Service Design-in’ at Mango
An asynchronous interview with Lourenço Viana, Global Head of Research at Mango
Q: Ciao Lou, please introduce yourself.
A: My name is Lou, and I am the Global Head of Research at Mango. My mission is to provide the organisation with knowledge about consumers and customers so that people can make better decisions about products and services.
Q: What does Mango do?
A: Mango is an international fashion retailer with over 2,000 stores worldwide. It was also one of the first fashion retailers in Spain to launch its e-commerce website in 2000. Mango sells fashion for women, men, teenagers, and children and recently launched a homeware division.
Q: How did you get your job?
A: I started at Mango roughly ten years ago as a UX Designer. It’s fair to say that UX was not even a thing back then at Mango. The three-person team built the discipline from the ground up over the years. Service design has always been a side interest of mine, for which I sought training, and we have successfully developed a few projects.
Q: How do you define Service Design?
A: I see service design from three perspectives: Service Experiences, Service Systems, and Service Configurations.
The first focuses on the interactions between the beneficiaries and the service providers through touchpoints; design focuses on these touchpoints.
On the second perspective, the focus of design is on the system that makes the service possible, deeply looking at how actors interact in a value-creating system.
The third perspective is all about building new relationships and mindsets among people. It’s about transforming organisations and communities so that new practices are developed over time: service is a consequence and is ever-emerging.
These three perspectives are valuable when working on various levels of service design, always with a clear focus on people and their relationships.
Q: What’s the current Service Design setup at your company?
A: Service design is not an official discipline at Mango; it is still nascent. The Research and Customer Insights team is very diverse, including designers, psychologists, journalists, sociologists… While our main task is to provide customer knowledge across the organisation, we do stand-alone service design projects based on our research, and our value proposition to the teams is that we are helping bring everyone’s work together. We are creating alignment. I believe not all organisations are ready for Service Design: they need a proper infrastructure for this, with a specific mindset that can be developed.
Q: What’s the relationship between Service Design and the other disciplines at Mango?
A: From my experience, both research and service design have the power to align people across teams because they create a shared base for discussion that goes beyond personal opinion. By introducing customer insights, teams start from that to create new propositions and develop their work. Bringing people together has been our team’s hidden power over the years; that’s why people have trusted us. For example, our latest project brings together the retail operations team, interior designers, visual merchandisers, human resources, communications, and IT to build a better fitting room experience.
Q: Let’s talk about your Service design work. What are the typical initiatives you work on?
A: While my work is mainly research, part of it can be understood under the umbrella of Service Design (especially if we consider the Service Configurations perspective mentioned above). One of my main tasks is to identify people across the organisation who can put customer knowledge to use, and bring them together. While it may seem straightforward, this is a long-term task. Every person we come in contact with must understand how this kind of knowledge can benefit them and their work while not disrupting their goals and practices.
My obsession is creating the infrastructures for a customer-centred approach to fashion (and fashion retail). This means, above all, having the most qualified team. But it also means having a team that can work well with others and is flexible enough to balance rigour and relevance.
People are the core of design work: having a powerful group of people is crucial. Besides this, it’s essential to develop relationships of trust with key stakeholders, constantly adapting to ever-changing needs and circumstances.
I’m particularly proud when colleagues who previously didn’t have a customer-centred mindset call us and ask for help, saying, ‘I have my own opinion, but I’d like to understand what the actual customer has to say.’
One of the key recent projects was ‘Customer-Centric in Menswear.’ We worked closely with a fashion development team to help them integrate new customer-centred practices into their daily work process. I’m particularly proud of this project because the mindset change is visible, and especially because the project ended with the team asking for more.
Another important initiative is the Innovation Community, an online platform where Mango’s most engaged customers can give us first-hand insights into their relationship with fashion and Mango. This community has been crucial to spreading our team’s visibility across the organisation because it is tangible and easy to understand. It is also a fantastic tool to engage top customers with the brand since they feel heard and are part of Mango’s future.
One of the most memorable moments since we launched the community was the participation of two members at Mango’s Retail Annual Meeting. These two top customers shared their experience with the brand in front of the company’s retail leaders from all over the world and got to know the headquarters in Barcelona.
Q: How do you educate your organisation on the Service Design approach?
A: Our approach to ‘education’ and ‘impact’ is through work and value.
If my team provides valuable insights to others, if they make their lives easier, it means we’re doing a good job. Making others’ lives easy has the power to build a tacit understanding of the value of a discipline.
Q: What’s the future of Service Design in your organisation?
A: I hope the discipline grows and becomes established and spreads across the organisation. While there is no established plan, the current focus is on creating the foundations for service design: We’re doing stand-alone projects to showcase the discipline’s advantages. If we successfully prove the value of Service Design, getting more resources to build a dedicated team will be easier.
Q: How can people follow you?
A: You can follow my newsletter on Becoming Design where I sometimes post some reflections on strategic design and research. I am also on LinkedIn and Instagram.
Service Design-in’ is a collection of thoughts and interviews with Designers that adopt a service-design mindset working within organisations. If you want to share your views, please reach out.
