There is much talk about how service design helps improve customer experience and has positive effects on overall satisfaction. However, it is not only the customer who should benefit from good service design. The service provider should also benefit. In fact, one of the first definitions of Service Design, by the co-founder of the Service Design Network, Birgit Mager, in 2004, included this dual perspective: “Service design creates services that are useful, usable and desirable from the customer’s perspective and efficient, effective and different from the provider’s perspective.”
The evolution of user-centered design
What happened to the supplier perspective?
It seems to me that, in the time that has passed since those first definitions, there has been more discussion about the customer’s perspective than about the provider’s, at least in the literature and tools available. It seems that we take for granted that companies know how to defend their own interests, and that the only thing we have to teach them from the service design is to “listen to the voice of the customer”, to have “empathy” and to improve their “value proposition“. It is true that many companies still have a hard time achieving this, and they would certainly benefit from focusing more on the customer’s perspective, but in my opinion, as designers, we must not fall into the error of ignoring the interests of the provider. Nor those of any other actor in the system, whether collaborators, allies, the general community, etc.
Beyond the customer experience
For many people, Service Design has become synonymous with Experience Design, or Customer Experience (CX) Design, ignoring precisely that to design a service well, we must carefully choreograph all the different interests within often complex systems. Customer, or user, interests are just one of those interests within the system, but they are far from the only ones.
Designing holistic service systems
If we prioritize only the customer experience, and ignore the interests of other actors in the system, we can easily fall into designing an unbalanced system, which tends to be unsustainable. For example, we may have initially happy customers, but dissatisfied employees. Or we may sacrifice profitability, and affect the interests of investors or owners. We may also be ignoring negative impacts on suppliers, allies, the community, ecosystems, etc.
Design within complex systems
Let’s think about a health service. It could be argued that the most important thing is the patient, their health, their life. But a health system is much more complex than that. There are different providers, including nurses, doctors, stretcher-bearers, assistants, etc. Their time is limited, their resources are scarce and sometimes expensive, and being able to generate well-being for them during the exercise of their work is critical for them to be able to provide a good service. All of this must be considered by the administrative staff of the health center, who in turn must balance income and costs, infrastructure maintenance, legal and regulatory compliance, among others.
But there are also government entities, insurers, regulatory bodies, and general opinion. Each has its own interests, and each part must mesh together to make the wheel turn. Designing a health service is not just about designing the patient experience. This is a fundamental aspect, perhaps it should be at the center, but it is far from being the only one. We must consider the different interests of all the actors in the system, and ideally, make them participate in the design process, co-creating value for everyone. The designer’s role must be to mediate between these different interests, generating agreements between the different parties, orchestrating benefits and compensations so that the system works in the most harmonious, efficient and effective way possible.
TPM, a case of conflicting interests
How to organize public transportation in a city, achieve a more efficient service and improve the quality of life of citizens? This was the challenge we faced at Blaster a few years ago, when a public entity (the Mayor’s Office of Medellín) hired our team to identify opportunities for improvement in the city’s public transportation system.
There are many solutions that improve the user experience. More comfortable buses and stops, more efficient payment methods, technology for managing routes and schedules, more professional drivers. The difficulty? An essentially private system, fragmented into more than 40 companies that in turn group together different bus owners, regulated but not managed by the local government, which also changes every 4 years. How to orchestrate the very different, and sometimes even opposing, interests of so many actors? Click here to read more about how we approached this project.
Effective service design: balancing multiple perspectives
Successful service design goes beyond the customer experience. It requires a deep understanding and optimization of business services that considers all actors in the system. Only then can we create truly sustainable and effective services.
Want to learn more about our service design methodology? Learn about our service design process and discover how we can help you create balanced and effective service systems.
