Service design

The service industry is rapidly growing, there is a servicification transformation ongoing in many sectors boosted by new digital opportunities. In e.g., the automotive industry, car OEMs are transforming their business models from selling physical products to selling services with the car as a platform. Services can also be related to partners, suppliers, and employees. For instance, there is an increasing expectation on companies from staff on effective internal services to keep up employee satisfaction.

What is Service Design?

Service design is the activity of planning and organizing people, infrastructure, communication, and material components of a service to improve its quality and customer interaction. It aims to design a service for the customer needs so that the service is user-friendly, competitive, and relevant. However, service design is not simply designing a service. It addresses the touchpoints that create a customer’s journey, while considering all relevant stakeholders and how they interact. Service design is critical when driving customer satisfaction, reducing retention, and boosting profits. 

Several components can be categorized as follows:

Props – Physical and digital artifacts (Including products) that are needed to perform the service successfully

People – Anyone who creates or uses the service, as well as individuals who may be indirectly affected by the service

Processes –Workflows, procedures, or rituals performed by either the employee or the user throughout a service

Service design

Service Design principles

There are several common service design principles, such as the ones proposed in “This Is Service Design Doing: Applying Service Design Thinking in the Real World”, by Adam Lawrence, Jakob Schneider, Marc Stickdorn, and Markus Edgar Hormess:

  • Human-centered: Consider the experience of all the people affected by the service
  • Collaborative: Stakeholders of various backgrounds and functions should be actively engaged in the service design process
  • Iterative: Service design is an exploratory, adaptive, and experimental approach, iterating toward implementation
  • Sequential: The service should be visualized and orchestrated as a sequence of interrelated actions
  • Real: Needs should be researched in reality, ideas prototyped in reality, and intangible values evidenced as physical or digital reality
  • Holistic: Services should sustainably address the needs of all stakeholders throughout the entire service and across the business

How do we support our customers in Service Design?

We support our clients with several aspects of Service Design such as

  • Business analysis
  • Value proposition development
  • Service blueprints
  • Persona development
  • User-story mapping

Our Service Design experience, business mindset, and result orientation combined with our deep service industry experience make us the perfect partner in improving customer satisfaction. We are happy to take an initial dialogue to discuss how we could support you in your Service Design transition!

Contact person

Martin Hessle