Service Design : How is that different from UX Design
What is Service Design?
It is a design process or an activity that involves planning and organizing a business resource that includes people, touchpoints and processes in order to improve the employee as well as the customer’s experience.
Let's take an example of Passport Seva Kendra.
- As a customer, I would register myself as a user in the Kendra portal and book an appointment in the nearest passport office based on my preferred date and time.
- I go to the office, have the first level of document verification done with other biometric registration which happens with non-government officials (who usually be their vendors).
- The second level would be with the actual government officials who interview us and approve the documents officially and send it for background verification.
- A few days later police officials are being sent to verify the documents and then once done, the passport is printed , dispatched and sent it to the customer.
Here if you notice various processes are happening in different departments such as third parties (usual vendors), government officials, police officials along with various digital touchpoints such as registration portal, slot booking portal, also the SMS service to update me about the status of the passport. If any one of the processes or the touchpoint is disturbed, both the customer and the employee experience is affected. This entire Passport system is a service and designing the end to end experience for it is called as service design and it can be better understood through the service blueprint.
Key components of service design
- People
- Process
- Touchpoints.
Backstage and Front stage in Service Design
In Passport seva system , what the user sees is the front stage action, so when I apply for a passport, I register in the portal, I go to the office, undergoes two levels of interview stages, and then I get the notification about the status of application. Each notification is dependent on what is happening in the backstage, from the document being verified by the police officials and getting accepted by the passport officials, and sending it for printing are the backstage actions. To maintain the transparency about what is happening in the backstage, the system offers the feature of SMS service to enhance the user experience.
So How UX & Service Design works together?
Service design on one hand is about designing the entire system, making sure that the system works fine for both the employee as well as with the end-user with the available materials and infrastructure. In the other hand, the User experience is tied with one or more touchpoints like designing the registration portal for the PSK service or setting up a Kiosk outside the office. It is necessary that UX of the touchpoints are satisfied inorder to maintain the overall experience of the system.
A UX designer might focus only on one or more touchpoint, whereas service designer make sure that the entire system operates fine and that the UX for overall touchpoints are primarily satisfied.
How Service Design improves both employee & customer experience at the same time?
Imagine if there are no digital touchpoints, let's take the registration stage, if its to be done manually, the number of people pouring in would be higher and the system has to support a lot of employees to address them which will lead to stress and peer pressure that would directly affect both the experiences. Bringing various better touchpoints can address this issue.
How should one get started with Service Design?
By understanding how a particular system works, by not just focusing on one section, but by looking at the bigger picture. Start by listing out the key components of service design like people — who are the employees and the customers involved in the system, what are all the touchpoints used and what is the process followed and map it out in the service blueprint template. Find out the pain areas by observing the blueprint and list out the opportunities that would make the system much stronger than they are.
Free service blueprint template available on miro
