Our approach to service design focuses on ensuring the service provides an excellent experience for those involved whilst being effective and efficient from an organisational perspective.
We’re confident that service design principles can improve even the smallest interaction between an organisation and its audiences. To show you how we’ve listed four top reasons for using an agency that specialises in service design:
Gain a fresh perspective and multidisciplinary expertise
Sometimes your internal teams have conflicting ideas or development only occurs in the same circles. Sometimes you’re just too close to the product/service or even the organisation itself. The list could go on. In reality sometimes you just need a new set of eyes to provide a fresh perspective and help identify opportunities users really value. Or even challenge preconceived internal ideas. We understand the challenges organisations face and our research-led approach means that we always relate back to real needs and opportunities.
We’ve found the best service design projects involve multidisciplinary teams and seek input from relevant stakeholders with various levels of seniority. Specialist service design teams often combine expertise from different disciplines including researchers, designers, strategists and marketers. Meaning all aspects of a service are considered and you benefit from experienced discipline specialists. At Make it Clear this means not only supporting with service definition but UX, branding and other capabilities to support the design of assets that may be identified as opportunities within the process.
An independent voice that removes internal silos
Within large companies, silos between teams can easily become a reality. The danger here is that teams only see projects from their point of view, which can be out of touch with the user and lack consideration for the wider service landscape.
Collaboration is at the core of a successful service design approach. Representatives from teams with service delivery responsibilities or interactions with users should be involved, no matter their seniority. Using an agency can play an important role in helping to facilitate discussions with various stakeholders. It can be useful to have an impartial point of view, independent from internal challenges and focused on the key objectives of the project. This also helps to create an equal voice from representatives in different levels of roles, as well as fostering good communication channels between teams going forward.
Practicality and feasibility of not only the service, but the design process
A delightful user experience is the end goal, but it’s vital to ensure it is not only possible but makes good business sense. Service design thinking used by service design agencies also considers the organisational and technological feasibility required for success.
Practicality and feasibility also relates back to the design process. Hiring a service design agency can mean everything is managed under one roof. Removing the need to manage multiple agencies for research, strategy, design etc. and the associated additional cost and time this can create.
Ensure a user-centric approach
Human-centred at its core, service design places focus on user needs but also considers everyone involved in the experience delivery. Depending on the organisation, many touchpoints may involve interactions with employees. Therefore, employee engagement, satisfaction, and happiness; or the ‘employee experience’ – is crucial to the customer experience. This type of holistic view can often be missed and difficult to manage within an internal team.
To learn more about service design and the benefits check out our report – Principles and benefits of service design for your organisation or book in for a clarity consultation for a free 30 min chat on how we can help your organisation with service design.
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We’d love to talk to you about how Make it Clear can support your organisation. Book a call here.