Services Layer in full stack service design
A service is something that helps someone do something they need to do — be that to pay tax, book a holiday or buy a house. Services are designed (intentionally or otherwise) to deliver an intended outcome as defined by the organisation providing it.
When someone is using a service, we might refer to them as ‘a user’, and the experience they have as the ‘user experience’. We might replace ‘users’ with other more specific words like ‘patients’ ‘visitors’ or ‘residents’ that reflect the relationship that our user has to our particular service.
When we talk about someone using a service, we can also mean people who are delivering that service, because that person often needs to use parts of your service, even if they are doing so to provide a service to someone else
Services are made of the things that our users see and experience themselves — their user experience and the things they don’t see — the business processes that we use to run those services.
The things a user sees and experiences are made of lots of small interactions with your service. This user experience is designed to orchestrate someone to do the thing they set out to achieve, like depositing money, applying for a driving license, managing or improving their health. These interactions might be made of letters, text messages, phone calls or emails — what unites them is the overall effect that they have on what a user perceives and feels, or what they ‘experience’.
Some of these things are in direct control of your organisation because you will design and deliver those things yourself (like, for example, the booking and check-in experience of your hotel), but other parts of your user’s experience will be outside of your control (like the fact that your user was late to check in because there was a lot of traffic on the road).
How good your user’s experience is will be dictated by how well the different parts of their experience are designed to work together, and how well they are able to use these things to achieve the outcome they set out to do, despite the surrounding circumstances.
How does the user experience affect the service?
In markets where there are competitive options, a poorly designed user experience may put users off choosing your service, even if your service is the same as other providers.
Poorly designed user experiences where users need further support to understand how to use your service can lead to an increase in backend servicing of the user and in turn, greater cost of delivery.
If the user experience of the service is not designed to be accessible, many users will be unable to interact with your service and get the desired outcome they’re seeking by using it.
The following questions can be used when you’re diagnosing problems with services, you’re making changes to them, or you’re embarking on a completely new design.
Questions we can ask as leaders
- What are the outcomes we want our services to deliver (policy, user needs, organisational)?
- Do we know who our users are?
- Whose needs do we want to meet?
- What are our services?
- Do we know what good looks like for users?
- Are we delivering the right services, do they meet user needs?
- Do we need to stop or radically redesign any of the services we are delivering?
Questions we can can ask if we work with this specific component
- Have we designed all of the elements of the user’s experience to work, regardless of the circumstances outside of our control?
- Is the service inclusive and accessible to everyone that will use it, including all touch points of the service?
- Does our branding align and communicate what our service offering does in a way users need it to?
- Is the connection between services that sit out of this domain easy for users to navigate?
- Have we resourced our service appropriately for the demand?
- Is there a service manual on how to deliver the service available and clear?
- Do we know where the service could fail and have a designed pathway to recover from this?
- Can users feedback purposefully on their service experience?
- Do we have access to feedback and are we using it appropriately to improve our service?
- Is there a pattern in the questions we are being asked by users for further information or common complaints, and what can we learn from this?
Information we need to understand before we start designing
- What is stopping the user experience from working for people?
- Do we have data on how our service is performing?
- What does the end-to-end user experience feel and look like?
- Are we meeting user needs, do we know what they are?
- Do our users understand what our services do?
- What are the steps needed to help a user complete a task?
- What information do we need from them to complete a task?
- What are the touch points needed to orchestrate helping someone to reach the intended outcome?
- What are the design principles that ensure the service is consistent?
Business processes are a series of actions we take as an organisation that enable services to take place
Some processes are explicit in the user experience, involving a combination of interactions between staff and users, for example, checking someone into a hotel. These are commonly known as the ‘front stage’ processes.
Others are automated or invisible to users, like a background check on your finances if you’re applying for a mortgage or health and safety processes to ensure what is being delivered meets safety standards. These are commonly known as ‘backstage’ processes.
Other business processes are not directly related to powering the user experience but facilitate the organisation or system to work collectively in order to facilitate all of its services, for example — internal payroll, or deliveries of goods.
Business processes usually have artefacts that support staff to understand how to deliver services. These things might take the shape of manuals, online learning resources, process diagrams and in-person training sessions. Some of these even become learned and imbibed by staff over time.
When business processes are not designed well, they can be expensive to provide, stop users from getting the support they need, or force them to become experts in negotiating your complex processes. Many poorly designed business processes end up being hacked by staff to deliver work more efficiently which can end up supporting users better but also potentially putting them, or staff, at risk.
Processes will usually incorporate elements of compliance, or health and safety to ensure staff and users are kept free from harm, for example, a process might be put in place to keep users data safe and meet data protection regulations. These are usually reviewed and audited by organisations or sometimes externally accredited by ISO standards. Understanding these standards will help teams know what needs to be designed into the processes that power services.
How do business processes affect the service?
Business processes can increase or decrease the time it takes for your user to do the thing they need to do
Business processes can be designed with varying degrees of flexibility, either enabling or disabling staff from performing certain activities that help your user to achieve their goal
When exposed enough to users, complex business processes can force people to become experts of complicated systems and language.
Poor business processes can lead staff to ‘hack’ or creating workarounds that make the service easier to deliver for staff, but that could potentially put users at risk
Questions we can ask as leaders
- Can our staff effectively deliver service outcomes and meet user needs?
- Does our propensity for managing operational risk stop our staff from delivering the right service for our users?
- Are we asking humans to do the work of machines and if so, can we utilise these skills for more purposeful work?
- Do we have clear resources that enable our staff to deliver a consistent user experience that meets outcomes?
Questions we can can ask if we work with this specific component
- Are the business processes we have in place inclusive and accessible for staff to deliver? Or are our staff forced to create unofficial workarounds to help our users?
- Do our business processes have review processes in place?
- Is there a continuous improvement approach implemented for making changes to our processes? If so, how engaged are front line staff in this?
- What is the cost of delivering the user experience we want to deliver and can it be reduced or delivered more efficiently?
- Is there any duplication in our business processes, and can we reduce this?
Information we need to understand before we start designing
- How do restrictions in our background business processes affect the user experience?
- What processes go outside of the organisation and are reliant on partners/others in the system?
- What organisational processes and policies sit behind the business processes that support the user experience?
- What safety or other standards must the service adhere to and how does this affect our business processes?
- If business processes are visible to users, are our user’s forced to learn how these work in order to use our service?
