9. July 2010 by Aidan.

The Irish Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) today released the results of a comprehensive poll conducted by Red C on the public’s opinion about the quality of healthcare services in Ireland. Over 1,000 adults were surveyed and there are some fascinating insights into the current state of mind of healthcare “customers” in Ireland. A good summary of the poll results can be accessed here.   

Some of the key findings included

• Over 40% of people feel that the healthcare they or their families have received has been below the expected standards
• Only about a third of these people complained however 52% said that they felt too intimidated to make a complaint and 80% found it difficult to know who to complain to.
• Most people rated funding and staffing as the most important issues when it came to ensuring safe services were delivered.
• A huge 86% said that they believed no-one took responsibility for service levels.

This is a valuable and important poll in the context of the state of healthcare services in Ireland. I understand that HIQA are going to start a consultation on draft national standards for safer and better healthcare services and I am looking forward to contributing to that.

In addition to the poll, I think that additional valuable insights could be uncovered if further service design based investigations were carried out (e.g. customer journey mapping) and I look forward to the move of the Irish healthcare service providers towards a more customer centric approach in the future, as has been happening for some time outside the state.

Eithne Donnellan wrote a good piece about this in today’s Irish Times, you can see it here.

Posted in Health Service Innovation, Service Design in Ireland, General | No Comments »

1. July 2010 by Aidan.

Many thanks to those who took my quick poll last month. There were 40 respondents, mostly from Ireland but some from UK, US and even Australia! Respondents came from a wide variety of business sectors.Here is a summary of the results with some comments:

• 42% of respondents said that they were service providers, with 30% saying that they provided products and services. In addition, 15% were public service providers. Only 5% said that they were pure product manufacturers. 
• 72% of respondents said that they generate revenue and profits from their service offerings and 13% said that they generated revenue but no profit. 15% generated no revenue from services but these were predominantly the public service providers
• 88% of respondents believe that services will play a great part in their future plans. 
• One challenge that exists is picking the right entry point into clients’ organisations. This was confirmed by responses when asked “who decides what services to offer?” ; 78% said the Owner/CEO of the business decides, with only 11% saying Sales and 25% saying Customer Service or Marketing. 19% said that it was decided by other factors and these predominantly included the Executive Board or a parent company. These findings highlight the importance of getting access to clients at the highest level in order to successfully introduce service design and service innovation successfully.   
• 58% of respondents said that they don’t have a process for designing new service offerings. The respondents that say they do have a process were often from regulated businesses. This lack of process for designing new service offerings represents a significant opportunity for service design practitioners.
• When asked, 68% of respondents believe that everyone involved in the delivery of services in their organisation is aware of their role in the process. This number seems high in light of previous responses and observed practices however there are 32% who say that their employees are not aware.
• 75% said that they ask their customers what services they would like to see offered. They highlighted workshops, surveys and other feedback mechanisms for doing this. 25% don’t ask their customers. 
• When asked whether they believed if their services could be designed better, 80% said yes and 13% said that they don’t know. Feedback indicated that respondents saw problems with processes being too slow and over complicated. They also indicated that more thought should be put into the design of their services, that they need more innovation and that change needed to be followed through on. These are areas that service design can address.
• 25% of respondents said that they would use an external company to help them redesign their services while an additional 35% said that they might depending on certain factors. These factors included cost, market/sector knowledge, ROI and the complexity of the offering.   

Posted in Service Desig, Service Design in Ireland, Servitize, Customer Service, strategy, General | 2 Comments »

30. June 2010 by Aidan.

I presented a basic introduction to service design at the recent Bizcamp South East event held in Waterford, Ireland in June.

Posted in Service Design in Ireland, Service Desig, Servitize, General | No Comments »

20. December 2009 by Aidan.

My daughter (14) has a mobile phone on the Meteor network in Ireland. It is a pay-as-you-go phone and once she tops up the credit (or in fact once I top up her credit) by €20 every 30 days she gets free calls and texts to everyone else on the Meteor network.

All of her friends are also on the Meteor network and topping up by €20 every 30 days to get the same deal.

I asked her about usage of the phone. We checked, and she sends about 85 SMS messages per day, so about 2,500 per month. Her calls total about 5 hours per month. (She assures me that this is conservative usage for a 14 year old). Most of these are included in the free text and calls package, unless she calls or texts myself or my wife, because we are on another network.

So the deal is that the phone company gets about €240 per year from her (actually from me) and my daughter gets 30,000 SMS messages and 60 hours of calls a year.

There are other deals out there from other phone companies that include calls and messages to all networks or charges less than €20 per month but my daughter won’t switch. The reason she won’t switch is because if she did then her network of friends would no longer be able to SMS and call her for free. So the power of the offer from Meteor is not only the bundled offer for a fixed price, it is the fact that everyone within my daughters network of friends are on the same deal and so no-one will leave the network.

I did ask her whether everyone would switch to another network if they could get the same deal from another network for less money. Her reply: “Only if you could get it for significantly less, say €10 per month!” So this market would need a significant incentive to switch to another carrier but if that incentive was there there would be a risk of large scale switching.

An eye opener for me was a few months ago when my daughter came downstairs after being on her phone for some time. I asked who she was talking to and she said she was on a conference call! Apparently each evening over the holidays 8 or 10 of her friends held a nightly conference call to catch up on what was going on and the latest gossip. This is a very switched on market!

Posted in Service Design in Ireland, Customer Service, General | No Comments »

5. November 2009 by Aidan.

I attended the “Designed in Ireland” event in Waterford last night, as part of 2009 Design Week. The event was very well organised by Marcus Notley and his team and was held in the City Library. In addition to poster presentations of the work of many designers in the South East, there were two talks from Sean McNulty of Innovator and Siobhan O’Dwyer of Threesixty.

Sean, MD of Innovator, spoke about the different business landscape in Ireland at the moment and the need for everyone to take their destiny into their own hands and re-evaluate their business model in order to survive and prosper. He argued for the application of Design Thinking to all of our businesses and introduced many of the tools that can be used to implement this. This would be very much in line with what I have been saying for some time also (see Service Design & Innovation Ireland Linkedin Group) and I would be in complete agreement with Sean.

Siobhan, Brand Director of Threesixty, spoke about the future of design and consumer patterns. We have been forced out of our rampant consumption culture by the need to cut back on spending, but even if the money does start to return to our pockets, will we return to the consumption patterns of before. Siobhan believes that we will be much more discerning about our purchases and that we will tend towards purchasing fewer, better designed products. I tend to agree that our buying patterns will be altered significantly. She also spoke about the future of eco and green products and services. Siobhan wrapped up by introducing us to the term “nonsumers” as the future consumers, her term for people who have turned their back on mass disposable consumption. It was a great talk with a lot to think about.

During the evening I also had a long chat with the wonderful Denise Ryan of Fineline Interiors. Denise has worked on some major commercial design projects and in a lesson to all service providers has now expanded her offerings by teaming up with Tony Clayton-Lea to provide bespoke music designed to complement the design and ambiance of your premises. Great example of extending your service offerings.

Overall it was a very enjoyable evening and a great success.  

Posted in Service Design in Ireland, innovation, consultants, General | No Comments »

4. October 2009 by Aidan.

Here is a collection of some of the Service design related conferences that are scheduled to take place. The problem is deciding which ones to go to. Please add a comment with any others you are aware of, thanks, Aidan.    

• SDN - Service Design Network Conference 2009 
  • Madiera, Portugal.  
  • October 26th, 27th 2009
  • Details    

• First Nordic Service Design & Innovation Conference
  • Oslo, Norway.  
  • November 24th to 26th 2009
  • Details  

•  Service Experience Engineering Forum 2009
  • Taipei, Taiwan
  • October 14th, 15th 2009 
  • Details    

• 2010 International Conference on Service Science
  • Hangzhou, China
  • May 13th, 14th 2010 
  • Details   

• 18th Annual Frontiers in Service Conference
  • Honolulu, Hawaii
  • October 29th to November 1st 2009
  • Details  

• International Association of Societies of Design Research (IASDR)
  • Seoul, Korea
  • October 18th to 22nd
  • Details  

• 11th International Design Conference
  • Dubrovnik, Croatia
  • May 17th to 20th 2010
  • Details

• Design Research Society Conference 2010
  • Montreal, Canada
  • July 7th to 9th 2010
  • Details

• SOLI10 - IEEE International Conference on Service Operations 2010
  • Qingdao, China
  • July 15th to 17th 2010
  • Details

Posted in Service Design in Ireland, Service Desig, international, General | No Comments »

24. September 2009 by Aidan.

I have set up a “Service Design & Innovation - Ireland” group on Linkedin.

Here is the overview from the Linkedin page:

There is a growing international reliance on design in the race to develop radically new, innovative, service offerings.
The demands for Service Innovation are highlighting the need for the practical application of Service Design and Product Servitization techniques.
Ireland is well positioned to play a leading role in the world in these areas however there is no cohesive approach being taken in Ireland to ensure that the experts in these fields are working together towards a common goal.
This group offers practitioners and other interested parties the opportunity to connect and start the discussion about how to move this forward and tap into the opportunities that exist today.

I am looking forward to having interested people join this forum with a view to improving Ireland’s overall standing in the areas of service design and innovation, before it’s too late!

Here is a link to the group page. 

Aidan

Posted in Servitize, Service Desig, Service Design in Ireland, Selling "Services", innovation, consultants, international, General | No Comments »

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

Posted in Service Design in Ireland, Service Desig, international, consultants, General | No Comments »