Service design thinking is a critical component to ensuring a company's success in the service industry. It is what drives a user's experience and builds a company's brand image.

1. 9 principles
Service design thinking

2. What is service design thinking?
Service design thinking
brings together the
organizing and planning of a
business's resources to
improve both the customer
experience and the front-line
staff experience.

3. An example of putting the user's needs first could start simply with a phone
system. It may be tempting to use a more automated process with a robot
operator that can help the customer navigate to who they need to talk to as
an attempt to save on physical labor, but this system is flawed as it will often
result in poor user experience. Even though the technology is accepted in
today's business world, if it becomes difficult for a customer to get the
information they are looking for quickly, they will likely become frustrated and
associate the negative experience with your company.
Services Should Be Designed
Based on Customer Needs
01

4. Another item vital to the customer experience is making the goals easily
obtainable. For example, if a customer signs up for an account and wishes
to cancel their account or service, it should be easy to do. Giving them the
runaround can create bad blood with customers and damage your image
with the public. If a contract is involved with the signing up of an account,
the terms should be easy for the customer to understand, and they should
be able to easily end the contract when the terms outlined are satisfied.
Services Should Be
Designed With Achievable
Goals
02

5. Service Design
Thinking Should
Always Keep the
User in Mind
03
One of the worst things from a customer service perspective is
for them to feel that they are just an account number to the
company or money in their pocket. You may have noticed how
customer service representatives ask who they are talking to, tell
their name, and typically ask a question related to the area
where the person resides. This is not to make chit-chat while they
pull up the account. This is to let the customer know that they
know who they are, where they live and are interested in more
than their business with the company. Another way in which a
design plan can involve more personalization is through other
customer service means, such as email. While generating stock
email is definitely more cost-efficient for a company, if the reply
does not address the issue the customer had emailed about or
appears to be a simple stock reply, the customer will feel
undervalued.

6. Part of what separates great customer service from average service is
knowing what the customer wants and providing it for them before they even
ask. But all too often, companies will have policies in place that conflict with
this in an attempt to create a healthier bottom line. What they fail to realize is
that while they are worried about how a few dollars may impact the bottom
line, they are creating a negative customer experience, which can be
significantly more costly if they suffer from poor brand image.
Service Design Thinking Focuses
on Creating Value for Users
04

7. In a technologically advanced world, customers are
often getting their information in moments at their
fingertips. Because of this, waiting for answers makes
them even more impatient. Your service design should
come up with ways to mitigate wait times. Whether the
design allows for your wait times to be more efficient,
or you design a system, such as callbacks to eliminate
the customer's need to stay on hold, parameters should
be put in place to mitigate a customer's wait.
Service Designs Should
Reduce Wait Times
06
While most service designs will be planned around
standard events that can occur, it should also include
contingencies for events that could occur, though they
are less likely. When special events or circumstances
are handled properly, it can show that a company is
adaptable and knows how to meet the needs or their
users no matter what situation may be raised.
Service Designs Should
Account for Special
Events
05

8. Because of the intangible nature of a service, it can be more
difficult to create a design for it than it is to create the design
of the product. Because of this, service design is often
overlooked, which can result in poor customer experience and
eventually affect the bottom line of a company.
Service design
thinking: 9 principles
READ MORE ON OUR BLOG

9. Ideally, you will want your service design to provide customers
with a great beginning and end experience of their service, but if
this is not as easily attainable, then focusing on the end
experience is critical. For example, being made to wait for a table
at a restaurant, for a server to get your order, and for the food
to come can ruin a customer's experience if it takes too long. If
this can not be avoided due to unforeseen backups, then you
should always make sure that the end of their restaurant
experience will provide for excellent service. This can mean
ensuring that the meal is exemplary or adding simple touches like
a complimentary dessert for inordinately long waits. The idea
behind this is that the customer is most likely to remember the
most recent part of their experience, and if that is a happy one,
then they will be left with a positive image of the company.
Service Designs Should
Focus on the End
Experience
07

10. It is essential to understand that service design is a plan for the user
experience as a whole, and it should be approached as such. Too many
companies focus on the individual components that make up a service plan
and can get hung up on them instead of seeing how they affect the big
picture. Start with the overall goals and develop an efficient way to achieve
those goals. Approaching it this way will make it easier to develop the
individual components to create the strategy in a way that they will
complement each other as well as the larger goal. If the components don't
work together, they can undermine the whole design.
Service Design Should Deliver a
Unified System
08

11. As with any design, it is always best to make sure it works before you try to
implement it. Even the best-laid plans will have defects, and the best way to
identify these deficits is by testing out the plan to find the weak points. When
determining if the plan will be effective, look at it with a discerning eye. You
may be in love with some of the components and feel that they can truly
work, but if the test does not show that they fit, it is best to remove or adjust
them instead of trying to get the plan to work around them.
Service Designs Should Be
Prototyped Before Being
Implemented
09

12. Learn more about this key hospitality ingredient with
EHL Advisory Services’ definitive guide to Service
Excellence: from Service Design to Service Recovery
DISCOVER
THE Service Excellence
Guide: from Service Design
to Service Recovery
LEARN MORE