When it comes to creating the best possible experience for your customers or clients, it’s important to look at the interaction between an organization and its users. You’ve thought about your final product, but have you considered all the steps a consumer will take to get there?
Service design
There are many roads to Rome
Naturally, the products and services offered to us on a daily basis never exist in a vacuum. There are lots of reasons a consumer can have or issues they might run into when trying to find a specific product. Think of trying to find sneakers with just the right fit for you online, wanting to visit a museum but you don’t know where to start, or gifting a unique set of beers to your father-in-law for his birthday. The road to get to a product is vastly different from person to person and the steps we take in order to get to a final product are important factors in optimizing the experience. Service design looks at all the variables in the process and weighs in on how to make sure it all makes sense.
Taking the right steps to get there
We do this by following a few important steps. First, we align with the needs of the organization and make sure everybody is on the same page when it comes to the goals we are setting. Through creative workshops (remote, on location, or in The Valley) and alignment sessions, we make sure the service experience fits the organization. What core strengths do we lean on? Which new skills does the organization need to be future proof? Next, we research the needs of the users and which steps lead them to your organization using methods like context mapping, Service Blueprints and interviews. We ideate on what the best solutions are, making sure all your touch points play well off one another in the journey and define what the common thread is through the service. This usually comes with lots of variations in order to make sure any hesitation or doubt is addressed. Finally, we build prototypes which can be tested and either approved or tweaked where necessary.
Streamlining the process
By treating service design as a structured approach to utilize design tools and methods across the board, we make sure that the best possible design choice is made for every step of the customer journey. However, service design doesn’t only benefit the customer. Think of it as looking at the whole structure of an organization, and implementing design tools that facilitate all your processes. This is great for the consumer, but also for your staff and other stakeholders.