21. August 2009 by Aidan.

Despite the fact that services are the main contributor to the Irish economy, the field of service design in Ireland is particularly under developed. There are a few companies practicing in this area but there is certainly room for major improvement in the profile of this sector.

If you are involved in Service Design in Ireland then let me know as I would like to build a network of companies working is this area with a view to raising the profile within Ireland and highlighting the capabilities and experience that exists here to a wider audience.  

Aidan

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21. August 2009 by Aidan.

In a previous blog I suggested that Service Design could become the next Health & Safety. The point I was trying to make is that you need processes, and ultimately a culture, to harness the creativity and innovation within a business in order to be able to implement innovative services. It’s not innovation if you just had an idea, it only really counts if you implemented changes based on that idea.

I came across an interesting article from Business Week magazine from October 2008 in which Mark Jones and Fran Salamionis state that strategies at the frontier of service design need a blend of creativity and discipline. They offer a good 5 step framework for implementing innovation projects successfully.

One key point they make is that innovation is not just a matter of “aha” moments, it needs a process that takes a disciplined approach to identify and execute the most promising ideas.

The article also links to some great work that Ideo did with 1st Source Bank in Indiana. Here is a link directly to the case study.

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18. August 2009 by Aidan.

There are two key customer elements in Service Design and they are the customer experience and the customer result. In many cases, as Service Designers, we work to optimise both of these.

From a customer experience perspective we design a customer journey, involving multiple touchpoints, that ensures the service provider is providing the customer with an experience that they will at best enjoy and at least tolerate, in order to reach the end point, which is the result. The result may be the completion of a transaction or it may be the culmination of a process that the customer chose to engage in, for example paying your phone bill or having a massage.

In certain circumstances however, the result may not be something that the service provider can guarantee. For example, when a patient visits a doctor, we can design a service that makes the visit as pleasant as possible however we cannot design the result. We have no control over whether the patient leaves the doctors office feeling good or bad, happy or sad. In a way, the visit itself needs to be minimized in the light of the result that the doctor and patient will need to determine.

In sport too, we cannot design the result. That is the job of the team manager and players. (Although I do think that a more thorough design approach to sport performance can improve results- that’s a blog for another day). So from a customers perspective, the result of attending the game is out of the hands of the service provider and cannot easily be designed. Of course, the experience of attending the game is where the service designers can play a huge role. You can be disappointed by the result but still have a great day out.   

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7. August 2009 by Aidan.

It used to be that we all just went along happily doing our job until 5pm and then we left for home. No-one really bothered us as we went about our job.

Then someone somewhere decided that we needed to be told how to do our job safely. The government got on board with enough legislation to make it a full time job and suddenly every medium sized company and above had a Safety Officer. Safety standards and metrics were established to ensure that performance could be measured. There were safety conferences for the safety officer to meet other safety officers and swap stories about safety and the average worker suddenly discovered that we were doing our job all wrong and were lucky to be alive. Over time, the concept of health and safety became embedded into the culture of companies and safety became the responsibility of every employee and not just a Safety officer.

Quality had a similar life-cycle. Again it started with a small number of practitioners and consultants working with companies who were open to the concept of improving the quality of their operations to make themselves more competitive. The position of Quality manager was established and standards and metrics were established and put in place. Eventually it became clear that Quality was everyone’s responsibility and again it became embedded in the culture of companies.   

Now it’s the turn of service innovation and service design. There is an explosion in this area at the moment, both in academic research and in companies with expertise in these areas. Progressive companies are starting to wake up to the benefits of applying proven design and innovation techniques to optimise their service models. There is a lot of discussion about the right language, metrics and standards that need to be applied to this arena. In addition, some companies are now recruiting Directors of Service Design. It’s an exciting time to be involved in this area but it is also just a matter of time before some of these techniques and standards become embedded into the culture of successful companies, which should ultimately benefit the customer and the companies willing to invest in this area.

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