Beyond my own experience and case studies from elsewhere, I always find it important to get under the skin of how colleagues are designing their services. And it’s always a pleasure sharing experiences of service design with my old colleague @peterqbrook, Design Authority at Kent County Council. I asked him what what were his top lessons from designing services. Here they are!
When thinking about you can improve your service, ask yourself & colleagues: Would the customer pay for this activity if they saw us doing it? Would it add value to the organisation? Would it help the service discharge its duty?
- Understand whether audiences are static or dynamic (i.e. new parents)
- Build relationships with most senior manager to identify their aspirations & constraints and anticipate decision points needed further down the line
- Get directors to come with you to brief the managers who will be working with you
- Use workshops as platforms for getting people to discover design thinking and discussion around customer service policy
- Listen to recording of calls from people who’ve had multiple needs and contacts
- Use stories to complement customer experience data
- Use different channels to prepare people for face to face conversation (i.e. booking a face to face chat, what information they will be asked, etc.)
- Deep dive on what behaviour change is needed that people want to make
- Focus on improving online processes so people want to shift
- Think about how a service with existing infrastructure (i.e. contact centre) could connect with stand-alone services (a families information service)
- Bring on board staff and service users to deliver the improved service
What suggestions would you make to improve your services?
