Service Design: Beyond Customer Journey Mapping

Editor's Notes

• #3: Welcome everyone, especially to those of you that have joined from countries other than the US. I believe we have attendees from as far as Russia and New Zealand.
• #4: It is always good to put a face to the name, so there I am – although I do believe I have a few more gray hairs than when that photo was taken. My name is Shailesh Manga and I am one of the Directors of User Centric. As you have probably figured out from my accent, I am not originally from the US. I grew up in New Zealand (yes, famous for Lord of the Rings) but am now based in the US. While in New Zealand I helped run a UX consultancy called Optimal Usability and I am also an owner of Optimal Workshop who make UX tools.Coming to the US I help run User Centric and from a project standpoint I am helping drive the development and execution of Service Design. Given that we have a number of international attendees I thought I would spend a minute to provide some context on User Centric. We are the largest UX consultancy in the US and we conduct both research and design. Although we are based in Chicago, we do work all over the US and about one third of our work is global.
• #5: More specifically, over the last 12 years we have evolved from a Usability consultancy to a User Experience consultancy and brought in design as a discipline as it was demanded by our clients. The expertise we have in research and design led us naturally to extending the very same skills into the area of Service Design.The key to what we do is having smart people that get business and research problems and know how to apply the above toolkit to situations.
• #6: It is great having you attend this webinar which as some of you will know is part of a series of free webinars that User Centric is doing this year. Registering for these will allow you to attend and also watch these sessions on demand at a later time.Alright – lets get into it!
• #7: Often people start a presentation by defining what they are going to talk about, I am going to start by saying what I am not going to talk about. There is often so much debate around the term Service Design itself, whether it is a new or old discipline or exactly how it should be done. In researching for this topic, one of the books I was reading said that if you asked 10 people for a definition of Service Design you would get 11 different answers. I still believe it is a field that is evolving so rather than debate semantics (which does have its time and place) I would like to draw your attention to focus on some key thoughts and ideas. My hope would be that you can take these and shape and experiment with them in your own organizations.Rather than talk through the structure which you can read yourself, the reason why we are talking about Service Design the way we are is that we have seen examples where the idea of Service design is adopted but very quickly turns into large projects that can’t be fully executed and don’t always provide a return to the business.This approach is about dealing with some of the realities faced when executing Service Design and also ensuring that it is worth doing commercially. So you will hear about a framework that we have at User Centric and we will build up a high level example as we go.
• #8: Just to give me some idea of the audience, I am going to throw a few questions at you:Would you consider yourself primarily a Service Design: Evangelist, Practitioner, Believer, Skeptic or What is Service?How many service design projects have you done? None, 1, 2-4, 5+Who is currently working on a Service Design project?Do you know where New Zealand is? Yes / No
• #9: We hear a lot about balance in our lives, balanced diet, work/life balance and in the case of service design we will also be talking about balance. In researching this topic there was a lot of material about designing services or experiences that we believe are out of balance because they focus primarily on making an amazing customer experience. The reality we have seen and experienced is that we work in companies that have their own goals and also many constraints. For Service Design to be effective we need to balance the experience we provide to customers with the realities of the organizations we work in.Some common constraints are: money (isn’t it always), resources, organizational structure, unskilled people, no real process, consultants providing great ideas that can’t be executed.So to paint a better picture of the situation we typically see in organizations we need to fly to the other side of the world….
• #10: Here is a picture of the back of the house with its horrible green trim and a ramp for when I get older. Behind the photographer it just gets worse!Knowing that we wouldn’t live in this home forever, and given that we were early on in our careers (= little money) we had to be wise about where we invested our money. We wanted to invest money in things that would make our living experience better but also know that it would increase our home value for when we sold it.
• #11: So you can imagine the discussions that happened:Initially we discussed what style of home we wanted – what kind of home aligned with who we were. Some of the aspects we wanted in our home experience were:Being able to entertain peopleBe able to relax outsideKids to spend lots of time playing outside rather than in front of the TVBe a place we wanted to hang out With this in mind we could start having discussions on where we should invest our money.Janine’s first idea was a good one: I would love a bathroom with this and that and it is totally worth it because it really adds value to a home – I could argue with that, it made senseMy first idea died a horrible death: I think a home theatre room would rock…. – very niche and was more likely to put people off the homeInsulation in the roof cavity and under the floors was another one that made sense. Kept the house cool in summer and warm in winter and reduced our electricity costs significantly – hopefully you get the ideaWe wanted to create an awesome home for our family but the reality was that we had limited money and had to do things over a number of years – we had to decide what would make the biggest impact to our home and be the best investment.
• #12: So back to the back of our house and our crappy deck…..we turned it into this.
• #13: A nice large deck (patio) with outdoor couches and a grill. As well as helping make my point this lets me show off my building skills – the deck looks pretty good doesn’t it!
• #14: So, just as my wife and I were balancing the family experience with the money we had available and the resale value of our home.In a business, we want to create a great experience for customers but we have limited budgets/resources and as a business we want to be investing in things that make a return.
• #15: So instead of bathroom, insulation, patio etc – in a business we may be looking at online, call center etc and of course the items we are looking at could be more granular than what I have described here.Since I can’t see you all and I don’t know whether you are nodding or shaking your heads I will throw in a questions here:Does the analogy make sense: Yes/NoMy wife and I could sit down in the evening with some wine, look at our home as a whole and craft a plan. It isn’t quite as easy in a business, there are complex structure, more people and generally you don’t get to have wine. To tackle this let’s try and break the problem down by defining what the key challenges are:
• #16: Useful to have a framework as it helps us to think through situations in a logical and structured way and having a physics background, I like logical and structured.
• #17: One of the big challenges I have seen is:Siloed organizations, different parts of the organization can operate quite independently, have their own staff, budget and managers. What is done can be done in complete isolation from other parts of the business. That is quite a disconnect with how customers interact with a business where many experiences are multi-channel.The second point is a key one for this presentation, this point deals with the reality of constraints. There are always things that you can improve in an experience, but not all changes are equal. How do you figure out what really matters to customers and makes a difference to the organization.There are other challenges but these are big ones and they will be the focus for today’s session.
• #18: So for the framework, you have an aerial view of three interlocking pillars. The interlocking part is important because the pillars go hand in hand. The output of one becomes the input to the next.We have mapped the key challenges against the framework to show how this approach addresses these key challenges.The first pillar I am sure you are all familiar with – it is the second two which are often not part of a Service Design approach that means you can easily end up with large unwieldy projects and very little output. Typical Service Design approaches present lots of opportunities but you can’t do them all – we believe that you don’t need to do them all. The method we will talk about will help identify what matters most and where you should put your effort.I will go into each of these pillars in more detail and as I go we will build up an example. The example is loosely based on a project focusing on a tablet experience. I am deliberately keeping this high level and low-fi because I want you to get the concept and not focus on the details as you won’t have the context.
• #19: Who has constructed a customer journey map? Yes/NoMost people are familiar and comfortable with Customer Journey Mapping. If you research Service Design, you will get to see many forms that communicate at different levels of granularity. The phrase we apply to Mapping is that it allows us to explore holistically but act locally – this is important when working with a siloed organization.For our particular challenge where you have Multi-channel experiences and siloed organizations we have some goals in mind when structuring the map
• #20: Often in organizations I have been surprised at how little is know about how interactions with customers occurs. Where there is a view, it is more process oriented from the organizations perspective or too fragmented to get any real insight. Mapping is a great way to get the lay of the land, see what is really going on and understand the interplay between the customer and different parts of the organization – it provides great context.Obviously you get the multi-channel view but I also like the last point here. It helps capture research in a useful and meaningful way. Often you have multiple research activities and rather than looking through lots of data this allows some level of synthesis.So let’s quickly see how you might construct a map
• #21: Maps can talk all sorts of different shapes and forms, they are not one size fits all – key thing is know your audience and what you are trying to communicate to them. This will affect the structure, boundaries and granularity of your map.As an example we could look at the experience a customer has with a tablet from pre-purchase through to on-going usage.Along the x-axis we would put down the key stages that we see as the structure of the experience. As well as stages, this axis often can have a time component to it.This may change over time as you discover more about your customers, you may add stages, remove stages or get more granular. With this in mind, don’ be afraid to start with a draft based on what you think it is and then change it. As I have done with this example, you may want the fidelity of the map to reflect your level of confidence in what is being presented – sketch for guess, full detail and fidelity for solidly researched.
• #22: The y-axis should focus on your organization and possibly outside influencers. The group that is related to your organization should reflect the structure of your organization in some way. This is important because later when you go to communicate to different parts of the organization about what is happening, and what needs to happen, they are interested in what it means for them so seeing their own areas is critical. Remember that one of the challenges we had was to be able to work with the silos that exist in organizations.So along this axis you would have online, you may divide it into tablet, mobile, call center, store etc. At the bottom you may also wish to put secondary customer components such as needs, emotions etcWhat are you trying to communicate, how do you paint a strong picture for your audience
• #23: The X and Y axes bring clarity to the terrain you’re trying to understand.When you map out the journey of a customer, it can allow you to explore the experience holistically and as you see issues that you want resolve. I could go into a lot of detail here but I wanted to focus on the next two pillars as these are the harder parts.
• #24: Measurement is such an important piece of the puzzle. Rather than being opinion based, it starts adding strength to what you are trying to do. It helps you to be objective. Our business is all about measuring and changing and that is precisely what we are applying to the service design discipline.
• #25: More specifically, with this approach you get to measure the experience of each component which in turn contributes to the overall experience. One way this can be done is through surveys. I went through something like this for a restaurant that my family ate at a week ago. Being a researcher I felt I should respond to their request for feedback – I assure you the free meal on offer had nothing to do with it!They sent me a survey and although I would change a few things in the survey, they broke down the whole dining experience into its components and assessed my satisfaction for each component. The design of the survey was like reliving the experience and assessing it. Looking at the aggregate data they could then start seeing where there were weaknesses in the experience or alternatively opportunities.As well as measuring each component and identifying weaknesses, this creates a baseline of measurement. So when you make changes to the experience you are in a position to show the impact you made. As Service Design is a discipline you integrate over time, being able to communicate positive changes to the rest of the organization with data is an important factor.
• #26: So you might start a draft customer journey map with your understanding of the experience and then change it as you get more data. Measures may be surveys with some interviews or observational research to begin with. This should be enough to ensure you get some output without investing too much time or effort.By overlaying any existing data you are collecting and the measures you have taken, you should have enough to understand where some of the problem areas might be. Some of the problem areas may be really obvious and others may be a surprise. At this point you don’t want to go overboard with data collection – you want just enough to get some pointers to the problem areas.What we don’t know with this picture is why problems are occurring – we only know where they are occurring. This is where we need to deep dive into these problem areas.
• #27: Deep diving is all about understanding the why.
• #28: Start with our understanding of the journeyOverlay existing dataConduct a survey or other method allowing collection of data at a high level and in an efficient manner to identify problematic areas
• #29: So far in mapping and measuring we have had pretty solid approaches that are not very subjective – prioritization though is different. One of the challenges we talked about at the beginning of the webinar was determining which parts of the experience to focus efforts to get the best ROI.One of the questions that I hope you are asking at this stage is that ROI can be both tangible and intangible. For example, we could talk about tangible ROI being increase in revenue, conversion or reduction in cost. It could also be less tangible ROI such as loyalty, brand awareness. In this section we will be focusing on the tangible items but there is a place for the less tangible items.
• #30: So as I just mentioned, prioritization is important because it shows us where to focus our limited resources. Rather than making the perfect experience, this approach proposes that we prioritize the effort on parts of the experience that drive tangible business outcomes. In order to do this, we need to introduce cost of making changes and also the benefit that we would expect to gain. As you can imagine both of these involve some level of guessing – we will call it predicting to sound more scientific.Overall, we want to make sure that ROI is a key part in deciding where to improve the experience.
• #31: So let’s go back to our example where we have identified some possible focus areas. The setup process seems to be causing the most difficulty but it has opportunity for improvement in three different channels. Online and the Call center see to be the worst. Remember that there was also a step to deep dive into each of these areas and understand the why – what is going on here that is causing problems. Going through the process of understanding why gives us insight into what we might change to remedy the situation.With this information on hand, we can start determining potential ROI to help us decide how to priorotize.
• #32: Here is a simplified view of what you can do. For each of the identified focus areas, we can take our baseline measures of which satisfaction may be one, based on our understanding of what needs to be done we can predict the impact on that measure if we make those changes and also associate the cost involved. With the right level of granularity, this will allow you to prioritize which are you should focus on.This step is key in optimizing the experience in a way that impacts real business outcomes. AS you can see, it is not about creating the perfect experience nor is it about touching everything that could be improved, it is all about focusing your efforts on what really matters.From a commercial standpoint, you also stand to gain better support from C-level people when they know that what you are doing impacts the business in a positive and measurable way.
• #33: Here is another way you could present the information in the table. The axis allow you to map the investment from the business and the impact it could have on something such as profit. The size of the dots would reflect the improvement in experience. You can visualize this in many different ways so think about the audience and what it is that you want to communicate.
• #34: So lets recap some of the key points that I want you to take away from today’s session.
• #35: For most situations, we have existing experiences, and turning them into perfect experiences is just not realistic. We need to optimize the experience by balancing the benefit to the business with the benefit to the customer.
• #36: We talked about two key challenges for Service Design – multichannel experiences in siloed organizations and where to focus limited resources.We presented you with a framework that maps to these problems and allows you to approach Service Design with a balanced and pragmatic approach.
• #37: Finally, the process allows you to conduct activities in a prioritized way that will create a better world for your customers and make your managers smile a little more.