Integrating Service Design Across Industries

With globalizing and technology disruptions, industries around the world are seeking an enabler for the creation of new businesses, new experiences and development beyond the sales of goods alone.  

Most experiences are quickly becoming seamlessly digital and physical, requiring organizations to adopt new marketing mindsets, increasingly holistic and inclusive approaches for generating shared value in business. 

Service Design, as new practice of business consulting, and can be seen as a convergence and an evolution of multiple design diciplines used with business management and with the goal of enabling organizations to innovate and implement complex experiences that have very focused desired outcomes. 

Starting back in 2007, CBi China Bridge began investing, developing and promoting the value of Service Design in China, seeing that the consumption was rapidly changing and commoditization was rapidly changing and commoditization of most commodities growing. Reflecting on this, recently, in January 2019, Service Design became an Official Industry, at a similar level to IT Services. The Chinese Ministry of Commerce, the Ministry of Finance, and the General Administration of Customs included "Service Design"in the "Guidance Catalogue for Key Development Areas of Service Outsourcing Industry"

At the March 2019 Apple Special Event, Apple annoucnned their "All in Service".  This time Apple wants to do something different; instead of releasing new products, Apple launched a new line of innovative services for consumers. Apple CEO Tim Cook announced that “this is a way to make Apple’s service revenue double in 2020 compared to 2018.” Currently, Apple’s gross profit margin is about 38%, service gross margin is 63%; Tim Cook sees greater profit in service, than in hardware manufacturing; therefore, service will be the catalyst to drive Apple for further future growth.

The question is how do we design service? And must it be high-tech?

There is no doubt that Financial Management is already a service, but the issue is identifying high-net-worth people. CBi China Bridge helped Noah Holdings Limited differentiate high-net-worth people into three personas. These three personas have different methods of earning revenue, so through service design we want to be able to aid these different groups of people in transforming their businesses.

 The retail industry is one that is growing and changing rapidly due to the fast advancements of technology. To keep up with the change in retail, CBi China Bridge uses service design prototypes to help transform and reconstruct a new way of retail. 

What we want to do here is to design a service that allows going to the supermarket to be a good experience for families. A European Supermarket noticed that when families with young children come, they tend to stay for a shorter time because children tend to get hungry and cry. As a solution, this European Supermarket came up with an idea to put a fruit stand at the entrance and allow children to take free bananas. This solution kills two birds with one stone, children are satisfied, and parents are satisfied. 

Many people tend to overlook the fact that education is also a service; and every country’s educational system is different. Recently CBi China Bridge has had the opportunity to work with VIPKID, using service design to help them reform and earn revenue of 2 billion RMB in the first quarter of 2019.

Can material also be considered a service? CBi China Bridge became Covestro’s CDO (Chief Design Officer) helped design a strategy, design landing, build organizational empowerment, find ecological resources, and connect Covestro with designers to design together. 

Service Design is being used in many scenarios to improve user experience; we need to regularly review NPS (Net Recommended Value) to improve service. Through co-creation CBi China Bridge and Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport looked at opportunities for improvement. After implementing these changes, Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport NPS increased from 31% to 50%. 

With the change in consumer needs, designers have begun to design car for future travel plans. In modern day, companies want to separate the idea of "cars"from the product itself. CBi China Bridge worked with Volkswagen and Weltmeister to incorporate service design into cars. 

Environmental protection has become a hot issue in the past couple of years; we want to find out how we can utilize service design to help protect the environment. CBi China Bridge is working with Grand Blue (an environmental protection organization) to promote environmental protection. The results of we've done: helping Grand Blue with organizational transformation, and designing an eco-friendly theme park (environmental friendly Disney) to encourage adults to bring their children to learn about environmental protection while they’re having fun. 

A lot of companies will come to us and ask us to  help optimize their services. The essence of service design is to make the service integrated, not the default, but the dynamic, real-time path. Service is no longer a consumable, but a source of value creation.

Service design will examine the relationship between the five elements: people, substance, behavior, environment and society from a system perspective. In modern day, a lot of labor previously done by humans are now being replaced by machines; for examples we no longer need multiple cashiers in stores and restaurants, they've all been replaced by kiosks. Service design is exploring the relationship between man-machine ratio. Although these machines are great and makes our lives easier, theres still a need for humans to do some tasks; so whats the optimal man-machine ratio?

Service Design is an experience coach, it stimulates teamwork, create organizational creativity and extraordinary experiences. Through Service Design we can find out the needs, make a choice, and create a positive brand. 

Know the needs. Know who needs? Stakeholder needs, customer needs.

Make a choice. What do you want to do? You can be advertising, packaging, website, POP, sales, interface, robots, etc. This is a question that needs to be considered in our service design.

Positive brand. What is your brand tonality? What is your main difference from your competitors? Service design can help you get stand out in this competitive industry.

Service design is a discipline that spans product cycles, transactions, and concerns about multiple people's experiences and stakeholders. 

A service is characterized by an ongoing relationship with a service provider that provides access to services that provide some form of value. Products can also be considered as services purchased by customers. As the consumer needs are constantly changing, we need to change our service designs in accordance to those needs; creating new styles of play and new production. Every industry has a need for service design. No competition in the industry does not mean that service is not important. 

So what exactly is service? Service doesn't end after a consumer purchases a product; in fact service begins with the purchase of a product. As peoples expectations are evolving from the traditional concept of bartering and trade; people now value services and experiences more. As peoples expectations grow and evolve, the industry needs to keep up with these changes through the help of Service Design.