What worked fine in the past doesn't work now.
What was worth doing in the past does not demonstrate the value now.
Because needs are evolving, technologies are advancing, the competitive landscape is changing.
It's time to adapt and iterate, which requires the integration of design decisions and business decisions.
That's why we call this "service design".
We are designing a business review service:
• Precisely shows the right clients the unique value of consuming our business review service
• Creatively re-structure the talent and operational resources to ensure the quality of the service
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When told "there is a problem", two questions are equally important to ask:
1) "What is the problem?".
What's wrong with the current business review service?
2) "Why is this a problem?"
Why does this service matters so much that we have to modify that?
The first question guided us to identify all the design spaces. The answer to the second question set the priorities of the problem-solving in the very blueprint of the business model.
Identified Design Spaces
in the context of the service process
The data analysis and the presentation are two critical steps in the business review service in terms of the client's value perceptions. But they are also the exact places that require improvement based on the research findings.
The lack of skillsets (training) and the standard workflow(process), and the difficult-to-use reporting tools( technology) are all attributed to unsatisfactory data analysis.
The current workflow and training system also doesn't effectively support the front-line client managers to communicate our work and value with the clients.
Identified Design Spaces
within the scope of the output of the workflow
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Not all problems need to be solved at the same time. We wanted to prioritize.
Asking "why is this a problem?" is essentially re-examining the value proposition of the business review service by zooming out to the whole business context.
When we understand what value matters most for both the clients and us, then we can decide what problem to solve first.
Yes, "matter most for BOTH clients and us." Not all about the clients. Not all about us.
It's BOTH.
Which clients really care?
The functions of the relocation program team in the companies are different.
Some relocation programs focus on meeting the requirements: experience, timeline, budgets. These clients can find almost all the information they need: service status, cost, and the number of assignments, from the regular reporting.
But for the teams playing a role in their organization's talent development strategy by designing competitive relocation policies, the information from the regular reports are definitely not good enough. They are supposed to constantly modify their relocation policy to align with their organizations' talent development goals. These clients have the expectations on the relocation companies to provide them the professional data-driven insights and advice.
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For the clients who actually only need the reports and the basis reporting service, the current business review service doesn't provide value.
But for those clients who are looking for professional advice, the current business review service doesn't meet the expectations.
The thing is the clients with strategic needs are just a handful.
Worth to change?
It's a business decision.
There are only a few clients who have expectations of the business review service. And there will be the cost to improve the current business review service to live up to their expectations.
We decided to invest in the re-design of the current service because:
1) The clients who value the business review service are VIP clients for us regarding the net profit;
2) The business review service is one of the critical touchpoints with the clients in order to build the service partner relationship.
What to change?
It's a design decision.
Step One: stop providing all the clients the business review service. The business review service will be only offered to the VIP clients who have a big volume of the relocation and look for relocation policy consultation.
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Step 2: We already identified the design spaces in the current service process, the technologies we are using, and the training program. By evaluating these design opportunities through the importance/difficulty matrix, we decided to divide the project into three phases. Phase one: standardize the business review service process; Phase two: re-design the training program for the client service managers; Phase three: systematically upgrade the data management technologies.
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Can we develop an overarching strategy that leverages the service process, the training, and the technologies with low cost for this year, meaning not adding more labor, new technology, advanced system?
If we consider the current service process as a collaboration between human work and technology work, it's not difficult to find out that: Much of the human energy is spent on the battle with the technical system. Neither the value of human work nor technology work is maximized in the current process.
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The current time allocation of CSM in BR service, and when IT is helping.
Strategy - Restructure:
We guide the high energy to the customized in-depth analysis by freeing the client service managers from the data aggregation, which will be completely done by the system automation.
By examining the client service managers' time allocation on their tasks, we decided to create more space for the business review service in the bandwidth of the client service managers whose clients see the business review service as the must-have.
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The lever, efforts and the load
The deliverables of the service process re-design
The new service workflow
The program report
The presentation deck template
The business review meeting template
The business review service evaluation metrics
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Service blueprint
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program report
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presentaiton deck
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presentaiton deck
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meeting structure
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Measurement
The deliverables of the training program for this service
The storytelling toolkit: thinking tool, storyline tool, the data visualization tool
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the structure of the three parts of the toolkit, the weight and the order,etc.
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How we make this toolkit easy to access, so that CSM can easily know when to access, where to h find, and how to use it. we use Figma
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How this training integrated into the service work flow.
The deliverables of the upgrade of the data management
Data accuracy protocol
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show how the data flow to us ,why there is GIGO problem
3. How do we know if works:
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Service blueprint
Based on the prototype results, the journey maps are:
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CSM journey map
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Client journey map
Then we modified the service blueprint
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CSM end-to-end prototype:
goals:
measurement:
format: virtual, online?
activities:
what we found:
In design, two changes:
first chanllgene, service designer might have the big bluelprint knwodlege of the service, but each MSE team and business stalehilders have the in-dept sopecific angle, and there are gaps betwwen these angles. the role of the service design in connecting them fillin gthe gap.
we have three versions of the service deisng, plus mine, we have four. why this happened?
this is how we anlauzie it and overcome it in the phase two.
if need to charge;
how to collaborate across the teams .project management. ( e.g. how the training program for this service should be integrated into the whole CSM training program?);
Third, how to recognize and motivate the real SME to join and contribute. Kept being amazed by how much SME's ideas are invisible in the research process.Why? worth to reflect.
how to work with and promote the reporting tool.
Data-driven insights and advice come out of lots of efforts. Why we need to invest on it. Whta van we gain form this free service ?
Research
There was an internal consensus that the current business review service needs to be improved.
There were different opinions about what problems are and how to solve them.
Keep those opinions in mind, I conducted the interviews with the clients who consume the business review service and hosted a few workshops with the client service managers who deliver the service.
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The service process, the internal technical support, and the capability of the client service managers all have spaces to improve.
Are there any other factors playing the roles in terms of the service experience? I went to a half-year business review on-site meeting for a client.
At this point, rather than finding out what the problems are or what to improve, I realized that there is a more important question to ask:
"Why do we provide the clients with a business review service?"
Why
