80% of companies believe they provide a perfect customer experience, yet only 8% of customers agree. This stark discrepancy often arises because companies fail to view their services from the customers' perspective. Service design thinking offers a powerful approach to bridging this gap by prioritizing the customer’s viewpoint in service creation and improvement.
Rethinking Services
Service design thinking is a method and mindset used to innovate and refine services with a strong focus on the customer. This approach involves re-evaluating processes, simplifying interfaces, and creating logical information hierarchies to enhance the user experience.
By prioritizing the customer journey, service design thinking helps develop competitive services that deliver a positive experience and is often applied in UX design to optimize user interactions.
Embracing Change
The core principle of service design thinking is to question everything—absolutely everything. This means critically examining all established practices. Instead of focusing solely on internal company needs, the emphasis should be on meeting customer requirements.
This approach often involves re-evaluating and altering existing processes, which can sometimes lead to resistance within the organization. To successfully manage these changes and mitigate potential upheaval, it is essential to involve all relevant internal and external stakeholders. Adhering to the 10 basic principles of service design thinking can guide this transformative process and ensure its successful implementation.
How Service Design Thinking Works
The process of service design thinking begins with a thorough analysis of the target audience and their needs. Services should be designed based on a clear understanding of their ultimate purpose, the underlying processes, the existing demands, and the service provider's capabilities. Tools such as personas, stakeholder maps, and customer journey maps are essential for capturing these insights. Furthermore, it is essential to analyze and optimize underlying service processes as needed.
Process design thinking and service design thinking are closely intertwined. To deliver a positive customer experience, it’s crucial that service, process, organization, information, and technology are seamlessly integrated and function together as a cohesive system. Ideas generated from these analyses are rigorously tested through prototypes, UX testing, and usability assessments. Findings are used to refine and optimize the service. After launching the revised or new service, the process starts again, emphasizing the importance of ongoing dialogue between the customer and the company.
“Service design thinking not only leads to new or improved services that offer increased customer satisfaction – it also paves the way for transformation.”
Pascal Gerber
Head of Marketing, Axon Ivy AG
A Successful Rethink
A prime example of successful service design thinking is found at the fast food giant McDonald's. Back in the 1940s, Dick and Mac McDonald set out to discover what their customers disliked most in their restaurants—namely, large menus and long waiting times. They then developed a new concept that eliminated both of these aspects. The menu was streamlined to focus on the most popular meal, hamburger and fries, and the processes and restaurant facilities were changed so there were just 30 seconds between a customer ordering and receiving their meal. To achieve this, the two owners sketched out their restaurant on a tennis court with chalk and simulated the individual work steps. The constant goal of improving services for their customers continues at McDonald's. The company began equipping branches with self-service terminals in 2003, aiming to increase customer comfort and take more orders.
Innovation in Software Services and Process Automation
Service design thinking is also prominent in software services and process automation. The Swiss start-up KLARA has taken a leading role in this field. KLARA is based on the Axon Ivy process automation platform and aims to use digital assistants to help SMEs and private households digitalize communications with authorities, tax offices, insurance companies, banks, and other service providers. KLARA software also automates administrative processes such as accounting and payroll using artificial intelligence, making tasks easier, reducing errors, and increasing efficiency and speed.
The Impact of Service Design Thinking on Business Transformation
Service design thinking not only leads to new or improved services that enhance customer satisfaction but also paves the way for transformation within the company. Established products are completely redesigned with the user in mind, and teams collaborate beyond established work processes. This new way of working in multi-disciplinary teams and the complete focus on the user makes companies more agile and competitive.
