25 November 2016
at 15Hatfields, London

Content Streams

The programme for Service Design in Business 2016 will be organised into three streams, each based around a key facet of Service Design.

Stream 1 — Architecting Customer Experience

Digital strategy

Digital first is a major buzzword – and it’s what many customers expect. Digital collapses traditional boundaries – between departments, intermediaries or organizations – and challenges established, safe processes and practices. A shift to digital is not simply a channel shift, it is a different way of doing business. How can service design help tackling the digital challenge?

Customer engagement

Engagement is the critical interface between customers and services – it is where experiences are shaped but also where costs are occurred and performance is measured. Both customers and organizations have desired outcomes for each interaction, but these goals are not always aligned. How can service design help aligning a firm’s engagement approach to customer goals?

Exceeding customer expectations

A growing number of organizations are beginning to understand that customer experience is a critical business factor. Commercial businesses in competitive markets can see how easily customers who’ve had poor experiences choose to switch to another provider. However, many organizations find it hard to move from understanding the importance of an excellent customer experience to actually delivering one. How can service design help organizations to deliver services that exceed customer expectations?

Customer innovations

To survive in a competitive market, organizations need to differentiate to stand out. In ambitious businesses there is a strong drive to innovate services that take the organization into new segments or markets. What does service design offer to tackle customer innovation?

Customer satisfaction

In approaching customer experience, many organizations rely on feedback from surveys and panels to listen to customers, or use methods such as Net Promoter Score to identify areas of improvements. Service design goes beyond asking customers for feedback by taking a holistic customer experience perspective. What are the examples of new ways to measure customer experience and satisfaction? How can they be used to identify areas of improvements?

Stream 2 — Shifting to Services

From products to services

Increasingly, manufacturers are choosing to innovate their offerings by providing an integrated combination of products and services that deliver value in use. This shift, although presenting a number of opportunities, comes with a number of organizational challenges. How do firms organize for this shift? How can service design help strategize this transition?

Employee’s engagement and participation

Digital channels, customer experience prioritization and cost drivers require that people in service businesses change the work that they do. These major trends are having a huge impact on the roles and activities of frontline staff in almost every service sector. For most people change is unwelcome. Change comes with uncertainty, fear and skepticism. It is essential to manage these challenges in any change and counter doubt and worry with clarity and purpose. How does service design offer a different, more participatory, way to engage staff in changes?

Service innovation

In today’s economy, where service industries account for approximately 70% of the western world’s GDP, enhanced services that truly respond to customer needs are essential for a long term strategic competitive advantage. What are the examples of the most cutting edge service innovations? How can service design help in this process?

Paradigm shift

The shift from products to services requires a fundamental change in approach, forcing organizations who are in this journey to question traditional practices and ways of operating. How can this paradigm shift be described? What are the consequences for employees’ behavior, practices, policies, processes, procedures and IT systems?

Sales through service

The service design approach helps to identify hotspots at particular stages in the customer lifecycle. These hotspots mark specific behaviors where customers will find value in a better experience, and where the business can reduce costs or increase revenues. How can service design increase sales while reducing customer confusion and irritation?

Stream 3 — The Impact of Design

The business case for service design

Today, service design is a major buzzword in many organizations. Yet it is a new approach that many struggle to understand. Often business leaders who believe in the potential of service design, find themselves in the difficult position of having to convince others. What are the examples of business cases for service design? What works and what doesn’t?

Measuring design’s impact

Service design is fundamentally an exploratory approach whose outcomes end up affecting different pockets of the organization. Measuring its impact is often a daunting task for those organizations who opted to use service design as medium to tackle key business challenges. What are the examples of ways to measure design’s impact? What can we learn for those organizations that have tried to do so?

In-house led

Increasingly organizations are opting to invest in developing in house service design capabilities, setting up dedicated service design departments, centers or labs. What are the benefits and the barriers of choosing to lead the service design effort internally?

A new language for service design

Service design is a relatively recent practice that, more than other design practices, has increasingly evolved its language and jargon to ensure to be understood and accepted by people in business that do not traditionally belong to the design world. What’s the new language of service design in business?