Services design for your Business

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Yes, we have a few viewers joining in, so we must be like fingers crossed. But we're good to go. We'll start. So hello and welcome to Momentum Office Hours. My name is Yash, and I'm joined by my co-founders, Jay and Koushik, to discuss topic of the week, which is services design for your business. Our goal with these sessions is to provide you with actionable insights and practical strategies that you can apply to your own business.

Throughout the session, we encourage you to engage with us by asking questions and sharing your thoughts. This is a fantastic, fantastic opportunity to learn from each other and gain new insights that can help drive your digital initiatives forward. So let's get started. Koushik, what's up? How are we doing today? Nice. Lots of discussions. Lots of discussions, of meetings, lots of conversations. So good to know. Always a good thing.

when that sort of continues to happen but today we are here largely, primarily to talk about service design for your business. So let's start with the fundamentalist, let's start with the basic. What is services design? So for uninitiated people like Koushik and sorry for Jay and I, what is services? I've heard of design services. know what is design services.

But what is services design? So services design is the stream that talks about designing the entire organizational experience or the entire business experience. it is if you are so the customer's journey is the user experience most of the time in a business or how they are dealing with that particular thing. Be designing everything within the organization such that the employees, the system

the people, the props and the processes that are involved, redesigning them that leads to better organizational functioning is service.

Can you give a few examples, maybe? I can just let me share my screen for an example. OK.

So we have here. Yeah, we can see it now. Yeah. So I'll just give you a quick example. like, like you could see here, let's say if there is, if the user experience is all about, you know, requesting for a support system, then the entire framework that happens at the background with respect to pinging the server, the review support, as well as the recording database and everything that's associated with it and designing that is technically the service design.

So usually people confuse user experience a lot with service design so this is the clear distinction between that. Metaphorically, if I have to define it like let's say if there is a drama that's happening, everything that's happening in the front, designing this is let's say user experience, then everything that happens in the background such that the front stage happens better is actually the entire service design aspect, such that whatever is happening in the front is done better.

So like I was talking about, so wait for it. Wait, wait, wait a second. Why didn't you tell Jay and I this analogy when we were discussing about services design? You used so many different words and so many different slides and you shared so many articles and stuff like that. I understood like I understood this like I never understood it before. just by looking at this analogy, yeah, now it makes sense.

Why did you keep this away from Jay and I when we were talking about it? It took me a day to create it. I thought you were going to say that you like our viewers more than Jay and I. Sorry, go on. You will see. But yeah, like Yash was mentioning, I took some time to figure this out. But yeah, because sometimes

like we were talking about your organizational process setting and making sure that everything works the way you want it is more important than the product or whatever you're selling because making these things go well itself becomes an issue. I think one interesting way to better to position it is that you have your customers journey and at each stage of your customers journey you have your business interfering and aiding them.

right? It's the service designer's job to design this interference of the businesses and each business item that's interfering at different levels of the customer journey would involve props, people and processes. So when I say props, we are talking about physical or digital artifacts. It could be your product or it could be a platform, anything of that sort. Then we have people who are using those things and then we have processes which help to make sure that these people and the props are interacting in the right way.

So it's the whole, all these things coming together and how these things should come together, designing it is exactly the service design. So answering your question as small as possible, this is how essentially a service design as a field works. This is a good, nice, simple way of looking at it. So this is really interesting right, wanted to understand what form of businesses

should more, you know, have these things sorted upon with respect to services design that is first and mainly like at what stage should they think upon? Service design is a problem that's specific to a scale. We are talking about, let's say you are a business and you have multiple, essentially the time when people are involved, multiple people are involved in it and multiple entities or platforms are involved in

Then you would start facing this problem of how to make sure that all of them sync together the right way. let's say you are a retail store for example, you just started with one product and then now as a brand, you start to have multiple outlets. Now that's when your entities are increasing, the people in the outlets are increasing.

as well as the platforms that the people will be interacting with also increased. Let's say if I have to, let's say you're selling bags, right? And you have multiple outlets which are also selling the similar product that is the bags. Your customer is entering the store from the stage of he getting to know about the product, then he researching about the product where he's seeing the display, he's interacting with people, he's looking at the catalog and different kinds of varieties with that. Then at the stage of actually doing the purchase.

And then he moves to the stage of, know, where he's after the purchase, there is a support stage where the one that he purchased, what all actions need to be done. And then to the stage of making sure that the customer, you know, you are constantly having an engagement with the customer who purchased that particular package. All these stages, there are people who are involved in the front stage who are doing this, who are dealing with this customer.

And they are using some other platform. It could be a ERP system. It could be a POI system that is involved at that particular stage. And at the backstage, there is a ERP system which tries to bring this all together. For example, let's say when someone is looking in a research state, of trying to make this decision about which bag to go for. You have a person who's showing the baggage. Then, okay, great. So you have a person who's showing the baggage and then you have a person

which means that there should be a catalog system digitally with the in-store staff such that they are aware of what to show and what not to show. So let's, but how do you know that you know this particular catalog system should be readily available digitally with me and also fact that you should train your staff with respect to the product knowledge. There should be an entire staff training system whenever a new staff comes in.

to make them aware about the product knowledge and everything. So these, that's why I said it's a problem at scale. So when multiple entities start involving, especially more people and more process, more platforms start to come in, new processes have to be set in and designed. So that's where it comes out as an important thing. So I could say that if you are in a mid, if you're a company who's

just scale to more than like a particular revenue and move to the next stage. That's essentially when you need this.

Correct. so largely, I mean, one of the things that I've also sort of observed previously is that the earlier you start to design services, is the better it is for the business, right? Because in a smaller group, at a smaller stage, you have the liberty to make a couple of mistakes and learn and then...

services design can evolve over a period of time as well but can you like do you have an example to show like let's take a sample business and then let's look at you know from like an entire client life cycle from start to finish or a part of that journey if you could explain how that could look like or how that could work that will be helpful. Yeah, let me share.

Yeah, could you see my screen? Yeah. So I'll just show you a sample example of how this could be done. So once we get into the action of doing the service design, what a service designer would essentially do is create a service blueprint. Now service blueprint starts with mapping the customer's journey. Let's say in this case, a customer is coming to do a purchase of an appliance. Right?

So they are visiting, so we map the entire customer journey from the start to the finish. So they are coming to the website, then they are visiting the store, then they are at a stage where they are trying to figure out what all features the appliance they would like to purchase has, then they are making the purchase and they are getting the things delivered. So there is a point A to point B journey for each customer with respect to the individual business, whatever it

Now, when we try to map it in service design, we divided it into two stages. One is front stage and the other one is back stage. The front stage, we again divided into two sets. That is, what are the actions that people are doing and what are the actions or what are the platform, what is the role of the platform or the technology that helps the employees to do the action better. So, when someone is visiting the website, there is no person involved.

But you need a support chat system in your website such that in case if they have any queries, it needs to be analyzed. And when they're visiting the store, there is a human that is welcoming the person into the store. And there is also an employee who checks the inventory and also makes sure the delivery times are all planned out when they're trying to discuss the features and the price and the availability. And when someone makes a purchase,

they have to provide the delivery time. So for all these actions that you are seeing, in the backstage there is a system that is aiding them to make these informed decisions. example, here you could see that, let's say when I am a customer and when I am discussing about the features and everything, let's say I like a particular product and there is a product on the display but for the product that I want to be delivered to me,

I need to know, I need to have the inventory management system to be ready so that I could check and tell at what delivery time would that be available to you. So, and the fact that your inventory management system should talk to the point of sale system, which is available at the front stage. Your inventory management system is not available in store, but your point of sale system talks to your inventory management system and gives you that information. So,

Like I was saying, now in the backstage these platforms are trying to aid you or help you to help your staff to give your customer the right information and the most informed information. Then we have the support process that is basically what all systems or processes that help us to make sure that the backstage action and the front stage action happens better. For example, when someone is coming to the store

We know that the staff who is in the front stage is going to welcome them and talk to them. But what key performance indicator would help us to know or to have an analysis of make sure that this is happening the right way. So the foot traffic scanner or the time, in fact the foot traffic scanner, the technology has advanced so much now that we have systems which could

Literally map where the user is standing within the outlet and then make sure that you know, if the user is spending more time near a particular product in the store, then we could actually highlight or you know, spend more time on selling that particular product at a higher range. Because most of them are more interested in that. It's literally like a three-dimensional heat map. It's the same logic that you apply for your website. You would do it, you know, for a store.

Likewise, the point that I'm trying to make here is that, it's something simple as a customer journey, then coming down to who the people are involved and then the technology that is available within the store and the technology that is at the complete back end that helps the staff to aid better customer experience during the course of the journey.

And then the metrics that helps me to constantly keep check of how these platforms and the staff are functioning together. So all these things come together for just as simple as a single customer journey as this. Now, when you do this exercise, you have complete visibility over how your business performance is happening and also which system is talking to what. So that helps us to make decisions.

to plan the future business where in fact it even helps you to understand where can I introduce AI integrations within this because everyone wants to have AI within their business now that is like a hot cake, hot selling cake now but this gives you more informed decision about where to actually implement AI such that it helps the most

and gets the better ROI for my business. So these kind of decisions to make it like if you think in an organizational level, it becomes difficult of who actually makes this decision because most of the time you have your founders who are spending most of their time thinking about from the product side and the customer side. And the fact, is so interesting that like if you could just make within your organizational experience better,

it eventually indirectly helps for the better customer journey. And what process itself you know, it hits them only when they reach that scale. no, I mean, so the fact that founders think about the product and founders think about the customers is actually good for consultants like us. It is where we get to go into their business and help them understand that this is important.

drive efficiency, will drive better customer experience, will drive growth and so on and so forth. So I'd say let the founders think about the product and investors and customer experience and stuff like that. Let us think about this and then like go in and help the decision. But jokes aside, I think one of the things that this is also helpful in letting businesses make a decision as to where does AIE

agents or do where do AI fit in which is where now you're able to actually if you have services designed across all of your customer journeys or across all of your departments you literally know that this is the metric that will move because we'll introduce AI or for whatever reason right then let me come to the next question that I have which is at what point of time do I like what are the metrics that I use to measure whether

whether an existing service operation that I have or whether the existing service design that I have, however poorly designed, right? Currently the services are being sold and consumed. It may not be the best, but they are being sold and consumed. So what are the metrics that will tell me that this needs to improve? That this part of the journey needs a service design? Now, I think the best way to think of this is that

it is specific to the industry. for example, I'll take one use case. For example, if you're trying to, let's take retail industry for example. Now within the industry, we try to, whenever a service designer tries to do an entire analysis or research into this, there is a as is blueprint and there is a to be blueprint that one creates. So as is blueprint in that use case, let's say for retail industry, let's say in this

is the retail industry service designer is trying to do it as his blueprint. In that, the metrics will be very different compared to the kind of metrics that would be applicable for a healthcare industry service blueprint. So, in the retail industry, for example, like I just showed in that example, food traffic metrics, as well as things like average order value, net promoter score, things like

with respect to order cycle time. when a customer finishes their entire journey offline or online, we often ask for a feedback and try to rate us out of 10 or five or whatever the number it is based on which we could calculate a net promoter score and the score would give us that could help us to create cohorts of our customers and then, you know, who is the most loyal customer, who is not loyal customer and

make business decisions according to that. So now this is very specific to retail industry and order cycle time at the purchase level, we could fix that as a metric where, you how my warehouse management system and how my inventory management system and my POI system and all these things are talking together well such that it and how I could improve the order cycle time.

At the same time, will be third party vendors, partners that are involved because the person, most of the cases, the person who is delivering the product could be a third party vendor. So it also depends on integrating our system with their system. those kind of metrics would come in place there. So I think the metrics will shift according to the industry.

But the pattern of how we measure it or how we go about it will be similar. So it depends on the customer journey. Like if you remember when I showed the example, there was a time factor that was involved on the top everywhere. And this one metric which should help inform us in much better way to do it. Which means in as is blueprint when you mapped it, let's say at the stage of where the user is in the store.

they are spending 20 minutes, let's say, within the store. Now, in the 2B blueprint, you could suggest saying that I want my customer to spend more time within the store. So I could say that I want my customer to spend 40 minutes. Now, you could clearly see right below it, what is the front stage action, what is the back stage action, what is the end at different levels, what changes could I bring in?

that would help me to make sure that my customers spend more time here. But at the purchase and the order delivered at the support stage, that time should be minimized. So, you would say, then you would check, again when you map it downwards, like in the example just we discussed, you would start thinking that, fine, my warehouse management system is functioning at this pace and my inventory management system is, this is happening.

what is happening within the system that is not allowing me to go faster or even with my third party vendor. So, it's that kind of, we just started with time as a venting and you just saw how we just went down and mapped everything together. It differs but the pattern is still there. So Koushik, could we say that you know

Like from innovation standpoint I guess services design is one of the crucial factors because without that what happens is you typically look at the customer journey separately and the service journey or the employees journey separately. Now if you showcase in the blueprint as well right that when you try to map it from you know in a proper time stamp what happens is from initial standpoint where customers entry is happening whatever service business it is or

whatever product business it is but customer journey starts from that point itself but there's a parallel line from service standpoint that's where we draw so initially people were just thinking on okay once the order is received from the customer side then the implementation or things are happening upon but then now there's a parallel line both things are running parallel and that's where the thought process of innovation comes in as well and that's how we also seen lot of good companies where

they come up with unique ideas on increasing the customer experience. So ultimately, it's improving customer experience, but then thinking on how services would act. Yeah, it is sort of like a reverse engineering process. You can't just randomly one day come up with the idea that if I do this, my customer will be happy. It's that kind of process. So the only way you could actually

have a predictable way of how the customer's experience could be done better is mapping out what is happening with your customer and how that is related to how you are providing that service. I think the best way to define this is one needs to understand what is the connection between good and a service also. So any tangible item or something that you're selling is a good, whereas everything that you do to sell it becomes a service.

And your company is somewhere in between these both channels. for example, I have to give, and the definition keeps changing according to what the business is. For example, we could say that if Spotify is there, the song is a product, and your streaming service would become the service aspect there, which is trying to do it. Now, if Spotify has an application.

spends, you will also see that Spotify spends so much time designing the streaming platform, not so much time on the, you know, making sure the product is great or that is still, I mean, they do spend some time there also, but significant amount of money goes into making sure that that service part gets better. So is that how well can I reach this to my customer? Because your product is a one-time wonder or a one-time idea that could be great or could not be great.

But your service is an ongoing process that you have to keep doing. So for you to sustain the business and to scale the business, it's service design that's more important than Yeah, the service is how the customer interacts with the product. So yeah. So you define. No, I actually. Yeah. Makes sense. what are, in your experience, what are some of the, so everyone, like any business owner that you will ask, whatever scale.

They will say we want to have excellent service design. So now I know Koushik said that there is front stage and there is back stage and customer experience and put customer at the center and then map everything out and I want excellent service design for my business also. What in your experience, what are the roadblocks that you have seen that stops typical business owners, most business owners to think about service design for their business or implement a service design?

that they have in their mind. And this is a challenge that we ourselves also face all the time. Which is where we have so many ideas in our head that this will make the customer experience better or that will make the customer experience better and this is how we should optimize and stuff like that. are also not able to do it. What are some of the roadblocks that you see? It is exactly this. So, you sort of answered the question also. They have so many ideas about the product that they have very less time to think about how to run it.

So because...

is it you will be very often you'll see that founders at a scale will delegate work. Right. So now they think that the person who they delegated it to is would take care of would get it done. Right. Now the thing is the person you did whom you delegated is also a person is a part of the system. Right. Now so he also needs processes. He also needs things. And very often what happens is that you would have delegated it. Let's say for example you would have delegated marketing work

to one person and let's say that the fulfillment part to another person. They will create their own processes for their teams and when they all are working at silo level at individually, what happens is both of them do not talk to each other. You would very often see this point. You will all be in the same company but you don't know what is happening in the accounting team. Yeah, they go for lunch together so they know what's happening.

You know in their personal lives for sure, but they don't know You know how a particular journey has been designed. Yeah, and but the thing is your customer is not experiencing your product that way that is like for example, you You think that your organization is in vertical but your customer is traveling in horizontal and you assume that he's only having one touch point at one time But that's not how it works. Your organization are in horizontal

And customer is also in horizontal and he is actually experiencing multiple touch points at the same time. He's experiencing purchase and support probably, you back to back at the same time within a fraction of within some minutes while he's in the outlet or something. So now if your support is not interacting with your purchase team or with respect to your order fulfillment team, then the entire system breaks. That means that

My order was supposed to get delivered in a day. Since it was not talking to me better, it takes two days. I'll tell you a very good example. We all might have experiences. You would have called a support chat or a support call. It would have taken your information just to transfer you to the next call. Ask the relevant person who it is. You would go to the next relevant person and he will ask you the same information. Same information. Yeah. Happens all the time.

And how and we immediately the customer gets frustrated, right? Because he'll be like, I just gave the information. Now the person, the staff who is actually taking his call, he doesn't know that the information was taken previously. Who is going to solve this issue? the biggest roadblock, but coming back to the question is that founders very often, since they delegate work,

And also they are so focused on the fact that the product is so important. It's similar thing that we saw in SaaS also. People are so obsessed with building the features. They forget about how the existing system is working for customers that are there. It is a similar kind of a roadmap here. They are so focused on the product that needs to go out. How the existing that you have created, is that service getting done the better way?

that awareness itself is less but it comes. So the thing is, will bite, when it bites you back, it's very harsh. You'll see that entire system fails when it happens. So Koushik, before we run out of time, I wanted to ask, we actually have but I would still like to ask one quick question to you. For businesses who are looking to scale, especially,

You can take example of an industry but you looking to scale. How do and now they know that they don't have service design done in house and they don't know even who from their team at the entire multiple department want to approach for services design. What do they need to do? How do they start? This is the best question Koushik. Please take as much amount of time as you want. Yes. So, so the thing is

Like I said, as a founder, you're more focused on the product. And you are so used to delegating things. So it's better to delegate it to a consultant who does this job better. And the fact that they have done this for a number of times for different industries, they know exactly how for different varied industries. In fact, if the consultants have done it for different varied industries, it's good to go for that particular consultant because

they know how to switch across and they have seen multiple innovations in different sectors. So they will pick up one or two different innovations that they have tried out. I'm pretty sure, for example, in healthcare industry, the innovation that they would have tried out might not have worked out there, but it would have been excellent opportunity or a use case in the retail industry. So it will come in as a great input over there.

So which we also happen to do. Yeah. so like consultants like Koushik, the other thing on top of this is also the fact that they know the benchmarks. So sometimes you don't know as to, let's say, let's take again retail as an example, because we've spoken about that a few times. If you're running a retail business, you don't know what is the ideal amount of time that a person should spend at checkout.

What is the ideal amount of time that a person should spend browsing the store that you built? so a consultant comes in with benchmarks also, where they know they've done it five, six times before. And so they understand the challenges of certain solutions. And they also understand what are the milestones of benchmarks to hit, and until then, there's optimization possible. So that's also helpful and meaningful.

Just a small point and adding to that, is also these, so the consultants would help you to fix the right KPIs and also will help you to fix the right, you know, KRAs that would help you to and also tell you how to assess them constantly such that you can put your product manager or the person, whoever is responsible for that to regularly check on this. For example,

If you didn't implement food traffic metric, how would your product manager even know that he need to measure that? And the fact that that is the first metric that you should have started with. How many people are coming into the store and how many people are going out to purchase? What is the ratio of it? So these kind of things is something that your consultants will back you up with and make you more informed decisions and scale you significantly faster.

Absolutely. And so I think with that, we come to the end of the conversation for today. I think we had a great conversation around services design for your business. And we'll see you in our future streams. But in the meantime, it would be great if you found value from this video, if you think that this is helpful. Do let us know your thoughts in the comments. Do subscribe. Do follow.

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