Generic service development or brand-driven service design?
Customer encounters in different channels are among the most significant factors affecting a company’s reputation and brand. Despite this, too many service design projects are executed in isolation without the guiding impact of the chosen brand strategy. Why is this and what could be achieved by doing things differently?
In a previous blog post (in Finnish), our service designers highlighted the five most common pitfalls that a service design project can easily fall into. On top of this, we look at one major stumbling block: in the rush to ensure customer orientation, companies all too easily fall into the trap of generic service development, forgetting the things that are most relevant from the perspective of their own brands. This sixth pitfall is essential in terms of developing a service concept to create differentiation and long-term competitive advantage.
Customer orientation vs. customer and brand orientation
Every service organisation that wants to be taken seriously has already set itself the goal of reinforcing its customer focus. When the customer is at the heart of all development work, there is a belief that the service offering and experience will be better than before. To some extent, this is also successful. However, the consequence is often a generic, functional solution that lacks originality and memorability. At best, such a solution can only generate competitive advantage over the short term and can be easily replicated by competitors.
When the focus also includes the company’s own brand in addition to its customers, the perspective changes. For example, we are now thinking about how we could adapt the things we do in order to provide a better customer experience, which of these things are most important in terms of boosting the desired reputation, and what we could do to realise this in an original way. This leads to the creation of new services and operating models that also systematically reinforce the desired impression of the company — its brand.
In most cases, brand-driven solutions are also difficult to replicate because they require a distinctive set of values, culture and operating models in order to succeed.
Let’s look at a simple example: when we study the areas in which hotels could improve their customer experience, improvements to factors such as digital services, the reception experience, room comfort or breakfast may come to light. If development work is carried out purely from the perspective of customer requirements, it is easy to create solutions that are functionally better but not sufficiently differentiated in terms of the experience. Things are done better than before but they follow the same formula as everyone else.
When the brand is also taken into consideration, you can create original, distinctive service experiences like breakfast concept in Hobo Hotel Stockholm.
The aim should be to offer the best possible customer experience in the strategically selected position that differentiates us on the market.
A shining example of this thinking is the Amazon Go pilot store that was opened in Seattle. Retailers all around the world have striven to improve their customer experience with the help of digitalisation and they have often come upon the same solution: self-service checkouts. At the core of Amazon’s brand is a desire to offer a superlative customer experience, and that is why their approach is completely different. When the customer enters the store, why should he take a trolley, fill it with products, scan them himself one by one at the checkout, pack them into bags and take the trolley back? What if it were possible to walk into the store, take products off the shelves and pack them straight into bags and walk back out? This is how the “Just Walk Out Shopping” category was created, an entirely new approach that differs from the way competitors work.
Strongly brand-driven service design is also commonplace in the Nordics. Here are three recent examples that we at Kuudes have been involved in building:
1. A new meeting place for citizens
In recent years, we have been given several assignments that have aimed to build “a type of meeting place for citizens in the middle ground between work and home”. Naturally, the background to this is the desire and need to offer customers a meaningful reason to come to the site when purchasing and service transactions are increasingly taking place online.
Physical spaces are by no means losing their importance, but their role has already changed and it will continue changing substantially.
The aim of the University of Helsinki’s new Think Corner was to create a meeting place for citizens. However, it was clear from the outset that the university’s brand would be at the heart of development work in addition to the needs and wishes of different customer groups. The aim was to create an entity where top-level science and people with widely differing relationships with science, whether young or old, could meet up in the living room of one of the best universities in the world. “It makes me think, it makes me talk, it makes me tick” — The Think Corner gets people thinking, encourages them to engage in the best debates in the city and leaves an inspiring memory. This is no ordinary meeting place.
2. Digital services in a shopping centre
In recent years, digital services in shopping centres have continued to focus on providing websites or apps that list the shops in the centre and the opening hours and that provide information about special offers and all manner of discount campaigns. As such, there is very little to differentiate one shopping centre from the next in any meaningful way.
Easton Helsinki, a shopping centre that opened in late 2017, promises to offer the best food in eastern Helsinki, ease and convenience for day-to-day affairs, and a genuinely eastern Helsinki identity. People from eastern Helsinki have been actively involved throughout the development of Easton, including in the realm of digital service development.
The aim was to develop services that are meaningful to customers and that also strongly support Easton’s brand promise.
The first examples of these are Eastori, a local digital medium based around food and well-being, and Sitä Itää, a communal customer loyalty programme. Eastori brings together local residents, organisations operating at Easton, experts and influential food experts from eastern Helsinki to work on inspiring and exciting themes around food, well-being and community. The aim is to promote food culture one step at a time — eating together, enjoying a more diverse range of foods and experimenting without prejudice. Sitä Itää offers local people the opportunity to point out local sites in need of renovation or support. Regular votes are held to select a new site to receive donations based on the purchases made at Easton. We believe that most people already value the common good of their local communities above striving after their own interests.
3. Exceptionally good service
Finnish key note speakers at customer experience seminars have long used Alko, the Finnish alcoholic beverage retailing monopoly, as an example of exceptionally good service taken to a practical level. How on earth could this service experience be taken any further? When Alko in Töölöntori, Helsinki was renovated, it included a strong nostalgia theme with the objective of providing an over-the-counter shop for consumers in the modern age. Where the counter once symbolised rationing and monitoring, the counter in the modern-day Alko is staffed by people with professional expertise and a service attitude.
When I want to make some delicious food at the weekend, I often stop off at Citymarket in Ruoholahti on my way home on Friday. In addition to an exceptionally wide product range, the store has service counters filled with delicacies and staffed by experts. Töölöntori Alko makes me feel the same. Behind the counter, the shop has a comprehensive selection of speciality wines and solid professional competence, so there is something exceptionally good in the customer experience. Just as there should be when you visit a specialist shop.
The successful concepts of the future will combine customer orientation with a mindset that supports the brand’s goals. Is this combination already in your service development DNA? Do not hesitate to contact us if you would like to discuss this further or if you need a sparring session.
