Service Design 101: Theory and Case Study in Fleet Management System (FMS)
Recently, learning about service design has become my interest after one of my former colleagues asked me to dig it for our freelancing project. Since then, I read quite a lot of interesting literatures and joined several online courses to speed up the learning process. Service design is essential since people engages with service in daily basis. Also, as a product strategist, I find that the approach is very useful to make a big difference to ensure service that we deliver are efficient and provide a great experience. Hopefully, this summary and case study example will help you to start your interest in learning service design, get you to enjoy the learning process, and get benefit from the approach as much as I do.
PART 1 : Service Design 101
Definition and why it’s interesting
When you have two coffee shops, right next to each other, and each sell the exact same coffee at the exact same price, service design is what makes you walk into one and no the other. -31 Volts Service Design-
Service design term was emerged in 1982 by Lunn Shostack and became global trend in modern economy in 1990s. It’s a holistic, multi-disciplinary, and integrative field to improve service and make it more usable, desirable, effective, and efficient to users. Service design works by creating cohesive experience and interactions between each stakeholder involved in the service as well as improve effectiveness of internal process. In more explorative and generative sides, service design approach could be implemented to explore and forecast new product-service system, conduct flow walkthroughs, spot problems early, and make adjustment quickly on paper.
Core principle in Service Design
By nature, service design unities multiple elements and stakeholders in collaborative design process. Our job as service designer is to help stakeholders to articulate their touchpoint and so we can map all the process and create cohesive experience within the service, with core principles as follow:
Service Design needs to be exact to avoid failures in the service experience due to ignorance or miscommunication within stakeholders. The services that are designed also need to be feasible to produce, scalable in size and financially viable. Keep in mind that service design is not a simply about service looks, but it goes beyond the visual and reshape multiple touchpoint. It isn’t just talking about service recovery or fixing after sales problem, it discovers effective process and business model by designing a service journey that people value.
PART 2 : Service Blueprint
What is service blueprint
One of service design’s eventual outputs is the service blueprint which details all interactions with a customer. It’s a diagram that shows the relationship between different service components, such as people, props (physical or digital evidence), and processes, that are directly tied to specific customer touch points. It goes deeper to combine customer’s experience with all business stakeholders’ actions and process which both visible and invisible to customers.
Why use it
Service blueprint is companion to customer journey maps in order to articulate big picture of how service is orchestrated. While customer journey map focuses on the customer experience when they interact with a service or business from specific action or touchpoint, service blue print emphasises on interaction and dependency between different touchpoint involved in the process. It’s a great tool to highlight any gaps and disconnected process across functions as well as spot lucrative opportunity within offered service. It optimising complex interactions and break a service down to its logical components improving the experience for its customers. Furthermore, it’s used to bridge cross functions efforts, breakdown silos, and create one shared understanding of how service is delivered.
How to use it
1.Understand the language of service design
The core of service design and service blueprint is understanding of frontstage and backstage as its key concepts, these are the parts of the service that will be visible or invisible to customer. Frontstage are the actions that can be seen by the customer directly as customer touchpoints. It shows with whom, what, when, and how users interact with the service, while backstage are the actions that happen behind the scenes to support what happen on the front. The backstage process shows how people, process, and technology interact to make service experience possible. To get better understanding, below is the elaborative skeleton of service blueprint:
1.Swim lane: each horizontal row capture and organize all the elements of service experience.
2. Service Moments: vertical columns represent service moments that encapsulate all service activities at given moment in service experience.
3. Experience Stage: this stage is used to mark different experience phases in delivering the service.
4. Frontstage: the actions that can be seen by the customer directly.
- Touchpoints: are the medium of exchange between the customer and the service.
- Customer Actions: actions that user performs during service experience.
- Frontstage Actions: actions that can be seen by the customer directly as customer touchpoints.
5. Backstage: the actions that happen behind the scenes to support frontstage.
- Backstage: behind the scenes process to support what happen on the front.
- Support Process: tools and system necessary to enable service delivery.
6. Lines and arrows: to create the visualisation and interaction, key elements are divided based on following lines and arrows as follow:
- Line of interaction: where direct interaction between users and service provider.
- Line of Visibility: where the service from service provider become invisible to customer.
- Line of Internal Interactions: where partner or internal process within service provider step in to support the service delivery.
2. Kick start your service blueprint
Below are some useful steps to kick start your service blueprint:
Step 1 Clear out the context by designing your service concept
Put on a clear context to define the user and the journey you want to analyse by determine underlying purpose that align with your key objective. At this stage, you may also use following service concept approach as an early stage to prepare each service blueprint element:
- Need map : why you offer the service (aim).
- Offering map : what you offer (service description).
- System map : who is the user and stakeholders.
- Interaction storyboard : how is the service works.
Step 2 Map out service blueprint building blocks
- Start with understanding and creating the visible elements, such as customer actions, frontstage, and touchpoint. In order to get comprehensive information about the elements, you may also need to conduct insight gathering activities such as service safaris or user interview.
- Unpack backstage and support process with relevant information from stakeholder or subject matter expert. You may also engage them with in-depth interview or a workshop.
Step 3 Clarify lines of responsibility and actions
Use different line separation and add the arrows to define the flows. It marks the interaction between each building block and illustrate the ways different actors interact during the service process.
Step 4 Active iteration to refine the blueprint
In the final step of creating service blueprint, you can add additional elements (i.e. pain points, policy, rules, time, etc) as needed. Keep in mind that you might not be able to create complete blueprint at one shoot. As an iterative process, it needs information gathering and data processing to complete each lens or swim line. Most of the time, you will create initial hypothesis from your current understanding. Then refine it along with insight gathering process and trace it gradually.
When to use it
Service blueprint diagram can be created at any point in your service design. Since it’s an iterative process, it can be used whenever you are just creating new service or mapping out an existing one. Usually, it’s used after customer journey mapping or before making process changes for service offered.
PART 3 Case Study
This case study is designed to illustrate practical application of service design approach in digital supply chain management, specifically on Fleet Management System (FMS). The example is a revamp from one of my previous projects that I worked with my former team, to provide efficient resource allocation and route optimisation for B2C logistic provider. In this case study, my role as a product strategist is to examines FMS values from a multi user perspective (customer, service provider, and business) by connecting experience delivery, operation, and technology that produce it.
Normally, my team and I went through following activities in defining and ideating processes. After having clear understanding about the set vision/goals, we clustered the synthesis from insight gathering into (1) How Might We (HMW) ideation framework, then collect bunch or ideas using (2) T idea approach (Sketch, headline, and caption) before (3) vote and prioritise it to get quick win solution. This quick win solution, then elaborated into (4) service concept, before start to map out the (5) journey map and finally design a service blueprint.
For this case study example, the elaboration will be focus on designing service concept and service blueprinting for selected HMW with Fleet Management System (FMS) as predefined quick wins solution. Optimising resource utilisation with FMS solution, not only become an interest of distribution management but also for logistic value chain as a whole. This theme is closely related to other interesting theme for digital supply chain management, among other things, customer experience, data driven operation management, collaboration across organisation, growth and innovation in technology.
A. How Might We (HMW)
- Selected HMW : how might we optimise fleet allocation and capacity to get maximum productivity?
- Selected solution : Fleet Management System (FMS)
Please note that for both HMW and service concept might different for each proposed service, you can define it based on your own iteration and make sure it’s align with the vision or goals.
B. Service concept for Fleet Management System (FMS)
C. Service Blueprint
Below is service blueprint example which illustrate orchestration of people, touchpoints, processes, and technology from defined system map for Fleet Management System (FMS) solution.
You also can take this service blueprint concept from another point of view, such as taking a “zoom in” elaboration from fleet driver as the (internal) customer, as follow:
Last but not least, as an iterative process, service design encourages active collaboration across functionality to to create value for all stakeholders involved, build a distinctive brand experience and maximise business potential. It’s all about making the products or services usable, easy and desirable.
Useful insight and reference:
[1] IDF Service Design Course. 2020
[2] SOMIA Service Design Fundamentals Course. 2020
[3] A Guide to Service Blueprinting, by Nick Remis and the Adaptive Path Team at Capital One
[4] https://www.nngroup.com/articles/service-design-101/
[5] https://www.nngroup.com/articles/service-blueprints-definition/
