Dear Service Design agencies: focus on business value outcomes, not the process.
Note: This story was published while I was still a director of CX in international telecom organisation and it reflects the point of view how a director with business responsibility saw value proposition of most service design agencies present on the market. I decided to keep this public as a reminder to all what matters to clients.
In June 2016 twenty remarkable UK design and service design professionals gathered to discuss about service design and it’s future. It is “all common sense” all agreed. To succeed in selling, promoting internally or succeeding in implementing, you need a blend of skills: from empathy over diplomacy to authority, from psychology to hard business knowledge. And all backed up with stubborn resilience not to burn out on the way. But how come that it is just “common sense”? Shouldn’t it be something more, something more spectacular?
Well, let’s examine…
The business managers of large organisations (like myself) are responsible for resolving business challenges. We are using various approaches and frameworks to structure the challenge, applying set of tools to resolve it and achieving business value at the end. Among these tools, service design is just one of them. And when using service design to resolve issues, we are also building the bridge between the detected business challenge and the business outcome of the design process. To be more specific: quantifying and “selling” the value delivered. Quite a lot of ground to cover, especially if you add on top internal politics and budget hustle needed to make work it out.
I am also a person that (potentially) buys service design work. Some challenges I can resolve with my fantastic team, but some are way too complex or require special skills that are not internally there (yet). Being a service design enthusiast, I understand and believe in the design process and it’s value. For me it is relatively easy to make the connection between design discussions I am having with agencies, and business impact their work will bring. But I am a minority. You will not find many top level managers or senior executives to appreciate this abstract level of discussion. Service design enthusiasts are usually positioned on mid and lower levels within the organisations. So to penetrate further in the business (and win more work) it is absolutely a must to have business value discussion capabilities: either to help low/mid managers to gain internal support and secure budget, either to help top management understand the benefits design would bring.
But who can today bring a business value discussion within the agency? Usually only partners and directors have these capabilities: they were addressing business challenges as they were building and expanding their business. But the problem is that this is relatively small group of people, they are not operational on client projects, and they are very expensive to use for business analysis. So we (the buyers) are on our own to “translate” the project deliverable into business value.
Currently this gap is starting to be filled by mainstream business consultancies. They combine strong business knowledge and they are buying service design companies (or building internal capabilities). Strong relationships with C-level executives will be leveraged to gain their traction in engagements related to design and service. If the proposition of service design agencies remains on the level of the tool (application of methodologies to design service), potentially the future can bring commoditisation and consolidation on the market as margins will eventually fall.
In order to change the course, reorganization of set up for growth is needed.
First, designer’s career development path has to converge with business understanding (the same way partners and directors were forced to learn that). Having highly specialized designer without business orientation, costs a lot of money and requires additional overhead costs of managers to derive brilliant designs to actual business value. It also frustrates designers because of limited growth possibilities within the firm (getting even better will not directly bring higher margins, unless new value is found).
Internal organisation has to align operations to business value. Set up in a way that your whole team is on the market looking for opportunities how to bring more value to clients. Having people waiting for projects to be sold (and scope to be agreed) will not grow them professionally. Mainstream consulting firms are pushing this proactive model to drive growth, knowledge and adaptation to constant market needs change.
To engage in business outcome discussions knowledge of the client’s business is needed, beyond specifics of touch points and general industry trends. Understand how business work (externally and internally). If you think this change is too hard to do with your current team, then go out and “hunt down” empathetic ex consulting professionals to help you gain that business value. .
And why this is important? Because connecting great design with business value does look like common sense. And this common sense is crucial to persuade non service design enthusiasts about the value of service design. Trust is always greater when talking about outcomes and business impact than the process.
More info on humanact team is available on http://www.humanact.design
