The visible and invisible world of Services

Everyday we experience service — it’s around us. Whether it’s booking a doctor’s appointment, grabbing a drink from your local coffee shop, paying for parking or ordering a take away from your local fish and chip shop — we are experiencing a service. We have multiple experiences with services every single day. Often we passively go through these experiences without a thought until they go wrong — and that’s usually when service is noticed.

Last week we chatted to senior leaders and change-makers involved in business and service transformation in the housing industry. Sharon Cooper, CDO at Economist Intelligence Unit joined Jenny Burns, Magnetic CEO, at the Disruptive Innovators Network (DIN) Service Design Forum.

We focussed on busting some design myths and talked about the challenges and opportunities in the sector and how the principles of service design can help businesses think differently and plan for 2023 and beyond. Here were some key takeaways from the discussion:

Service Design helps organisations have a deeper relationship with customers. The key is to be embedded in the customer journey. By understanding the ever touch point, and how that aligns to customer needs at that specific moment, we’re able to keep the people we’re designing for at the heart of the process.

The little things matter. At Magnetic we use design thinking to make small iterations, adding value and impact. When considering Service Design, often it’s the small things that make the difference: a personal welcome and your name on the coffee you just purchased, getting timely updates on the pizza you just ordered. Meaningful moments ensure a better experience, often requiring careful consideration as opposed to large financial investment. That said it might not always need a small tweak. Sometimes it’s the big problems that need solving: how to make sure your distribution channels and processes are efficient, cost effective and sustainable.

Ideas are abundant, make sure you focus on the right problems. Start at the beginning: what’s the problem we’re trying to solve? Do research, gain valuable insights and frame the problem brilliantly before trying to solve it.

“Getting to the root of the problem is what Service Design is so good at. You start off thinking ‘I want to understand this problem’ and you realise that the problem is very different from the user perspective. It really helps you shift your thinking from ‘this is our problem’ to ‘we need to better define what this problem is’.” Innovation Lead, Housing Group and DIN member

Look for — and learn from — services that break the mould. Joe Gebbia and Brian Chesky (founders of airbnb) dreamed up the idea of a website that would allow people to rent out a spare room for a night or two. This happened after they charged three guests $80 each to sleep on airbeds in their San Francisco apartment when every hotel room in the city was taken. At the time this service was revolutionary because Gebbia and Chesky were able to challenge the pervasive assumption that people wouldn’t want to stay in a stranger’s home over a hotel. They’ve built an incredible business from challenging that assumption. Apple is another example. Most are familiar with Apple products, they’ve extended into services. The Apple Genius bar helps customers get the right support. This helps customers understand the products, reducing any worries and provides them with the ability to upsell and create brand equity both online and in their stores. It’s a working example of balancing customer and business needs.

Tools and methodologies help. From user interviews, personas, surveys, workshops and ‘how might we’ statements — there are plenty of tools and methodologies to help get close to customer needs. At the event we focussed on a service blueprint as a tool and looked at the Deliveroo experience. Service design links the customer experience with everything that happens behind the scenes — from the journey the customer takes when placing an order, how they track it to when the order arrives — and everything in between. What’s important when designing the service blueprint is not just looking at what’s visible to the customer, but focussing on what’s invisible. Without thinking about both sides it will be hard to deliver an experience customers appreciate and like.

Here’s a few more tips to build a deep understanding of customer motivations and place the right bets on which products and services to invest in.

“I have done customer journey maps with customers and it is such an insight in how you think something is working and how it actually works!” Project Manager, Housing Partnership and DIN member

Internal culture matters. At the event we heard from Sharon Cooper, Chief Digital Officer, the Economist Intelligence Unit. Having worked with Magnetic and embedded Service Design into the business (read more about it here), Sharon gave some top tips on Service Design in an organisation and what cultural traits are important to make change happen:

• To define a new product you need to understand who your users are and what’s important to them.
• Test appetite before launching a new proposition- figure out what consumers will purchase versus what they want.
• Put yourself in the users shoes and have empathy with who you are designing for.
• Believe wholeheartedly the views and perception of consumers matters.
• Willingness to fail and a no blame culture — accept you won’t always get it right.
• Openness to try something new but pivot quickly if it doesn’t work.
• Celebrate successes — how you share and celebrate the small wins help motivate teams internally and drive you forward.

Magnetic is a design and innovation company that helps design better futures. We’ve worked with global businesses to build capabilities, products, services and transform organisations. To find out more, get in touch: hello@wearemagnetic.com or sign up to our monthly newsletter to keep up to date.