Whether your business is a service provider or retailer or relies on B2B sales, Service Design can play a key role in optimizing operations, motivating your staff and satisfying your customers. Still unsure what Service Design is and can do for your brand? Read on!
Service Design
Service Design is the activity of planning and organizing people, infrastructure, communication, and material components of a service in order to improve its quality and the interaction between the service provider and its customers.
Service Design can teach your employees new ways to work together, develop ideas and make decisions. So whether you run a restaurant or sell antiquities online, educating your employees about service oriented behaviour can be crucial to your business success.
We understand if Service Design still sounds like a Design process and its end result and impact seems ambiguous. We’ve answered a few questions that you might have on Service Design and how to equip your staff in designing better customer and client experience.
Where do I start?
Start by applying Service Design to the most vital for your business and implement it all the way to achieve the goal that matters the most. Induction and training of employees at an early stage can bring about a transformation in the culture of your company. The design of your service and the delivery of your product should consistently reflect your brand values. And even though, Service Design is a term that’s not easily understood by your workforce, when you explain it in simple words, it will make sense.
What if I face resistance?
You will probably face cultural resistance simply by the fact that you’re trying to bring something new that there may not be room or interest for. The key is to simplify the process as much as you can for the internal adoption by your staff. Where lectures, technical jargon and heavily imposed rules and restrictions fail,lead by action, set an example and show them the obvious benefit of your initiative.
Can I use Service Design to drive sales without changing the service?
Can you quit smoking without stopping to buy cigarettes? It’s the service (the sequence of actions) and its delivery that defines customer experience with your brand. Service Design isn’t a go-to tool for service providers to promote their brand, but instead to re-vitalize the business. As brand owners we develop a tendency to be overly-critical of our businesses and complicate it along the way. If your services aren’t immediately understandable and easy to use it can confuse users and lead to mistakes being made.Basically, bad services are expensive and require more time investment from the point of the user. So transform your services to transfigure your business.
How do I design a service?
Services should be viewed and treated as a sequence of interrelated actions or events. Delivering a service is like taking your customer on a journey. So make sure that you make this journey as comfortable and as memorable as possible. Your product or service should be designed based on customer needs rather than the internal needs of the business. If your business offering satisfies their desires then Service Design can enable better experience delivery and more meaningful interactions to take place between your staff and your customers.
How do I make a service memorable?
It would also help if you add ‘physical elements’ to your service delivery to help customers visualize and retain the experience. Triggers such as souvenirs, merchandise, cosmetic samples etc., when properly designed and positioned within the service delivery experience can be powerful value adding contributors.Capturing emotions and experiences of customers in terms of photographs, testimonials etc., and featuring them within your ‘services cape’, be it your website or brick-and-mortar store, can create positive service memories and strong emotional associations with the brand.
Is Service Design only for those with digital presence?
While most services in the internet age are driven by digital, it doesn’t exclusively apply to building websites or digital interfaces. Some of the biggest challenges in service design are in the transitions between physical, offline, and digital transactions.
Who creates the Brand Experience? How do I transform customer experience via Service Design?
Your brand experience is co-created by your service staff along with the customer. While your staff can be responsible for delivery of the service, the overall experience depends upon the customer’s mental, physical and emotional state when the service is consumed. The first two conditions of mental and physical discomfort can be remedied by indulging their senses and creating a holistic environment of relaxation. The 5 senses, seeing, hearing, touching, smelling and tasting, can be vital to the delivery of a seamless, impactful and overtly positive customer experience.For this, the entire environment in which the service exists and is delivered should be considered.
Naturally, it is your staff who plays a crucial role in the service delivery by making a conscious decision about how he/she wants the customer to feel. Their understanding of behavioral drivers such as expectations, personal tastes, and cultural values lay a foundation of their actions. By training them and guiding their actions in a brand consistent manner, brands can achieve customer satisfaction while efficiently meeting their business goals.
Want to know what we can do for you?
We understand that good branding is all about creating an immersive experience for your customers – at the store and on your website. We bring your brand story to life by creatively embedding it in your website and into your customer’s user journey. We work fast and we make things in code, wire frames and diagrams. We test our assumptions through research. We believe that it’s results that matter and we are committed to designing better services.
