Why Bringing Service Design In-House?
How service design can help you craft & Implement your Service|Product
Let us not start with what is service design and why it important to adopt it. Let us take a look at this picture of the KOCHHAUS store in Germany and think about what it represents?
I think what differentiates this store picture from any other food store picture is the ‘Recipe Board’. If you also guessing this is a medium-size shop, not a big chain that is right. So what is the story?
Kochhaus decided to bring service design in the house. They decided to innovate in their customer experience delivery.
Why successful businesses apply service design innovation thinking?
1- Differentiate
How you respond to the needs of your customers plays a significant role in how people perceive your brand. Products and technologies can be easy to copy, which is why you can use service innovation to differentiate your business.
2- Deliver more value
Exceptional and consistent customer service, smooth order processing, inventory management, and troubleshooting all contribute to value creation and the happiness of a customer.
3- Generate more revenue
By focusing on service innovation, we can unlock new business opportunities and find new revenue streams.
Service design innovation helps businesses to create new or significantly improve service concepts. in a new way or existing market. It can be for example a new customer interaction or distribution channel, a system that improves the delivery process or new solutions in the customer interface.
Back to Kochhaus's story; their first step with service design innovation was to map their services and define their targeted customer segment.
Target customer: Their service is for { foodie & chef at home }. Customer Need { X who has way too little time }. Market Category {supermarket} . One Key Benefit { That offers pre-compiled recipes }.Unique Value { Offers all ingredients in one single shop for X who need to run thru the city}
Following it by ideation process to come up with a customer journey that attracts more customers, solve their problem, and deliver more value.
shopping based on recipes instead of going to the supermarket and wasting an hour of collecting everything on the list and 95% of the time you forget something. The Kochhaus’s experience is easy and human-centered design-focused.
supermarket stores measure success and customer attraction by having more products and offer them for convenient prices. But, not all of them paused to think about their customer need and pain-points and how they can design new experiences.
Probably its time to bring service design in house. For more further 3 reasons ;
- Need for inspiration
- Lack of knowledge and skills
- Need for additional manpower
There are two ways of bringing service design in-house :
Training: Enabling staff to solve service-design related challenges by themselves
Project-Based Work: Completing tasks by external professionals when internal resources or expertise are limited.
Service designers help you to think holistically. Help you to deliver the best-in-class experiences whether its digital service or physical.
To conclude, service design isn’t a new marketing strategy or customer service approach that your business needs. But it is a holistic approach that transforms your business and delivers a unique experience, value proposition, and improves the service all along the channels.