Service Design
People who use service - customer journey (pre-during-post service)
People who provide service - front of house (pre-during-post service)
Invisible mechanics - back of house (pre-during-post service)
This is the standardized presentation of a client’s journey and improving services. Before a service reaches the public, it passes through many hands, including employees who design, support, and deliver it. Yet, most service design tools focus almost exclusively on the user journey. We’ve made client journey for years, but what about people delivering the service?
The same is happening in product and agile management; most analysis and interventions focus on the first line – people who use the product or service. But, how about people who provide the services… what kind of journey/change must they go through to provide a new service?
According to Ennova, a management consultant company, only 10% of 540 HR managers stated that they mapped the employee’s experience (EX). Too often, this area is overlooked by management due to competing priorities. This gap is not just a missed opportunity, it’s a missed Return On Investment (ROI). Employee journey maps are a strategic tool that directly impact the bottom line. The more we understand and improve employee experience (EX), the more we increase adoption and ultimately see higher ROI in service transformation.
In a landscape where every organization is advertising its commitment to excellence in service delivery, Kate Tarling’s latest book ‘The Service Organization’ offers a refreshing perspective on what it truly means to deliver exceptional service.
The foreword is written by Hillary Hartley, another guru in service design, former Ontario Chief Digital and Data Officer and founder of 18F during the Obama Administration.1
The book dives deep into the details of modern service delivery with practical examples and simple narratives. It has abundance of practical advice and real-life case studies from global companies to government departments are drawn from Kate`s rich experience across both sectors. Every page is worth highlighting.
Kate makes a compelling argument; if we want to deliver excellent services, we must design with the people who deliver them too. Most importantly, it bridges the gap between the client’s journey (users of government services) and the employee’s journey (government workers who provide services). She is for involving employees in the design and implementation of service changes, recognizing that their insights and experience are crucial for sustainable and effective transformation. Employees need to be informed, involved, trained and receive ongoing coaching during the change process, because, when service changes, the way people work also changes.
And just like a client’s journey, the employee’s journey is a series of experiences and interactions, but it maps the lifecycle of an employee’s involvement in delivering or supporting a service.
• How does the employee initially hear about a new service?
• How does the employee understand their new role?
• What support and training will employees receive?
• What challenges will they face with new process? and…
• How will they feel throughout the process?
Why does this this matter? Resistance to change comes from poor experience. If employees feel excluded, uninformed and unsupported, the resistance is natural. Service designed without employee input is incomplete. It should contain same design markers as client’s journey; service blueprints, co-design workshops, service-delivery personas and feedback loops. The employee journey is a missing link between good intentions (policy) and successful implementation (operations).
Glossary of Terms
Employee Experience (EX) – how employees perceive and experience all aspects of their work life (tangible and intangible elements, engagement, retention…etc).
Return on Investment (ROI) – financial metric used to measure the profitability of an investment relative to its cost.
Note1 - 18F no longer exists.
References
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