We help organisations understand, explore, design and deliver compelling services and experiences.
As one of our principals Steve Baty defined, “Service design is the intentional and thoughtful design of internal and customer-facing activities needed to deliver a service” (see “Service design, interaction design and design thinking” for more).
Many organisations put the delivery of a consistently compelling service in the “too hard” basket. This is often because services aren’t as tangible and discreet as products. They can involve elongated interactions over multiple touchpoints over days, weeks, or even months. There are front and back-office considerations, as well as the fact that services often cut across organisational silos and involve many different people in their delivery.
But this problem isn’t going to go away. If statistics are to be believed, as with many other countries, almost 80% of Australian jobs are in the service sector, and the trend is upwards.
How can organisations strategise, design and deliver consistent and consistently good customer experiences in such a situation?
At Meld Studios we believe in the value of the conscious and strategic design of all aspects of services. Whether it be the queue you stand in, the packaging of the postal delivery, the marketing materials, the website, the retail outlet, the flow of customers around the store or the intricacies of the business model that underpins the the service — we believe all of these can and should be designed well.
Understand, envision and roadmap your service
In order to deliver appropriate service to your customers, and for your customers to receive and experience the service as you intend, we use a technique called service mapping.
Service mapping provides three tangible outputs:
- Current state map: A reflection on the service you provide today, putting you on the path to assess and monitor how your organisation is delivering with current people, systems and processes.
- Future state map: A vision of the service your organisation wants to be providing, reflect business strategy, customer need, and innovation of service delivery.
- Roadmap: Designing for the transition, how service delivery and customer experience can shift and be supported, putting your organisation on a pathway from current state to future state.
In addition to the tangible outputs, service mapping provides many focal points around which those involved in the delivery or management of a service can convene.
We are part of the service design community
Meld Studios is a member of the Service Design Network, an international organisation of businesses and organisations working to develop service design knowledge and expertise.
Presentations on service design
We have presented on service design and service design topics at various conferences and events including:
- “Mapping a service” at Service Design Network conference 2012 in San Francisco.
- “Design as a risk mitigator” at Service Design Network conference 2012 in San Francisco.
- “Mapping a Service” at Service Design Australia 2011 in Sydney on 3rd May 2011
- “Customer experience and intranets in the context of service design” at Intranets 2011 in Sydney in May 2011.
- “Communicating behavioural insights” workshop delivered at various conferences including Service Design Network Conference 2010 in Berlin.
- “Role models for service designers” at Service Design Network Conference 2010 in Berlin.