Service Design - 4imprint Promotional Products Blog

4imprint.com

Serv ice Des ign

© 2013 4imprint, Inc. All rights reserved

Serv ice des ign: Des igning exper iences that create valueDoing business is a lot like playing hockey. To be successful, you need a skilled and well-balanced team. You need a game plan that directs you towards success, and everyone on the team needs to know the role they play in executing the game plan. Let’s be honest, minus the pads, big wooden sticks and the various types of checking, that sounds a lot like what you do to build a successful business, right?

The most important thing a hockey player can do once they hit the ice is gain control of the puck, and with the help of their teammates, guide the puck across the ice to score a goal. Wayne Gretzky, the Great One, was extremely good at that. When he was asked to explain how he became so good, he said, “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.”

That quote becomes significant for businesses when you realize that in a business context the puck is really your customer base.

In a blog post for the Harvard Business Review®, author Ravi Sawhney explains that businesses operate in an environment of constant change. And while customers are certainly not simple, they can be “both logical and irrational, motivated by opportunity and emotion, full of contradiction, impacted by economic conditions, and often difficult to define,” they more or less remain the same over time.1 That being the case, Sawhney proposes, “If you want to know how to be best positioned for business success, you have to understand where [your customers] are going.”2

So what can you do to become more successful at anticipating where the puck’s going to be? May we humbly suggest drafting a Gretzky? And by Gretzky, we mean service design. What is it? Put simply, when you have two coffee shops right next to each other that sell the same product at the same price, service design is the reason why you walk into one shop and not the other.3

At its heart, service design is about understanding customer behavior, and using

that understanding to design new offerings, or change existing ones, to deliver a

better experience for customers. In today’s hyper-competitive environment where

products and services are quickly commoditized, service design provides a means

of creating customized consumer experiences that drive unrealized value and

increase ROI.

1 Sawhney, Ravi. “People Are the Puck.” Harvard Business Review. Harvard Business School Publishing, 01 Sept. 2011. Web. 25 Mar. 2013. <http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/09/people_are_the_puck.html>.

2 Ibid3 Stickdorn, Mark, and Jakob Schneider. This Is Service Design Thinking: Basics - Tools - Cases. Amsterdam: BIS,

2012. Print.


The economic case for serv ice des ignAuthor Joseph Pine lays out the economic case for service design in his TED®

Talk “What consumers want.” In his presentation, Pine charts the evolution of

economic value over time.4 He illustrates it this way:

• Commodities—This is where it all started. Originally, commodities involved

extracting things (crops from the ground, fruit from trees, etc.) and selling

them. The value comes from having the commodities to sell or trade

º Example: A coffee bean. As a commodity it has a value of 2¢ to 3¢.

• Goods—Goods were the next evolution of economic value. Goods involved

taking commodities and turning them into something. The economic value

comes from what’s put into making the finished good.

º Example: Packaged coffee (roasted, ground and packaged on a shelf). As

a “good,” that same coffee bean now has a value of 10¢ to 15¢.

• Services—Services developed from taking goods and customizing them,

leading to the birth of a service-based economy. Once a service becomes

common, however, it starts to become commoditized.

º Example: Brewed coffee. Now, as a result of performing the

service of brewing, the value of the coffee is 50¢ to $1 for a cup.

• Experiences—Experience, the outcome of service design, is what

results when you customize a service. This is where the new

economic value is being created—think about the rise in value from

the simple brewed coffee service supplied by Burger King® to the

experience of meeting for coffee at Starbucks®.

º Example: Starbucks, where the experience has a value of $2 to

$5 per drink.

Service design is a means of aligning your organization in terms of

people, infrastructure, and other resources, to best enable it to move

from offering goods and services to offering experiences. In today’s economy,

consumers have tons of choices for both goods and services. Organizations that

provide authentic experiences, where consumers leave feeling better about

themselves and, therefore the brand, are the organizations that will prosper.

The authentic part of that equation is just as important as the experience part.

Pine points out, “… authenticity is … becoming the new consumer sensibility—

the buying criteria by which consumers are choosing who [they’re] going to buy

from, and what they’re going to buy.”5 This is where service design can really

create impact. If done properly, you’re designing your experience considering how

4 Pine, Joseph. “Joseph Pine: What Consumers Want.” TED: Ideas worth Spreading. TED Conferences, LLC, Jan. 2009. Web. 25 Mar. 2013. <http://www.ted.com/talks/joseph_pine_on_what_consumers_want.html>.

5 Pine, Joseph. “Joseph Pine: What Consumers Want.” TED: Ideas worth Spreading. TED Conferences, LLC, Jan. 2009. Web. 25 Mar. 2013. <http://www.ted.com/talks/joseph_pine_on_what_consumers_want.html>.


customers will interact with you across the entire company. Providing a consistent

experience across all touch points is vital to building authenticity. The key is to

act like you, and do what you say you’ll do at each point in the experience. That

communicates authenticity. Fail to do that, and Pine says, “That’s when you’re

perceived as fake, as a phony company—advertising things that you’re not.”6

Service design, like any major business initiative, will require investment. Peter

Merholz, president of Adaptive Path and an internationally recognized thought

leader on user experience, emphasizes that point in his Harvard Business Review

article titled “Customer Experience Is an Investment, Not a Cost.” He says:

Typically, design is considered a cost—a necessary element of business,

the expense of which should be managed to be as small as possible. But

when you realize that successful design has an impact, driving heretofore

unrealized value, you must think of it as an investment, akin to marketing

or product development, where what matters is a return, and where

spending less can actually be detrimental to your top- and bottom-lines.7

Merholz explains that the companies that understand this principle best are

able to “… connect core business problems, customer behavior, and financial

metrics.”8 In other words, companies that invest in service design, aligning

their organizations to improve the interaction between the organization and

its customers, will start to realize untapped value from solving core business

problems in ways that improve the customer experience.

Merholz outlines a process for quickly identifying business opportunities

and determining the potential financial impact of using service design to

achieve the desired behavior change. He calls it the “linking elephants,”

and it goes a little something like this:9

• Business Opportunity— What is the specific opportunity?

• Desired Behavior— What exactly are you hoping your customer will do?

• Behavior Metric—What’s your target metric for your desired behavior? What

could it amount to in terms of units?

• Value Metric— What’s the value in dollars of the desired behavior?

• Financial Outcome— Your Behavior Metric multiplied by your Value Metric

equals your financial outcome.

6 Ibid7 Merholz, Peter. “Customer Experience Is an Investment, Not a Cost.” Harvard Business Review. Harvard

Business School Publishing, 19 May 2009. Web. 25 Mar. 2013. <http://blogs.hbr.org/merholz/2009/05/customer-experience-is-an-investment-not-a-cost.html>.

8 Ibid9 Ibid


Here’s Merholz’s example, showing how you could quickly gauge the

impact of investing in a “suggested items” area prior to check out on

an e-commerce website:10

• Business Opportunity— Increase purchases per visit.

• Desired Behavior—Customers purchase one additional item per visit.

• Behavior Metric— 5% of visits lead to an additional sale. With 20,000 visits

per week, that equates to 1000 additional items per week.

• Value Metric— Average item price is $12.74.

• Financial Outcome— $12,740 of additional revenue per week.

The linking elephants is a simple tool you can use to quantify that

untapped value that Merholz mentions. And will that investment yield

a return? Put simply, the untapped value can be substantial. Oracle®

Corporation’s most recent Customer Experience Impact Report reveals

that an astounding 86% of consumers would pay more for a better

experience.11 Equally astounding, 89% of consumers give a competitor a

try after a bad experience.12 The report goes on to quantify what those

percentages mean in potential increased revenues for certain industries.

Hold on to your hats … according to the Oracle report, the U.S. airline

industry could have made an additional $8.94 billion in 2010 by providing

a better customer experience.13 Wireless carriers, an additional $14.65

billion each year.14

These are not small numbers. So the real question becomes, can you afford

NOT to adopt service design? Can you afford to gamble with the commoditization

of your products and services? There’s really only one reasonable answer to

that question.

Clearly, investing in service design could generate a significant return for your

organization. But just like with any investment, you have to be clear about your

goals, you have to make a plan for reaching those goals, you need to do some

research and you need to be able to measure your progress so you can adjust

along the way. That’s how you maximize your return, and it’s no different with

service design.

10 Ibid11 Oracle Corporation. 2011 Customer Experience Impact Report. Rep. Oracle Corporation, Jan. 2012. Web. 28

Mar. 2013. <http://www.oracle.com/us/products/applications/cust-exp-impact-report-epss-1560493.pdf>.12 Ibid13 Oracle Corporation. 2011 Customer Experience Impact Report. Rep. Oracle Corporation, Jan. 2012. Web. 28

Mar. 2013. <http://www.oracle.com/us/products/applications/cust-exp-impact-report-epss-1560493.pdf>.14 Ibid


Sett ing your goals and doing your researchIf you want to understand someone, walk a mile in their shoes. It’s a common

saying that we’ve all heard for years. But the secret to its staying power is its

simple truth. Understanding someone, and understanding their motivation, takes

time and study. Service design is built on that practice. But before you start, it’s

important to know where you’re headed. While it’s true that service design is

about taking a holistic view of how your customer interacts with your company,

it’s important, as Peter Merholz pointed out, to identify the core business

problems that you’re trying to diagnose before you start.

One way to start would be to think about what stops your customers from

committing to purchase from you? Obviously the point of creating great customer

experiences is to convert those experiences into purchases. So as you begin to

think about the goals of your service design efforts, consider what customer

needs you must satisfy to motivate them to commit to a purchase.

Merholz, in another blog post for the Harvard Business Review, articulates three

specific sets of requirements that customers need to satisfy before they’ll be

prepared to commit to a purchase.15 They are:

• Functional— Does the product or service meet my basic needs?

• Intellectual—Through comparison, I’m confident I’m getting the best deal?

• Emotional— Could I have a relationship with this brand?

Merholz found that until consumers were able to satisfy all three sets

of requirements, they would go through the motions but never commit

to purchasing. In the context of service design, when you analyze your

customers’ interactions with your company, look for the areas where

customers seem to be on the path to purchasing, and then drop off.

When looking at customer experience with your brand from a holistic perspective,

are they able to fulfill all three sets of requirements? Or do you need to provide a

means for meeting a functional, intellectual, or emotional requirement along the

way? Answering that question may be the key to creating the valuable experience

your customers are looking for that allows them to commit to purchasing. Once

you have some initial goals or targets in place, it’s time to start walking in your

customers’ shoes and mapping the journey.

15 Merholz, Peter. “It’s Not Who Your Customers Are, It’s How They Behave.” Harvard Business Review. Harvard Business School Publishing, 11 Feb. 2009. Web. 26 Mar. 2013. <http://blogs.hbr.org/merholz/2009/02/its-not-who-your-customers-are.html>.


Customer journey mappingOne of the realities of business success is as your company grows, a smaller and

smaller percentage of your employees actually interact with customers. This can

lead to a natural, gradual detachment from what it’s really like to interact with

and buy from your company. Since service design is all about understanding

your customers’ behavior and providing them with experiences that provide

value for them, losing touch with what their experiences are like is dangerous.

That’s exactly why so many companies that embrace service design also embrace

customer journey mapping.

Harley Manning, co-author of Outside In: The Power of Putting Customers at the

Center of Your Business, explains the importance of customer journey mapping in

his recent blog post for the Harvard Business Review:

What’s the best way to optimize your customer experience?

Why not fix it where it happens? Improve the experience

on your website. Improve the experience in your retail

locations or call centers. This strategy makes perfect sense,

and it aligns nicely with the way your company is probably

organized—with the website, retail locations, and contact

centers each in their neat little silo.

But based on our research, this natural strategy doesn’t

work because it lacks any understanding of the larger, cross-

channel journeys that your customers take.16

In the post, Manning explains the mapping process is about determining customer

goals, perceptions and behaviors in a holistic way. He says, “Customer journey

maps visually illustrate those findings by showing the series of events that make

up a customer’s interactions with a firm over time. The maps help companies find

problems that occur in the ‘white space’ as a customer passes from one channel

to another.”17

16 Manning, Harley. “Customer Experience Should Be Part of Your Business.” Harvard Business Review. Harvard Business School Publishing, 29 Aug. 2012. Web. 26 Mar. 2013. <http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/08/customer_experience_should_be.html>.

17 Ibid


We mentioned Starbucks earlier as an example of an experience versus a good

or service. Here’s an example customer journey map developed by Little Springs

Design documenting the customer experience at a Starbucks location, noting both

positive and negative aspects of the visit:18

Here’s another example from Lego® mapping the experience for an executive

visiting them in New York City:19

18 Starbucks Experience Map. 2010. Photograph. Littlespringsdesign.com. Little Springs Design. By Little Springs Design. Little Springs Design, 28 Mar. 2010. Web. 28 Mar. 2013. <http://old.littlespringsdesign.com/wp-content/themes/LSD%20theme/images/experiencemap1.pdf>.

19 Temkin, Bruce. “LEGO’s Building Block For Good Experiences.” Customer Experience Matters. Temkin Group, 3 Mar. 2009. Web. 28 Mar. 2013. <http://experiencematters.wordpress.com/2009/03/03/legos-building-block-for-good-experiences/>.


Manning points to a couple of examples of companies who have effectively

utilized customer journey mapping to better understand their customers and how

they can create better experiences for them:

FedEx®20

The shipping giant went so far as to create a Channel Strategy and

Orchestration Team in 2008 that was organized outside of any of the

existing company silo. The team utilized customer journey mapping to

understand what customers experienced when they transitioned from one

channel within the company to another, like from the website to a local

FedEx location or a phone agent.

The mapping process helped the team clearly identify opportunities for

improvement in all areas of the company. Since the Channel Strategy and

Orchestration Team doesn’t exist in any siloed unit, it’s been able to more

effectively coordinate the efforts for improvement across the company

channels. FedEx’s focus on the customer experience is paying off, and the

company was recently voted the industry leader in customer experience

according to the 2013 Temkin Experience Ratings Survey, an annual survey

of ten thousand U.S. consumers that ranks two hundred and forty-six

companies in nineteen industries.21

Virgin Media®22

Virgin Media, the largest Virgin company in the world, operates

a mobile network, provides broadband service, and home phone

and pay TV services. The challenge for Virgin Media was to create

a consistent and valuable experience across multiple channels

and product lines. The company embarked on an aggressive

customer journey mapping project focused on six specific

customer journeys within their company, including subscribing,

paying, and customer support. Manning describes the ever-

evolving customer journey map as, “a giant sheet of brown butcher paper

covered in red pieces of tape and multi-colored sticky notes. It links all six

journeys together in a continuous flow that crosses five functional silos

within the business.”23


21 Temkin, Bruce. “FedEx Leads Parcel Delivery Services in 2013 Temkin Experience Ratings.” FedEx Leads Parcel Delivery Services in 2013 Temkin Experience Ratings. Temkin Group, 21 Mar. 2013. Web. 28 Mar. 2013. <http://experiencematters.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/fedex-leads-parcel-delivery-industry-in-2013-temkin-experience-ratings/>.


23 Ibid


Virgin Media uses customer journey mapping in conjunction with the

Net Promoter Score system to track how their changes to the customer

experience changes their customers’ opinion of the company. Since

embarking on the initiative, Virgin Media has seen an eighteen-point

increase in their net promoter score24, which represents a significant

improvement in customer opinion. In addition, customer churn has been

reduced by an impressive twenty percent.25

Mapping the customer journey gives you a holistic view of how your company

treats customers, and will give you insight into what the overall experience of

buying from your company is like. The key takeaway here is to focus on the

customers’ experiences and not on your own internal organizational structure.

Fix the problems that customers experience as they transition from one business

channel to another to create a truly valuable customer experience.

Design personasNow that you’ve got a map of your customers’ interactions with your

company, a map that you can use to identify opportunities to improve their

overall experience, it’s vital to define just exactly who your customers really

are. A design persona is just that. Officially, it’s defined as:

Models of key behaviors, attributes, motivations, and goals of a

company’s target customers. A persona is created from primary research

with real customers and takes the form of a vivid narrative description of

a single person who represents a behavioral segment. Organizations use

personas to guide the design of products, channels, and messaging.26

One of the key aspects of that definition is the fact that personas are created

from primary research. Design personas should be an embodiment of what your

research tells you. You’re bringing your customers to life, but the trick is to do so

in a way that accurately segments customers by behaviors. Steve Mulder, Director

of User Experience & Analytics for NPR® Digital Services, in his book The User Is

Always Right: A Practical Guide to Creating and Using Personas for the Web says

this about design personas, “Personas are expanding from a design tool you use

to decide how to implement a strategy into a strategic tool you use to help define

a strategy in the first place.”27

24 Satmetrix Systems, Inc. “Virgin Media: Embracing the Net Promoter® Discipline at Virgin Media - Putting the Customer at the Heart of the Business.” Satmetrix. Satmetrix Systems, Inc., 2010. Web. 28 Mar. 2013. <http://www.satmetrix.com/documents/pdfs/VirginMedia-CaseStudy.pdf>.

25 Satmetrix Systems, Inc. “Virgin Media: Embracing the Net Promoter® Discipline at Virgin Media - Putting the Customer at the Heart of the Business.” Satmetrix. Satmetrix Systems, Inc., 2010. Web. 28 Mar. 2013. <http://www.satmetrix.com/documents/pdfs/VirginMedia-CaseStudy.pdf>.

26 Rapide. “The Future of Customer Experience.” The Future of Customer Experience. SlideShare Inc., 30 May 2012. Web. 28 Mar. 2013. <http://www.slideshare.net/rapideuk/the-future-of-customer-experience>.

27 Mulder, Steve, and Ziv Yaar. The User Is Always Right: A Practical Guide to Creating and Using Personas for the Web. Berkeley, CA: New Riders, 2007. Print.


When developing a design persona, you want to make them as detailed as you

can. Really flesh them out, and make them as real as possible. Include a picture

that’s representative of the group the persona represents. Give him or her a

name, and detail their background. Where do they live? What do they do for a

living? What’s their family like? What are their hobbies? Most importantly, what

is their experience goal with your company? What are they hoping for from

your brand?

Again, the personas are there to help you develop your specific strategy in

conjunction with the customer journey map. As Mulder puts it, “Personas give

you a valuable framework for creating and prioritizing business initiatives, and a

way to enable more effective distribution and alignment of strategy throughout

the organization.”28

You’ve framed your goals, and now you have your customer journey map and

design personas to check your assumptions against. Set your final strategy based

on the research presented by those two tools, and start designing a more valuable

experience for your customers.

Putt ing serv ice des ign into act ionWe’ve talked about service design as a holistic approach for creating experiences

that add value for your customers, and that distinguishes your brand from

competitors. We’ve talked about the economic case for service design, and how

it’s an investment in your relationship with your customers. Now it’s time to make

change. In order to make that happen, you need to treat your services with the

same level of design and detail as you would if you were engineering a car or a

building. You need a detailed blueprint.

The serv ice bluepr intThe key to service design and delivering a valuable experience is making

that experience both authentic and consistent. Consistency is a tough thing

with services because they so often depend on people, and people can be

notoriously inconsistent. That’s precisely where the service blueprint comes

in. The service blueprint is exactly what it says it is, a specific and detailed

design for how a particular service should be performed.

The service blueprint’s goal is to help your organization move beyond depending

on an individual to deliver “great service,” and instead move to a consistent and

authentic customized service that delivers an exceptional experience for your

customers … consistently and without fail.

28 Ibid


G. Lynn Shostack, senior vice president in charge of the Private Clients Group

at Bankers Trust Company and former chair of the American Marketing

Association’s special task force on service marketing, makes the case for service

blueprints in an article she authored for Harvard Business Review. In the article,

she emphasizes the importance of taking the same disciplined approach to

designing services as most companies do to designing products. She says, “Better

service design provides the key to market success, and more important,

to growth.”29

The service blueprint is designed to guide companies through exploring all of

the issues related to creating and managing a service. In order to create a service

blueprint, you need to:30

• Identify processes— What are the things that will constitute

a service?

• Isolate fail points— Where could things go wrong and what

would happen if they did?

• Establish the time frame— What’s the standard execution

time for the service you’re designing? You would use this for

calculating the cost of performing the service.

• Analyze profitability— What does your profitability look like

under normal circumstances? How would delays affect your

profitability?

Graphically lay these elements out to create a literal blueprint of how the service

would be performed. At the design stage, the key is to consider every interaction

between your customers and your company. Things that are considered to

be good personal service, like a great attitude and attentiveness, should be

incorporated into the hiring, training and performance measurement practices

of the company.31

The real advantage of the service blueprint is that it allows you to map out

the entire service and its various customer interactions on paper and test your

assumptions. Really walk through it thoroughly to find the bugs and rectify them

before the service even makes it off the paper. This will save you time and

money, and also protect your brand from delivering poor experiences to your

customers. Consider testing the service as a “prototype,” and iterating quickly

based on feedback.

29 Shostack, G. Lynn. “Designing Services That Deliver.” Harvard Business Review. Harvard Business School Publishing, Jan. 1984. Web. 26 Mar. 2013. <http://hbr.org/1984/01/designing-services-that-deliver/ar/1>.

30 Ibid31 Shostack, G. Lynn. “Designing Services That Deliver.” Harvard Business Review. Harvard Business School

Publishing, Jan. 1984. Web. 26 Mar. 2013. <http://hbr.org/1984/01/designing-services-that-deliver/ar/1>.


Handing your customers the controlsSpeaking of feedback, the last key aspect of service design to keep in mind is

the part where you check your progress and make adjustments as you iterate

your new design. We’ve established that service design can be a critical

investment for your organization, helping to align your company and its

customers to create experiences that provide real value. “Align” is the key

word here. It means “to bring into cooperation or agreement with a particular

group, party, cause, etc.”32 In the case of service design, that’s an extremely

appropriate definition, because to effectively utilize service design, you’ll be

cooperating with your customers to design a mutually beneficial experience.

And in order to do that, you’ll need to listen and give your customers a certain

degree of control over your brand as you iterate.

Giving up control can sound frightening, but service design is a collaborative

animal. It only works if you focus on listening and learning about your customers

and understanding their behaviors. Knowing who they are, what they want, and

what you can do to make their experience more memorable is the goal of service

design. Once you’re able to answer those questions, you may find that the results

require you to give your customers more or less control over your brand.

Tim Leberecht, chief marketing officer of NBBJ and founder of the award

winning “Design Mind” print and online magazine, details the concept of

“usefully losing control of your brand.” In his TED Talk, “3 ways to (usefully)

lose control of your brand,” Leberecht describes two very different

approaches for how organizations can use varying amounts of control when

designing their experiences, ultimately making customers happier.

Give customers more controlAs we’ve discussed, service design is a deliberate cooperative effort

between a business and its customers focused on creating valuable experiences

that make customers happier and, as a result, differentiate the brand from

competitors. In his talk, Leberecht provides a few examples of brands that gave

customers an unprecedented level of control over their businesses in an effort to

create a unique customer experience.

Radiohead’s release of In Rainbows33

Leberecht points to this example as an extreme collaboration with

customers in terms of pricing. When Radiohead released “In Rainbows” in

32 “Align.” Definition of Align. Dictionary.com, n.d. Web. 26 Mar. 2013. <http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/align>.

33 Leberecht, Tim. “Tim Leberecht: 3 Ways to (usefully) Lose Control of Your Brand.” TED: Ideas worth Spreading. TED Conferences, LLC, Oct. 2012. Web. 26 Mar. 2013. <http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_leberecht_3_ways_to_usefully_lose_control_of_your_reputation.htmlhttp>.


the fall of 2007, the band decided to offer it online only with a pay-as-you-

like model. For a limited time, consumers could download the album and

pay whatever they thought it was worth, even if that price was free.

The experiment created a lot of buzz for the album, and initial sales were

up from previous Radiohead releases. The band realized they could create

a better and more exciting experience for their customers by eliminating

the price barrier to listening to their new music and turning the control of

pricing over to their fans.

The launch of Microsoft® Kinect®34

Leberecht highlights the case of Microsoft’s popular Kinect motion

controller for its Xbox gaming system. When the device was

initially released, it was quickly hacked. Microsoft’s first reaction

was to fight the hacks and frantically publish software updates to

combat them.

But the software giant ended up changing course once it realized that

allowing the hacks was actually creating a better experience for its

customers. It supported the gaming community by allowing for more

functionality, it created buzz for the product, and it helped create a sense

of co-ownership between the company and its gaming customers. The

“hackability” of the Kinect has spawned an entire ecosystem around the

device, similar to Apple’s App Store. It seems clear, according to a recent

New York Times article, that the openness of the Kinect contributed to

it getting into the Guinness Book of World Records for fastest-selling

consumer device ever.35 And it’s still rolling …

Give customers less controlUnderstanding customer behavior can sometimes lead to surprising results. For

example, sometimes the right answer is to give your customers less control over

their experience. That might be exactly what they’re looking for. To make the

point, Leberecht offers a simple observation, “Giving people less control might be

a wonderful way to counter the abundance of choice and make them happier.”36

He offers two powerful examples of how service design has lead to great

customer experiences by limiting choice.

34 Ibid35 Walker, Rob. “Freaks, Geeks and Microsoft: How Kinect Spawned a Commercial Ecosystem.” The New York

Times. The New York Times, 03 June 2012. Web. 28 Mar. 2013. <http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/03/magazine/how-kinect-spawned-a-commercial-ecosystem.html?pagewanted=all>.



Nextpedition®37

The service from American Express® designed for travel enthusiasts in

their 20’s and 30’s creates an exciting vacation experience where the

destination and itinerary are completely unknown until the journey

begins. The itinerary is revealed daily via a smartphone app. The service

creates a completely customized and unique experience by taking control

completely away from the customer.38 The service has since racked up over

two million likes on Facebook.39

Interflora®40

The UK-based florist monitored Twitter® looking for users who were

having a bad day. When they found one, they sent them a free

bouquet of flowers. A great experience where the customer had

no control over the outcome, but it made them happier according

to their joyous replies back to the company. The campaign led to

thousands of social mentions which helped boost Interflora in search

rankings as well.41

While it’s clear that control is a key part of successfully implementing service

design, Leberecht concludes his presentation with the same point that

Joseph Pine made at the end of his: When engaging customers, he emphasizes,

“At the end of the day, as hyper connectivity and transparency expose companies’

behavior in broad daylight, staying true to their true selves is the only sustainable

value proposition.”42 Authenticity matters, especially when you begin to give

greater control over your brand to your customers. Service design requires

openness in order to really transform products and services into experiences.

Conclus ionWe started this Blue Paper talking about hockey, and the importance of being

able to anticipate where the puck is GOING to be. In hockey, that’s everything.

In business, that same principle applies. The key is to know your customer to the


38 McCracken, Grant. “The Revolution Inside AmEx’s Nextpedition.” Harvard Business Review. Harvard Business School Publishing, 6 Feb. 2012. Web. 26 Mar. 2013. <http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/02/american_express_has_launched.html>.

39 Schmid, Corinne. “Enterprise Gamification.” Enterprise Gamification by ItzCorinne. SlideShare Inc., 26 Sept. 2011. Web. 28 Mar. 2013. <http://www.slideshare.net/itzCorinne/enterprise-gamification-by-itzcorinne>.


41 Essex, Mike. “Using Free Stuff to Leverage SEO and Online Brand Building.”Koozaicom. Koozai Ltd., 5 Apr. 2011. Web. 28 Mar. 2013. <http://www.koozai.com/blog/search-marketing/using-free-stuff-to-leverage-seo-and-online-brand-building-756/>.



4imprint serves more than 100,000 businesses with innovative promotional items throughout the United States,

Canada, United Kingdom and Ireland. Its product offerings include giveaways, business gifts, personalized gifts,

embroidered apparel, promotional pens, travel mugs, tote bags, water bottles, Post-it Notes, custom calendars,

and many other promotional items. For additional information, log on to www.4imprint.com.

point of understanding their behavior and motivations. If you can get there,

you can anticipate where they’re headed and meet them there with an amazing

experience that makes them happier about your brand.

Service design is the application of that concept. As we discussed, today

economic value is being created by experiences: Authentic, consistent

experiences that make consumers happy. Service design provides a

comprehensive approach to learning about customers, then using what

you learn to systematically design a customized service that can be

delivered consistently to create an exceptional customer experience.

Tools like customer journey mapping, design personas and the service

blueprint will help you understand your customers’ behaviors. You can use that

understanding to create new customized services to meet the needs of your

customers, improving the holistic experience of interacting with your company.

Products and services are quickly commoditized today, and service design provides

a means of differentiation through customized consumer experiences that drive

unrealized value and increase ROI. Time to suit up and hit the ice. Just remember,

make sure to skate to where the puck is going to be.

Documents

Service Design - 4imprint Promotional Products Blog