What is service design?

Service design is the practice of planning and organizing a business's resources to

enhance the experience of employees and their customers. It creates streamlined
service processes to help employees work more efficiently and serve their customers
more effectively. Just as a product designer might design a toy or a garment of clothing,
people involved in service design plan out the direct and indirect interactions people
have with companies and their representatives when they book flights or dine out.
These are some reasons service design is important:

● Provides a framework: Just as product designers create a blueprint for their

products, service designers create a service blueprint. These blueprints work the
same way, serving as a framework for business processes that provides direction
for achieving end goals.
 ● Improves customer experience: Service design addresses the common
practice of focusing on customer-facing outputs at the expense of internal
processes. Shifting the focus ensures internal processes and the resources used
to complete their work more cohesively.
● Boosts morale: The relationships formed through service design are important
to organizations. Service design encourages employees to work in alignment to
improve service processes.
● Adds business value: As service design enhances customer experiences,
consumers are more likely to become repeat customers. This increases the
chances that customers refer others to the business.

5 components of service design

To fully comprehend service design, you need to understand its fundamental principles
so you can relate them to your own business. There are five main components,
including

1. General service design principles

apply to all aspects of planning and organizing service resources. Follow these main
principles governing service design:

● Consider each service's purpose, customer demand and the company's capacity
to deliver it.
● Aim to satisfy customer needs of business needs.
● Ensure services work within whole efficient systems rather than in isolation.
● Ensure services deliver value and efficiency for users and customers.
● Consult users and relevant stakeholders.
● Make prototypes before developing services.
● Consider special events and how they may impact services to minimize
disruption.

2. Service design principles for processes

The design and development of processes are an integral part of service design. Follow
these principles governing process design:

● Ensure that activities always add value to customers.

● Focus on the process rather than constructs like products and how they function.
 ● Focus on satisfying customer needs. If customers have several conditions, you
may need to develop multiple processes to meet them all.
● Make sure processes and development are part of the company's larger
operations rather than fragmented.
● Simplify processes by reducing steps, points of contact, restrictions, breaks or
delays, the number of reliant processes, and other elements.
● Use performance indicators to measure results that show employee and
customer experience, such as the number of customer queries resolved
satisfactorily.

3. Service design principles for employees

Employees are one of the most critical resources businesses have and one of the
essential drivers of service design. Follow these service design principles to achieve
optimal results from employees:

● Work in groups of people who are knowledgeable about services and their
associated processes and have skills relevant to these areas.
● Share your point of view to make and influence decisions and encourage others
to do the same.
● Work in a location where you can operate efficiently and productively.

4. Service design principles for information

The free flow of information helps businesses deliver services to their customers.
Employees can work more productively when they have relevant information about their
business' products, services, and customers. A free flow of information also makes
companies seem more trustworthy and transparent. Follow these service principles
concerning information to achieve this free flow:

● Share data freely within the business and with members of the public.
● Ensure data can transfer for easy sharing and reuse by people within the
organization and other stakeholders. This may involve adopting digital
record-keeping methods, for example.
● Replace data entry, which may be prone to errors, with more reliable data
lookup, selection, and confirmation tools.

5. Service design principles for technology

Technology is vital in almost every business industry, including service design. Follow
these service principles to use technology to its fullest potential:

● Use technology to enable services rather than drive them.

● Ensure technology is appropriate for the service, and only use it when it achieves
the optimal outcome.
● Make sure technology is flexible enough to be changed in the future when or if
necessary.

What Is Service Design? How To Implement Service Design Processes

it’s easy to think of design in terms of tangible objects, like a smartphone or a chair, or in
terms of digital products, like a website or an app.

But what about those experiences we can’t touch or see?

This is where service design comes in. Just like UX, service design is all about creating
a first-class experience for the customer — whether they’re buying a coffee, going for a
beauty treatment or using public transport.

Let’s take a closer look at what service design is and the processes involved.

What is service design?

The main difference between service design and product design is that services are
intangible. Essentially, a service designer tries to make a company’s services better
than its competitors by following a service design methodology. The aim is to improve
how the service works in order to improve the customer experience.

Take your favorite coffee shop.

There are probably other coffee shops you could go to, so what makes you choose this
one? Perhaps you enjoy the friendly service, the smiley face on the receipt, the fact that
they use fair trade coffee beans, or the plugs they have to power your phone. It might
just be something small like you never have cash on you and one doesn’t take your
card.

Well, that’s service design in a nutshell!

Wikipedia explains it like this: 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 may function as a way to inform changes to an existing service or create
a new service entirely.

Service design: Consistent vs. unique experiences

Companies like Starbucks and McDonald’s go to great lengths to make sure you
experience the same service from San Francisco to Saint Petersburg.

Fast forward and times change. Today’s customers are looking for unique experiences,
which throws up a whole host of opportunities and challenges. The hotel industry has
definitely felt the impact of Airbnb, and traditional hotels are now striving to create
unique experiences or unique rooms to win back their customers.

Of course, companies still face the ultimate challenge (and cost!) of delivering a unique
experience on a mass scale.

The four approaches to customization

Apple is a great example of outstanding service design.

Have a problem with your iPhone? Just go to the genius bar and they will help you fix it
and get it back up and running for you.

It’s personal, builds the brand and generates loyalty. As a customer, knowing that if
anything goes wrong you can quickly get it solved is a huge benefit.

The service design process is similar to UX!

Designers seek to understand the needs and desires of the people who will use a
product or service by spending time with them. This approach ensures solutions are
both fit for purpose and desirable to the people who will use them. By focusing on
human stories and insights, designers build empathy for users, and ensure that the
ideas they develop are wholly relevant.

Here is an overview of a typical service design methodology:

● Framing: Get your objectives and outcomes for the project and determine how
you will measure your success. Use this template from Service Design Toolkit.
● User insights: From surveys and interviews to user shadowing, you need to get
some qualitative data from people. A key aspect of this is asking unbiased
questions that get to the bottom of your service design challenge.
● Personas: The persona you build is made up of the research of user insights
and data from any customer information you have. It can help you to recognize
that various individuals have different demands, behaviors and assumptions, and
it can also help you to identify with the individual you’re designing for.
Remember: Creating a business for everyone, creates a business for no
one! Your persona helps you to come up with ideas and set up experiences to
appeal to a specific target group. Check out this guide.
● Ideation: Using the information that came up in the research phase: what
ideas/hypotheses have emerged that are worth exploring further? Working in a
group and spending time on this section pays off. Having thinking time is
underrated in today’s world. Another common failure is to study the competition.
Don’t study the competition, study the winners in other industries and draw ideas
from a wide range of sources
● Service blueprint: The service plan is a strategy originally used for service
design and advancement, but has additionally found applications in identifying
problems with operational effectiveness. The method was first described by G.
Lynn Shostack, a bank exec, in the Harvard Business Review in 1984. A service
blueprint is different from a customer journey map. A blueprint works on the
business back end on how a service works, how it will be delivered, and where it
fits into the customer experience.
● Prototype and test: Validate with prototyping, and be aware of biases that
might be introduced into this part of the project. Different factors affect the
prototypes: people (not limited to the customer, including yourself, the business
 owner, and staff), location, and timing. Have a list of what to observe and what is
important to gather in the testing. The main priority is getting out there and trying
things out.

Service design examples

Let’s bring to life the service design which is all around us with some real-world
examples.

Organ donation

If you live in an ‘opt-in’ country, then people have to take the time to actively register to
donate their organs. The ‘opt-in rate’ is always a struggle for countries to meet and
requires heavy marketing and an army of volunteers to remind people. The intent from
people is that it’s “something they’ll get around to doing” — but we all know the outcome
of that.

Social psychologists Shai Davidai, Tom Gilovich, and Lee Ross set out to understand
the psychology behind these different organ donation rates.

In Austria, your organs are donated unless you ‘opt out’. 90% of the population are
registered organ donors.

The average for an opt-in country is 15%. That’s a huge difference!

Davidai, Gilovich, and Ross found that people who were already opted in found it to be
an ethically trivial and inconsequential action.

In this example, service design and the operations behind it have a huge impact on
organ donations — ultimately saving lives.

Airbnb
This example has become a Design 101 case study around the world. Airbnb uses a
platform to create a unique customer experience that previously wasn’t so widely
available. People wanted to feel free in an apartment and have a unique experience
without feeling held hostage in a hotel room.

They started by storyboarding 45 different realistic emotional moments for Airbnb hosts.

They studied consumer journeys to understand their feelings and pain points.

According to Airbnb’s Head of Global Hospitality and Strategy, Chip Conley, the
experience of staying in an Airbnb is the core of its customer strategy, and they work
towards creating experiences that would match a customer’s desires.

Service development
Definition

Serving consumers in the best possible way is the first and foremost responsibility of an
organization. Being an important and integral part of the company, an entity always tries
to evolve and improve its existing services, known as services development.

Overview of Service Development

Although attracting consumers is the main purpose of a business entity, service

development suits best. It is a method of adding, eliminating, and improvising existing
services to make them exciting and attractive to that company. Moreover, the process of
service development helps in customer retention and the acquisition of new consumers.
Although the entire task is dependable on a single factor, there is more than one aspect
based upon which the final decision of development is taken.

Service development strongly depends on introducing new products, and new

processes, extending the types of products and processes, etc. The creation of a
brand-new service undoubtedly opens up the opportunity to take part in the competitive
market. Moreover, designing a new service is quite tricky as companies need to be
flexible enough to grab consumers’ attention. Another important thing to consider is the
cost of the service. For this reason, to develop a new service, there should be a proper
design that ensures appropriateness and offers ample benefits to the company.

Aspects of Service Development

During the improvisation of a new service, an entity must consider some important
aspects to avoid the uncertainty of acceptance. Important aspects of service
development include the following:-

● Innovative new products: Perhaps, it may sound quite unnatural that the
launch of new products affects improvised services, but it is very much true.
 Newly launched products also need their specific service team. When that new
product circulates that the new product within the market and people start buying
it, buyers may require a newly developed service especially suited to it. Thus,
improvised service should always adhere to the new product qualities.
● Innovative process: To mold the same existing product, attractive companies
sometimes do not change the entire product but transform the way they offer the
product to the people. Therefore, changing the mode of offering certainly
demands the development of service. For instance, if the University of California
would like to introduce an online graduation course for the pandemic situation
then it should also improvise its services such as introducing a dedicated server
for the students and professors to join for class, strong security service of
non-disclosure of student’s information, fees payment service and many more.
● Extending category of products and processes: Many companies used to
extend the category of products and processes. The main purpose behind it is to
attract more consumers and retain the existing ones. When a buyer finds out that
he or she can shop for different types of products under the same roof, it will
ease his or her shopping habit. Therefore, a company should improve and
extend its services as per the category. For instance, when Adidas brought
verities among its product lines by manufacturing hoodies, accessories, socks,
watches, etc., it needed to improvise services for every category.

Service Development Opportunities

Generally, the introduction of a new service encourages a company to perform in the

competitive market. Deriving a new improvised service opens up the door of a
competitive market to an entity. It helps sustain high competition and molds an entity to
become a reason for concern for others. Although other companies will try to bring
down that entity’s reputation, they will remain unsuccessful if a newly derived service is
better than competitive organizations.
It is not difficult to understand that appropriate service development plays an important
role in reshaping the structure and reputation of the company. However, success
completely depends upon the perfect design of the plan. Thus, a proper service design
is required to enjoy successful implementation and earn popularity. Failing this, a
company can face major financial loss. While implementing new development, a
company needs to sacrifice its benefits for the sake of earning revenue. If it does not
succeed, then it will be a completely useless compromise.

What is the Service Process?

The service process refers to the steps required to deliver a service. Service includes
taking the order to deliver the product or following up with consumers regarding issues,
resolutions, feedback, etc.

The goal of the service process is to ensure customers receive the same high-quality
experience in all stages.

The service process is a series of activities performed to deliver a service to customers.

The term is often used in manufacturing and logistics to describe how raw materials are
transformed into finished products, but it is mostly used in customer-facing activities,
such as providing professional services, delivering food orders, etc.

Every organization has a service process that reflects its mission, values, and
competitive advantages.

The service process begins with identifying customer needs and ends with the
customer’s satisfaction. It includes all the steps in between, such as planning,
designing, producing, shipping, and delivering the finished product or service, and then
after-sales support and feedback.

Characteristics of the Service Process

The service process is key to a business. It has five main characteristics:

1. Divergence: When service providers deviate from standard service to

meet different customer needs, it is called divergence. With divergence,
customers can get the specific service they need, rather than generic one.
2. Complexity: Service processes with many steps or interactions can be
complex. The process should be simple in order to provide the right
expectations to customers.
3. Service Location: Services can be provided in person, online, or by
phone. Consider the service location for easy access.
4. Customer Participation and Interaction: Customers need to be involved
in the process to receive the service. This interaction can happen in
person, online, or over the phone.
5. The Service: The service itself is an essential part of the process.
Customers are paying for it, and it needs to be on par with their
expectations.

A 7-Step Process for Managing Service Processes

The service process is the backbone of the business.

The basic framework for the service process is given below.

Step # 1. Flowcharting

Flowcharting refers to creating a diagram that shows the steps in a process and their
relation. The flowchart outlines all steps involved in the process.
Businesses can gain valuable insights by looking at the process from a high-level
perspective and seeing how all steps fit together. It shows where improvements can be
made and help train new employees.

Step # 2. Service Blueprinting

After creating a flowchart, a service blueprint is developed. The service blueprint shows
how the customer interacts with the service process. It includes steps in the process
and shows what happens at each step.

The service blueprint can help identify potential problems and areas where
improvements can be made. It will also help organizations understand how the
customer interacts with the process and their experience.

Step # 3. Identify Failure Points

The next step is to identify failure points in the process. A failure point is a place where
issues can occur. Failure can be caused by human error, equipment failure, etc.

Identifying failure points is key to improving the service process. It also helps in creating
contingency plans for when things go wrong.

Examples of failure can be a lack of:

● Staff to handle customer demands

● The right tools to finish the job
● A clear understanding of the process

Step # 4. Failure Proofing

After identifying the failure points in the process, the next step is to failure proof them.
Failure proofing makes changes to the process to stop failures from happening.

There are different ways to failure-proof a service process.

Some common methods include:

● Adding additional staff to handle customer demands

 ● Providing more training to employees
● Installing better equipment or tools
● Creating clearer instructions for the process

Step # 5. Setting Service Targets

The next step is to set service targets. Service targets are goals that businesses want to
achieve. They can be customer satisfaction, quality, speed of service, etc.

Setting service targets is important because it helps track progress and ensure that
goals are being met. It also helps to identify areas where modifications are required.

Step # 6. Service Process Redesign

Once service targets have been set, the next step is to redesign the process to meet
those targets. Here, processes are redesigned to improve quality, speed of service,
customer satisfaction, etc.

This step can change:

● The way tasks are performed

● The order of tasks
● The tools and equipment used
● The training provided to employees
● The customer interface

Step # 7. Managing Customers Effectively

When it comes to providing service, managing customers is the key. Customers can be
valuable assets or liabilities. It is important to know how to manage them effectively, so
they become an asset.

There are many ways to manage customers effectively.

Below are steps to follow.

 ● Recruitment and Selection: Recruit people with the right skills and
attitude for the job.
● Job Analysis: Understand the job and customers’ requirements.
● Onboarding: Train customers on how to use the service.
● Coaching and Feedback: Provide coaching and feedback to help
customers improve their performance. Give them opportunities to develop
their skills further.
● Motivate the Best Performer: Recognize and reward good performance.
Help them see how their efforts contribute to the company’s success.
● Appraisal: Review customer performance regularly. Take action to
improve their performance if necessary.

Elements of the Service Process

The three basic elements of the service process are the people involved, the processes
used, and the physical evidence they produce. The interaction between these three
elements creates the customer experience.

● People: The people in a service process play an essential role in creating

a positive customer experience. They need to be friendly and helpful,
knowledgeable, and skilled to provide the service.
● Processes: The processes must be efficient, effective, and designed with
the customer in mind.
● Physical Evidence: Physical evidence is anything that the customer can
see, touch or hear that provides them with information about the service. It
can include staff appearance, display notes, service environment, etc.

The importance of service processes

Put simply, a service process is a set of defined tasks needed to complete a given
business service activity, including who is responsible for completing each step, when,
and how they do so.
It is important to note that service processes are not just the processes at the point
where the customer receives the service. Service organizations that consistently meet
both cost and quality targets know that they must manage the chain of processes from
start to finish rather than simply the final stage of delivery to customers.

Service processes are the lifeblood of the operations in service organizations. The way
the DNA provides the pattern for a living organism is the way service processes provide
the service pattern for a service organization. Service processes determine the
procedures to be followed in service delivery and also how various activities link
together to provide the whole service.

Hence good service processes ensure that service is delivered consistently, time after
time, and creates the desired experience and outcomes for the customer.

That is why excellent service – which satisfies the customer and meets the strategic
intentions of the organization – is usually the result of careful design and delivery of a
whole set of interrelated service processes. These processes not only ‘process’
customers to create the customer experience but they also process materials,
information, and even staff.

The service process is not just one of the key elements of service delivery, it’s also the
glue that holds the rest – the customers, staff, equipment, and materials – together. It is
the mechanism that creates the customer’s experience and results in the service
outcomes.

Thus services frequently fail when service processes have been inadequately designed
and executed. And rather than solving service failure issues from the root, most
organizations keep treating them on the surface by merely trying to pacify customers.

What makes customers annoyed, even angry, after a failed service recovery, is not so
much that they were not satisfied but that they feel the system has not been changed to
prevent the problem from arising. In other words, the relevant service processes have
not been improved.

Many service organizations underrate the importance of service processes and do not
pay adequate attention to them. They fail to get their process design right and also do
not bother to make continuous changes as needed.

This results in services that are inconsistent and poor. Unaware of the root cause, these
organizations just let their staff soak up the resultant pressure, leading not only to
dissatisfied and disillusioned customers but also to stress out and negatively disposed
staff, who feel powerless to help or sort out the problems.

As mundane as service processes may seem, their importance to service operations

cannot be overstated. To achieve consistent service excellence, service organizations
should ensure they have processes that are well-defined, consistently executed and
evaluated, and continuously improved.

Otherwise, it would be a case of showing only occasional service greatness, which Mark
Sanborn may be inadvertently referring to when he says, "Better to be consistently good
than occasionally great".
Boundary-spanning roles
If you have a small business and don’t have as many technological resources as a large

company, utilizing boundary spanning roles can allow your small business to flourish. As

an extra bonus, it can also help large companies become even more competitive.

Boundary spanning roles interact with individuals and groups outside the organization to

obtain valuable information to help the innovation process. Boundary-spanning roles

allow a company to gain more innovation information from other businesses. It’s useful

to gain insight from other organizations that you may not be aware of. Not just

management is involved in boundary spanning; all employees can get information from

one or more companies and bring information back to their business to help improve

innovation.

Service Culture

A culture of service is an organizational culture that prioritizes customer service in all

goals, decisions, actions, and everyday operations. When an organization has a heart

for service, each employee is connected emotionally to a world-class service outcome.

Better yet, a service culture is thriving when it becomes the foundation of everything that

happens in your organization; when decisions, behaviors, strategies, meetings,

interactions, signage, forms, messages, etc. are all designed and executed to support

and sustain service delivery-to both internal and external customers.

Service delivery for customers can be seen in a factory. The place the service is
produced and is consumed interacting with the employees and other customers. E.g in
a classroom or in a training situation, students (customers) are sitting in the factory
interacting with the instructor and other students as they consume the educational
services.
Since these customers are present during the service production, customers can
contribute to or detract from the successful delivery of the service and to their own
satisfaction.

Importance of customers in service delivery

Customer participation at some level is inevitable in service delivery. Services are

actions or performances, typically produced and consumed simultaneously. In many
situations employees, customers, and even others in the service environment interact to
produce the ultimate service outcome. The customers receiving the service participate
in the service delivery process. He or she can contribute to the gap through appropriate
or inappropriate, effective or ineffective, and productive or unproductive behaviors.
Customers who are unprepared in terms of what they want to order can soak up the
customer service representative’s time as they seek advice. Similarly, shoppers who are
not prepared with their credit cards can “put the representative on hold”. While they
search for their credit cards or go to another room or even out of their cars to get them.
Meanwhile, other customers and calls are left unattended, causing longer wait times
and potential dissatisfaction.

Participation in service delivery

The level of participation – low, medium, high – varies across different services. In some
cases, all that is required is the customer's physical presence (low level of participation),
with the employees of the firm doing all of the service production work, as in the case of
a Ghazal/ musical concert. The listeners must be present to receive the entertainment
service. In other cases, consumer inputs are required to aid the service organization in
creating the service delivery (moderate level of participation).
Inputs can include information, effort, or physical possessions. All three of these are
required in the case of accounting services who prepares a client’s income tax return
effectively. Information in the form of tax history, marital status, and a number of
dependents. Effort in putting the information together in a useful fashion. Physical
Possessions such as receipts and past tax returns. In the case of long-term consulting
engagements involvement of the customers is high as they co-create the service.

Customer’s roles

Customers as a productive process

Service customers are referred to as “partial employees” of the organization. They are
human resources who contribute to the organization’s productive capacity. In other
words, if customers contribute effort, time or other resources to the service production
process, they should be considered as part of the organization.
Customer inputs can affect the organization’s productivity through both quality and
quantity of output. E.g. research suggest that in an IT consulting context:

● Clients who clearly articulate the solution they desire.

● Provide needed information in a timely manner.
● Communicate openly.
● Gain the commitment of key internal stakeholders.
● And raise the issues during the process before it is too late will get better service.

Customers as quality contributors to service delivery and satisfaction

Another role customers play in service delivery is that of the contributor to their own
satisfaction and the ultimate quality of the services they receive. Customers may care
little that they have increased the productivity of the organization through their
participation. But they likely care a great deal about whether their needs are fulfilled.
Effective customer participation can increase the likelihood of service delivery that their
needs are met and that the benefits the customer seeks are attained. Services such as
health care, education, personal fitness, and weight loss, where the service outcome is
highly dependent on the customers' participation. In such services, unless the
customers perform their roles effectively, the desired service outcomes cannot be
achieved.
Research has shown that in education, active participation by students – as opposed to
passive listening – increases learning the desired service output significantly.