conference full-day program The breaks with sponsored Tarja Chydenius works as Senior Lecturer at Laurea University of Applied Sciences. was timely and gave interesting breakfast and lunch also offered She is the co-founder of SDN Finland and insights into creating powerful great opportunities for connecting is a member of the SDN Management Team customer experience with service with other professionals. And an representing national chapters. design. The event was composed open-to-everybody ‘SDN Blind date’ Laura Rinta-Jouppi is an enthusiast of keynote presentations, parallel reception after the programme service designer with a multidisciplinary sessions of service design cases as attracted even more people to background. A pharmacist, editor and designer, she now works as a Customer well as activating workshops. the venue. Many guests left the Service Specialist and is finalising her Among the interesting keynotes successful event with the hope of studies for her Master of Business Administration, Service Innovation and were: Teemu Äijälä from Fjord who attending a similar event in the Design at Laurea. showcased how living services coming years. are the next wave of the digital “Today, most products are very transformation; the British keynote, similar, so service is the way of author and academic Kamil standing out and [of gaining] Michlewski who provided insights competitiveness. Service design about design attitude and why all is the methodology to guarantee prominent and successful companies a superior customer experience. I

86 Touchpoint 7-3 INSIDE SDN

Service Design National Conference in Taiwan: ‘Service Design for Social Impact in Asia’

The SDN Taiwan Chapter hosted their very ﬁrst conference about the social design movement in on 23 October 2015 in Taipei City. Over 160 people from Taiwan and the WDC 2016 in Taipei; and Xue Yin shared a point of view the business, academia, agency and social enterprise about the service design trend in ﬁelds gathered to discuss the meaning of service design. China. A panel discussion, moderated The conference included not only Taiwan's practitioners by Diane Shen, followed to discuss challenges and opportunities for but also Asia's service design community. service design in Asia. SDN Taiwan would like to thank Eighteen contributors from the impaired people navigate and create everyone who joined this conference. United States, Japan, China and a service experience in the dark. We wish to see everyone next year Taiwan delivered two keynote During the morning session, and create more connections and addresses, 11 presentations and Owen Lee talked about the UDN sharing opportunities between two workshops. Presenters shared Vision project, which is shifting service design practitioners in Asia. their works, experiences and ideas media toward a new role regarding to demonstrate how they are using Taiwan's public issues; Andrew Yu Arthur Yeh is the chapter representative of SDN Taiwan and director at Service service design to create social impact. presented the social enterprise 1kg. Science Society of Taiwan, facilitating To name a few, Jamin Hegeman org, which focuses on education in interdisciplinary teams to work better on from Adaptive Path, who also China's rural areas; and Dr. Atsushi service innovation and service design. He focuses on creating value in co-creation represented the SDN management Hasegawa and Taro Akabane shared service systems in social and business team, discussed how to bridge the their project on elderly nursing care environments. He also runs the training gap between designers and non- with Caiso in Japan. In the afternoon workshop for both public and private organisations to spread the impact of designers. Prof. Hsien-Hui Tang session, Han Wu from the World service design. discussed a project to help visually Design Capital 2016 gave a keynote

Touchpoint 7-3 87 SECOND BUSINESS MEET-UP BASE YOUR IN HELSINKI A group of approximately 30 people from different companies gathered CUSTOMER at Nordea’s premises in the centre of Helsinki on 9 November 2015 to share experiences on internal JOURNEY service design work. They heard two interesting opening speeches on how service design has helped improve both the service processes ON F***ING and customer experiences in private banking (Pontus Slotte, partner) and real estate and housing SKV (Timo RESEARCH! Kaisla, CEO). After the opening speeches, participants were split up into groups and decided, independently, on a service design-related subject MAKE IT SUPER-EASY they would like to elaborate. FOR CUSTOMERS TO RECORD THEIR REAL EXPERIENCES Groups created ideas on ‘internal marketing’: how to convince upper management on the benefits of Use ExperienceFellow for diary studies based on mobile ethnography. ExperienceFellow service design, and how to engage combines a free mobile app for customers and colleagues that are not yet familiar a web-based research so ware. with service design. Many of All uploaded data is automatically visualized as the ideas were ready to be taken customer journey maps and can be filtered into practice immediately, which and analysed with di erent tools. Export high- delighted the co-creators. quality journey maps for workshops and gain a better understanding of customer experience. It was an energising evening With ExperienceFellow you can research customer hosted by Concept Management experience along the entire journey in real-time – Team Leader, first vice president across all online and o line channels. Taina Mäkijärvi and Senior Concept Manager Riitta Vainikka from Nordea. The next BMU will be held DISCOUNT VOUCHER in the beginning of 2016 and hosted by Digia Plc. The BMU events are a confidential sharing platform Available on the 100 EURO for company representatives and code touchpoint internal service designers only. Android app on valid 31 Dec 2016 Article written by Jaana Komulainen.

START YOUR RESEARCH 88 Touchpoint 7-3 www.experiencefellow.com How can I read Touchpoint?

2016 | 7 3

Selling Service Design

Insider

creating value for the quality of life. service design global conference 2014

SDN teamed up with its Nordic chapters to host this year’s global The conference oered great conference in Stockholm, Sweden. speeches and talks. Highlights Over 600 leaders and practitioners included Mark Levy from Airbnb from around the world joined us to talking about employee engagement, explore the theme Creating Value for Fred Leichter from Fidelity Quality of Life. Investments, Kigge Hvid on how the “This was a big collaborative design of services can improve life for eort. I’m very thankful to people, Nathan Shedro on defining everybody that participated. It felt value, Shenyen, a Buddhist monk, extremely inspiring to be amongst talking about quality and time, Wim this great crowd and I believe we Rampen from Delta Lloyd sharing have a huge opportunity to improve deep personal insights and many life around the world with service more. Denis Weil held the closing design,” said conference chair Stefan talk reflecting back on the two-day Moritz from Veryday. event and sharing his perspective Enthusiasm for the event was on how service design can reach the great from the start, with tickets next level. selling out two weeks prior to the Aside from experiential opening of the conference. And many highlights like healthy food, artisanal participants said their expectations espresso, live sketching and yoga, an have been exceeded. “We put a lot of ambulance drove straight into the 58EASY TO BUY – NOT EASY by Satu thought into the overall experience, venue to introduce the patient expe- by Paula Giles ensuring time and space to share, rience workshop. Some of the other encourage networking and participa- MAKING A SERVICE DESIGN MOVIE popular hands-on workshops focused 80 tion,” added conference producer on empathy, defining the value of 32 THE PATH TO VALUE VIA SERVICE DESIGN Magnus Bergmark from Doberman. service design, waiting experiences by Daniel Ewerman, Anders Landström Prior to the conference, three and employee engagement. TO SELL introduction seminars oered the Overall the conference Miettinen, Mira Alhonsuo and Heikki Tikkanen 18 possibility to get familiar with the atmosphere was excellent; basics, get answers from experts on participants enjoyed a global spirit questions and the value of service and vibrant sharing and networking design. SDN also hosted its mem- atmosphere. You’re invited to bers’ day with activities linked the check out and follow the discussion newly-launched Special Interest and reflections at the conference Groups (SIGs) focused on the areas website, as well as find videos of Printed copies of healthcare,Online finance, public service presentations. access and service design implementation. www.service-design-network.org

8 touchpoint 6-3

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