What is Service Design?
Service Design is the practice of improving or designing new services. It synchronizes processes, technologies and interactions, taking into account the customer's perspective and motivations. This holistic approach fosters collaboration and the creation of value for customers, the organization and employees throughout a service's lifecycle. Source: Service Design Network
This practice is closely related to Design Thinking, as both are centered on people, co-creation and innovation.
However, the scope is different.
Design Thinking can be applied to a wide variety of complex, human-centered opportunities (e.g. products, solutions, concepts, business models, etc.), while Service Design is specific to services. It enables a holistic (global) understanding of the interactions between an organization and its customers, to align moments with business processes.
Different definitions and variations
Of course, Service Design is applied differently in different organizations.
For example, NASA groups together the research, analysis, synthesis, ideation, design, prototyping, testing and measurement expertise of their existing and future services. This includes the visible and invisible parts of improving both customer and employee experience, across all touchpoints (whether digital or not) and all interactions (whether physical or not). This includes all the roles and skills that help improve CX, EX and operational excellence.
In other organizations, Service Design has a more significant presence within the development of digital products, as these aim to provide services to users.
Some organizations position Service Design as a mindset for breaking down silos and fostering multidisciplinary work, in order to make better decisions and solve service-centric problems.
Another form of application consists in using Service Design as a tool for organizational design: by adopting this approach, we refocus on internal partners. This leads to an overhaul of processes, culture and structures, resulting in more agile and innovative organizations.
Finally, some organizations use Service Design to develop new strategies to ensure they are optimally positioned to deliver sustainable value to their customers and differentiate themselves in the marketplace.
Beyond the term "Service Design", what's most important is to bring together expertise to participate in dedicated initiatives, inviting them to think outside the product box and to look holistically at experiences outside existing structures.
Focus on the customer experience
Prioritizing the customer experience is essential.
Interdisciplinary collaboration encourages different departments to share their knowledge and build together, with distance and an external perspective.
In this experience-centric approach, teams are called upon to consider the entire customer journey, including physical interactions, to deliver a seamless, integrated experience.
To be able to step back from the organization's systems, processes and structures, teams need experienced facilitators, or consultants, to enable them to keep the customer's point of view in mind.
A never-ending loop
It's essential to understand that this perspective on global experiences never ends. Think, for example, of the volume of interactions and the diversity of customer profiles that require continuous improvement.
This is a valuable practice for fine-tuning your services so that they contribute to simplifying and even transforming customers' lives, all with efficiency and performance. By fine-tuning your services, you activate the employee experience and enable people to develop a common understanding of the whole system and align themselves naturally.
Trends in Service Design
Stimulating inclusion, ensuring consistency across different products and services within the same organization, integrating artificial intelligence into services, creating a positive impact on society, designing public services, supporting sustainable development are all strong trends.
To find out more :
Design Thinking: equipping teams to develop innovative solutions
