Why should you use Service Design in service management projects?

Today, organizations face growing expectations for seamless, intuitive, and effective services. Service management is often a crucial part of business processes and everyday operations, acting as the backbone that keeps business wheels turning. When systems change or businesses streamline their processes by adopting new service management solutions, managing these new ways of working and defining operations post-implementation can be challenging.

Understanding Service Design in the context of service management

Service Design is a human-centered approach focused on understanding users, stakeholders, business objectives, and context to develop meaningful and effective services. In IT Service Management (ITSM) and Enterprise Service Management (ESM), Service Design helps align technology and processes with user expectations and business outcomes. Co-creating requirements and new processes with the team and stakeholders around the system enables more efficient implementation by leading the teams to adopt the new system more readily when they feel involved in the project. This approach adds value to the business and ensures alignment with clearly defined business objectives, facilitating their achievement.

Leveraging Service Design methods in service management projects can bridge the gap between technology and user needs, significantly enhancing user experience, efficiency, and overall service value. Service Design methods and Design Thinking align well with ITIL4 principles:

• Focus on value.
• Start where you are.
• Progress iteratively with feedback.
• Collaborate and promote visibility.
• Think and work holistically.
• Keep it simple and practical.
• Optimize and automate.

A Service Design approach ensures teams get the most out of the new solution

The most impactful value we gain by using the Service Design approach is the level of collaboration. Collaboration between different teams enables them to learn from each other and understand the possibilities to develop better ways of working. In the long run, this results in more efficient processes and unified solutions that are better managed, which is business value.  

1. Understanding the structure of the teams and their needs: Possibilities learn from each other, understand and innovate new ways of working, understanding of roles, processes, and user journeys, leading to more streamlined operations.
2. Align business objectives: Ensures all stakeholders understand the objectives and reasons for the project.
3. Start with the current state: Early identification of user issues or process gaps through iterative development and co-creation with service agents and end-users ensures higher quality and smoother implementation.
4. Co-create and define future state: When discovering gaps and refining basic requirements, you should define and ideate future processes and possibilities. You can find valuable future development opportunities from this stage and create a roadmap and budget beforehand.
5. Test with smaller groups during development: During implementation, it’s important to understand the aspect of continuous learning. Test and validate your solutions quickly with a few users.

Addressing common challenges

Introducing Service Design into established service management processes can sometimes face obstacles, such as resistance to change, siloed structures, or limited resources. However, a Service Design approach can be especially beneficial for larger organizations managing multiple agent teams. By unifying different viewpoints, it helps break down silos and ensures solutions are robust, scalable, and aligned with real business needs. It’s also important to clearly understand both business objectives and resource constraints. 

Organizations can avoid post-implementation pitfalls and prevent an ongoing cycle of reactive changes by dedicating enough time and budget to thoroughly define requirements and plan a clear roadmap instead of rushing into technical solutions. Meanwhile, a full-scale Service Design process might not be necessary in smaller or more basic environments. Still, even a small amount of collaboration with service agent teams and end-users can improve usability and encourage higher solution adoption.

Here’s what you should consider when starting a Service Management project

Communicate clear benefits Emphasize how a collaborative, user-focused approach lowers friction, boosts efficiency, and encourages knowledge-sharing across different teams. By showcasing quick wins (For example, standardized escalation processes or more intuitive forms), you can validate the effectiveness of this strategy early on and gain broader support for continued improvements.

Promote cross-team collaboration Break down silos by establishing structured co-creation sessions involving the facilitator (service designer), service agents, and service management teams. Creating shared deliverables like joint requirements documents promotes ownership and transparency.

Start small and scale Pilot your service design approach on a focused area or single process. Track and measure the outcomes; use clear successes to build momentum and justify expanding service design methods across larger initiatives.

Closing thoughts

Adopting Service Design methods in service management projects brings together people, processes, and technology to meaningfully address user expectations and business goals. By focusing on real-world data, collaborative workshops, and iterative feedback loops, teams can develop more streamlined, user-friendly solutions that are easier to adopt and maintain.

So why don’t you consider utilising the Service Design approach to your next service management project?