Eight questions

- The original sort of classic locus of service design is a team room with a whole lot of Post-its stuck on a wall, mapping processes, mapping customer journeys, and so on and so forth. But our argument here is that this goes from the team room to the boardroom. That there's really important business value, at the highest strategic levels, that need to be presented. And one of the ways of thinking about this value is a series of questions that you can ask about what's going on backstage, where the customer's not seeing what's happening, and what's going on onstage, in the presence of the customer, that can create value. So here are four questions for each of those areas that you can start thinking about. The first question is where are we making errors backstage? Where are we screwing up? Where do things go wrong? How can we eliminate those sources of error so that we have less rework, more efficiency, better quality? How can we improve our quality by reducing error? The second question is how can we become more efficient by eliminating or combining steps or processes that we no longer have to have? What can we do to just become more efficient? And that's not just a cost exercise, right? That's more efficient so you can provision value better for your customers. - When you really map out the customer experience, remember, it's a journey. And a journey has steps. So map out that journey, and look at those steps, and say "You know something? "Do we really need to make this stop here? "Is this a diversion? "Or is this really getting us where we need to go?" - A third set of questions is where can we innovate? And I don't just mean innovate in the sense of coming up with new services, but I mean where are there new technologies that we can apply to our backstage processes to make them more reliable, make them cheaper, make them more rich with information, so that we can do a better job? Just think, for example, of what can you do with new technology so that the person who's answering the phone when the customer's there actually has the whole account right in front of you and can make decisions and make changes in an efficient way. And finally, backstage you want to ask organization questions. Where do we have silos? Where do we have bad hand-offs? Where do we have Department A that isn't talking to Department B? And as a result we're creating internal confusion, we're also creating customer confusion. - Technology isn't the only place where we see silos. There are silos that prevent information from being shared, that prevent knowledge transfer, that prevent decisions from getting made, or that don't empower the right people to make those decisions. So look at where the silos are causing problems for you backstage that are really making it harder for you to do what you want to do for your customers. - So those are four questions that you can ask about business value, where you can apply service design principles to create business value backstage. There are also four questions, there are more, but there are four questions that you can ask that are similar questions about what's going on onstage. How do we create value for our customers, and value for our shareholders, in the presence of the customer? So the first question is what customer criticisms or complaints tell you about your work. You remember when we were talking about organizations, we were saying "What kinds of mistakes do you make?" This is what are you hearing from your customers that they like or that they dislike? "I wish they'd do this, I hated it when they did that." What does that tell you about how you can redesign your service offerings, or redesign the service, redesign the way in which you deliver service, so that you no longer hear those criticisms, but instead hear a "Wow, I really like what they did." The second question has also got a parallel backstage. Remember, backstage we talked about where are you wasting time? Well, the customer question's where are customers wasting time? How can you help customers use their time more valuably with you? Because they value their time, and the more value they get from their investment of time, the more they're going to come back, and maybe the more they're going to spend with you even in the current journey, as well as in other journeys to come. So that's a second important question. Then there's a question about innovation. And a question about what technologies do customers now have that you can leverage? We all know, of course, customers now have mobile phones in their pockets. What can you do with that, to leverage that technology? But what can you do with all kinds of new technologies so that you can deliver a cooler, more innovative service to your customers? What value can you create there? - Technology, obviously, is constantly changing. And it's not just changing our ability to do things, it's changing the expectations for how things get done. So look at what is happening with technology, and how you can harness that in a way that is going to make the whole experience smoother and easier. The integration, now, of technology makes a huge difference. We no longer have the necessity to have silo technology. - And finally, you want to look at every touchpoint with customers, and see "I wonder if there's something else "that we could do at that touchpoint? "What added value can we provide at that interaction?" Do you want fries to go with that? Do you want shoes to go with the bag, right? What are the things that you can provide at every touchpoint where you can add value? Or a related question is who else is making money off the customer at that point in his or her journey? And maybe we can make that money for ourselves. So those are four questions you can ask about the customer's side of the journey. And ask those four backstage, ask those four onstage, and bring those answers to your board of directors and see what they say.