Service Design

Welcome to the service management show. On this month's show, we're going to be talking about service design. I'm Gary Blower. I'm a ITSM practice lead here at Eicode and I'm joined by my colleague from Eicode who I leave to introduce themselves. Hello, my name is Lara and I work as a senior service designer here at Ficode. So uh over the years I have been uh applied service design in wide range of different kind of a projects. So I have worked in F code uh two years now. Amazing. Right. So we're going to talk about service design the benefits of service design some of the challenges we face. We faced with service design but I thought I'd start by asking can you share your journey in service design? So how did you how did you get started? Yeah. Well, actually I how many years ago? Almost 10 years ago, I started to be interesting in customer experience and and this kind of a design approach and then I started to uh learn what is service design and this was a new term for me but it was so interesting and I started to learn more and then I went to school and study service design. So now I have a bachelor's degree in service design and and then I I started to uh have used that in my previous work and then then I started to to learn more and more and and once you learn the process you understand how the process go and and this kind of a design thinking after that I think you cannot think any project or process or development thing without using that kind of a approach. culture or process. Yes. Yes. Of course. And most of us in our careers, we fall into things without intending to. What was the thing that like when you started doing it, you realized this was something you really enjoy doing? Because there's people involved, right? Yeah. I think companies and and especially our customers sometimes they rush into technical solutions and they forgot the people who who is actually doing the work. So I I like to be with people. I like to understand how people operate, why they think as they think and what they need. So service design is kind of a cooperative approach when we we want to understand the human aspect. So that's why I I love service design. Yeah. And that's I think that's true for a lot of people in service management. Although it is often IT and technology, it's very much the people face facing um part of it. So you mentioned you've worked with several clients and and uh organizations over the years um you know developing uh or doing service design. What's what what's the main benefit to a business in kind of reviewing how they deliver their services and designing their services? I think the collaboration, understanding the business objectives because in service design there is like three uh focus things or three like cornerstones as you may say this uh people understanding the people and the processes and then understanding the business and the objectives and then understanding that what we actually can do with the technical solution. So those are like the three we need to understand. So if you get that understanding when when doing the project I think that's that's main benefit and also uh when you taking the teams and the stakeholders with the project and and take them and cooperate with them and co-create with them then they will uh when when you actually like release the the solution or service management process or then they will start to use that actually because there is less resistant of using the new tool and then because they have been involved in the process in the beginning and they understand that why we do this and how we use it because usually the the roles and the processes are not that clear starting this kind of a project. They say that yeah we do this like this and then there is this ops team and the different teams and they don't know how they work. So then we dive deep into their like daily basis work and then understand that how they actually use those tools and and how the processes should work and how we could make them even better for for the company. And you mentioned uh a little bit about sort of customer experience and and sort of customer value. So how do you determine how successful you've been with the service design in relation to those? Because there's when I start this kind of a project I want to always understand that what are the objectives of this what are the business objectives and how do we ensure that we we make good experience for the for service agents for example or the users who send the tickets or or the stakeholders. So so we need to uh uh document the objectives we want to achieve and how do we measure those. M so that's one important aspect and then when we get like this service agent uh want we want to increase the happiness of those employees maybe or then we want to receive maybe less of this kind of a support tickets. So this this kind of a measurements we need to follow and and and see are we able to like make the objectives. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I know we're both going to the um XLA event in next month and that's that's kind of another way of looking at the same way the same thing is it another way of measuring it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's one interesting aspect and how how can we like make this using this service design approach and and and these kind of a measurements and understanding the customers and how we measure the are they happy or not and combine those kind of approach. I think that's that's important and and then I think service design helps us to evaluate that what we need to change in our process so that we are able to reach those measurements when you've worked with a with a client or with your previous companies. What what have been some of the challenges that you faced uh in trying to both design the service and then see it through to to service transition and adoption. Oh no. Well uh as I said the companies tend to rush to the technical solution. So that's that's why like like one main struggle I always see that hey we have developed this and no one uses this and now the companies is like like at why why no one uses this and and we planned that and we wanted this kind of a tool or solution or or this kind of a process but but we don't get the results. So that's that's like one struggle and usually then service designer comes in and starts to like evaluate that what what do you do and and and co-create with the with the users? So do you find sometimes it's a question of taking things out that were put in? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes. Yeah. Exactly. And then then when when they hop into the tech technical side, I think they sometimes forget that that the resistance and then there might be some like resources or budget. So we don't want to use time in the air and beginning of the project to this design part or we don't want to use time to to map the stakeholders or the teams that the agent teams or business units that is going to use this this solution. So, so this is like we cross straight to the technical side and then start to implementing and then then during that time they start to realize that okay what actually are the requirements and how do we develop this and and what do we want to achieve by this transformation and and so on. So and you've mentioned sort of like collaboration and co-creation quite a lot. But h how how important is that to to the process you follow to to to do the service design? It's crucial. It's crucial. It's the main point that you take the people with creating the requirements and the processes and and the solution. So that's the main point and then you test with the actual users. uh you can you can create this kind of a prototypes or or just create this test process to cheer or somewhere and then just test do this kind of adoration with the users and um I know you've worked with a couple of very large uh clients the typically you know if you're looking to do a kind of business change around service delivery and service design what's what's the sort of time scales that you you're looking at for that it depends how many like business units do you collaborate with? So, so I think that's the main main thing that defines how long it takes. But usually it might be this kind of a short design sprint kind of a two weeks when we start to have this interview sessions or workshops and co-creation workshops and then define the requirements or then that might be like larger scale project when we start with the working with the teams and and map the stakeholders and the teams and then start to workshop with them and and then it might be like couple of months. Okay. Yes. Okay. So, so months rather than Yeah. Yeah. A couple of months rather than like 18 months, two years. Yeah. But actually it's it's very beneficial that service design is with the project when the technical implementation start because that's also the uh state of the project when we learn also. So we realize that okay this will not work. how do we make it better and how do we uh take the uh the people and the users during that time into the process. So, so that's also beneficial. So, I hope that the design don't just disappear and hey, this is like the concept and this is the requirements and this is documented processes and bye-bye. So, yeah, leave you to it and then nothing happens. Yeah. Yeah, that's usually that might be the case. But but yeah, the better results you get if if the service design stays. Yes. Hopefully not. Hopefully not. So through through the experience you've had, have you had any sort of unusual sort of services you've you've helped implement or anything that's sort of slightly out of the ordinary that you could share? ah like this kind of a h we one project which was really difficult for me it was uh this kind of a large project where many business units were involved and and then I hopped in in the m in the middle of the project. So it was also already like went through maybe one year and and uh and at the time the first releases should have done like during month and then I hopped into the project and then then we realized that okay we are definitely not ready to release at all and all the requirements uh they haven't been documented at all and they haven't uh discussed with the business units as much as they should have been and then they were like hey they haven't listened to us and we said that we need this kind of a functionalities in there and there is this legislation and requirements they need to follow so we cannot make make the implementation or the release before we get this this like legislation based functionalities running. So that was very very difficult to hop in in the mi middle of the project. So so then we started to work with the business units and cater to requirements and then reflect that which was already done and which needs to still be developed and and so on. So then we started to have this kind of a release plan step by step and which needs to be like released individually for the business units. this kind of a solutions and which needs to like two business units needs to release same time and so on. So that was really really difficult. And is there a a happy end to that story? Was it successful in the end? Yeah, actually we released just uh two functionalities and then then the they had in the middle of the this speaker kind of a business transformation. So, so that ended the project. But, but if we got service design like more early states, I think we would have been quicker to to release and then they would have have time to test those and actually get things working. Okay. So, that that's I'm thinking of like key lessons from some of these experiences. The earlier you you're able to engage the better really. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And some I have been discussing with some customers that they have for example they have been in implementing uh Jira service management and then they they changed the tool and then they just implemented that and and after the implementation and release and then the team started to work on it and then they said that okay we should have used service design and we should have created these new processes around this system and so on. So when when I talk to the customers they are always like saying that oh we should have done that. Yeah of course it's easy to have hindsight after the fact but but uh okay um so so within FOD this is a service we provide. Um where can people find out more information about uh you know what you do and what you get up to? Is it LinkedIn? Is that the best place? Yeah, LinkedIn you can contact me on LinkedIn and then I have wrote a blog post uh about this this subject. Do we have can we like add the link somewhere so that people can in the show notes. Yeah. Great. And then then um also you can contact me for more information. Oh yeah. Perfect. And obviously uh the blog post is on the ficcodes.com website. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, perfect. Right. Okay. Well, thank you very much, Laura. So, we'll wrap things up there. Um, so as usual, if you've enjoyed uh this content and this episode of the service management show, then do share this video podcast with your friends and colleagues. Um, if you want to leave us comments, you can do so in the comments on the YouTube video or on LinkedIn. And we do read all the comments and and respond. So, please do. Um, otherwise, if you can like and subscribe the video to help us get it out to more people, that would also be great. Uh, so easy to do to thank uh my guest this month who was Laura. Thank you so much. It was a pleasure. And we'll be back uh after the summer break with another episode of the service management show. So, I hope you'll join us for that as well.