06 / Service design · 2023
INDUSTRIAL SERVICES
Understanding the service from end to end.
A discovery and co-creation project connecting the customer experience with internal operations to inform the definition of a new tool.
Outcome: Diagnosis and prioritized opportunities
- Role
- Product Designer in a multidisciplinary team
- My contribution
- Research, synthesis, analysis, journeys and workshop support
- Client
- Industrial services company · anonymized
- Year
- 2023
Complementary case
The challenge
The challenge: Many teams, one service
Before introducing a new tool, an industrial services company needed to understand how its processes connected, from sales to collections. Information was spread across teams, each with a view of only part of the journey.
The challenge was to bring those perspectives together and identify where internal friction also affected the customer experience.
My contribution
My contribution: Research, synthesis and journeys within a team
As Product Designer, I contributed end to end alongside Research, UI, Service Design and PM roles. I worked on research, analysis, synthesis and journey mapping; supported the workshops—co-facilitating some activities—and helped connect internal operations with the customer experience.
During prototyping, I contributed criteria and feedback in team discussions. The client team built the prototypes.
Value proposition
Value proposition: Deciding what the tool needed to solve
Connect the customer experience to operational dependencies to define what a new tool needed to address.
Decisions and evidence
Decisions and evidence: From a fragmented ecosystem to a shared view of the service
Research and service design
The team combined interviews with direct and indirect stakeholders and remote 1:1 client interviews with AS IS mapping, TO BE sessions, benchmarking and prioritization to understand the service before proposing changes.
01 · Ecosystem
Actors, teams, systems and exchanges supporting the service.
02 · AS IS journey
Twelve stages, from client administration through collections and closure.
03 · TO BE journey
Future scenarios connected to internal and customer needs.
04 · Prioritization
Pain points, opportunities and proposals prioritized with the teams.
Reading friction within a shared journey
The project documentation identified difficulties with coordination, tracking and information exchange between teams. Looking at them within one journey helped connect operational issues with what customers experienced throughout the service.
Portfolio summary · a shared view of the service
- 01Sale and service agreement
- 02Scheduling and logistics
- 03Collection and receiving
- 04Treatment
- 05Invoicing and collections
- Teams involved
- Sales
- Customer service
- Logistics and transport
- Operations
- Administration and finance
- Documented internal friction
- Coordination across teams
- Service follow-up
- Information exchange
- Documentation and invoicing
- What customers experienced
- Response times
- Visibility of service status
- Document delivery
As a team, we mapped current processes and explored future scenarios. Prioritization sessions helped organize pain points and group proposals for the tool; priorities were set together with the participating business teams.
Impact and actual scope
Impact and actual scope: A shared basis for discussing change
The team produced an ecosystem map, current and future journeys, and prioritized opportunities. The conclusions documented a fuller understanding of operations and cross-team issues that not every team had seen.
I contributed to research, synthesis, analysis and journeys, supported part of the facilitation and provided input to prototyping.
Learnings
Learnings: Separate findings, interpretations and proposals
Journey maps connect the customer experience with dependencies between teams. Their value lies in making those relationships visible and giving opportunities context before defining a tool.
Synthesis needs to preserve the different perspectives brought into workshops. Separating findings, interpretations and proposals gives the team a shared basis for reviewing priorities.
What can’t be claimedwithout measurement
What can’t be claimed: Diagnosis and proposals, not implementation
- The available material includes no implementation follow-up or efficiency or satisfaction measures.
- Prioritized opportunities are proposals, not implemented features.
- The client team built the prototype; my contribution was criteria and feedback.
- The case is anonymized: brands, names, systems and internal data are omitted.