Service design, as a concept, has not been top of mind in the U.S. over the past decade. It has been discussed, especially in academic and business strategy circles, and has enjoyed adoption in Europe. Now it is beginning to surface in the U.S.
Why now?
Why not.
From the late '90s until "the crash", e-commerce promised to change the fundamental understanding of how businesses worked and how value would be measured. All eyes were focused on the new breed of companies; the ones formed and IPOed, at incredible stock prices, within a few years - or less. Traditional brick-and-mortar business were driven to action by boards who demanded that an Internet strategy be developed to try and capture the momentum stolen by their virtual counterparts.
Key to taking advantage of this opportunity were a new breed of consulting firms. Much of the responsibility for creating business value was placed on a new set of roles - functional analysts, anthropologists, design analysts, information architects, interaction designers, human factors designers...roles usually found in software development, that few had ever heard of before. With the dotcom crash, many of these people lost their jobs. The fortunate ones navigated the ensuing consolidation of the industry, and landed in the surviving Internet businesses.
While this was happening, the service sector of the U.S. economy was rapidly growing. The consumer goods producers were looking to maintain their footing in a shifting economy and began to rely on consultants to help drive innovation through the application of design thinking processes. The goal was to put the consumer (the user) at the center of the design process, so that the resulting product experience was valuable and delightful.
As the traditional consumer goods producers moved online for marketing, commerce, and building customer relationships, the online businesses began to up the ante on the quality of service they offered.
On all fronts, the experience customers had - across all range of touchpoints, along the entire lifecycle - became crucial to business success.
Hence the rise of service design.
Useful definitions for service design can be found online. The following are from servicedesign.org.
Design for experiences that reach people through many different touch-points, and that happen over time.
(noun)
1) "Set of instructions (specifications, drawings and schedules, etc) necessary to construct an artifact or service."
2) "Artifact or service itself."
(verb)
"Generation of information by which a required service or product can become a reality." (British Standard for Service Design: BS 7000 -3, BS 7000 -10, BS EN ISO 9000)
Service design can be both tangible and intangible. It can involve artifacts and other things including communication, environment and behaviors. Whichever form it takes it must be consistent, easy to use and have strategic alliance.
As more and more touch-points are conducted digitally, and as the distinction between product and service is blurring, the importance of service design to business success continues to grow. It is becoming critical to the process of user-centric service design to bring the design of the service upstream into a company's strategic planning to ensure alignment with the mission and core strengths of the organization.
Service design starts by identifying opportunities based on a strong understanding of how people see their world and really live their lives. This involves cross-discipline teams going out into the world and observing what is really going on and understanding how the motivations and needs of target audience relate to how they live their daily lives and see their world.
It continues by building consensus among the key business stakeholders, whose buy-in is crucial to development and delivery of service value, by using the insights from the research about people's unmet needs and aligning them with the businesses core strengths to identify the opportunities, goals and requirements of the service experience.
The experience is then defined, detailed, and designed for all of the individual touch-points through which the service is delivered. Service blueprints are used to show the interaction with customers both from the
customer point of view, as well as all the internal operations, processes, systems, and partner relationship needed to support the intended experience.
Once a touch-point is launched into a market, the job of a service design team is not done. It is just as crucial that the team be able to evaluate how customers experience the service and making sure that from entry to closure, the service is delivered efficiently and effectively.
To a large extent, many companies are working with consultants and agencies who can help them with service design. However most are involved in tactical activities that happen downstream, usually led by product and/or marketing managers. Service design needs to be recognized as a strategic tool at the highest level of the business.
Today, many businesses are coming to the realization that their customers own their brand. If they aren't able to create meaningful experiences that deliver value for customers in a way that they can easily access, they won't have an effective brand, nor an effective business.
The smart business leaders are already realizing the role that service design can play in developing and maintaining a competitive advantage.
