aplo | designing experiences

making the big, personal

I borrow this title from some pitch work I recently did for a big, well, massive blue chip service company. One of the issues raised was the disconnected experiences customers feel when interacting with the service. Wealth of products/service offerings and a multitude of touch-points make it hard for the service provider to develop and maintain one consistent voice, message, and eventually service experience.

By 'consistent service experience' I do not mean an unsurprising and predictable experience that leaves people unimpressed, but a series of diverse experiences that share an underlying theme and philosophy that weave through all interactions with the service and the service offering itself.

Before starting to tackle the issue, we looked at service experiences people love and identified a series of attributes that contribute to that positive experience: Respectful, observant, staff that embody the company philosophy, are some of the elements of a positive personal service experience. We also found that small, frequently independent service providers, are the ones that exhibit most of those virtues.

Hence the question: how can you make the big personal?

Companies, such as Starbucks have tried it. As this month's (issue 16) Monocle editorial reminds us, Starbucks current problems partly stem from the fact that it pretends to be 'a community player but ultimately falls short on both spirit and product'. So how can a global brand offer a personal experience? The answer lies in understanding what attracts customers to the service in the first place as well as clearly defining the service. Sounds simple but requires commitment and an open culture.

service you care about

Tyler Brûlé, in his recent FT column, laments the state of the hospitality and service industries. As well as stating the need to set up a hospitality school, he urges business owners to 'take a microscopic look at how their businesses are being represented and what staff are being allowed to get away with. Put simply, if yours is a service business, why are so many policies anti-customer?'

There are two separate issues here: First, the policies that underpin the service delivery. Were these designed with the customer in mind? When was the last time they were reviewed? Are they flexible enough to be tailored around specific customers and their needs? Is there a process of capturing those needs? Has management got first hand experience of the service provided? Basically are the policies tied to business objectives and the bottom line or to customers and service delivery?

Second, there are the staff that deliver the service. I’d argue, as well as looking into what the staff are getting away with, it will also be useful to find out why the staff feel the need to get away with substandard service. Have they been included in the design of the service? Are they empowered to define the service and feedback to the management? Basically are the staff treated as the brand ambassadors that they are?

Service design, user/customer centred design -call it whatever you want - can both give answers to those questions and help design a service that meets Mr Brûlé’s standards and hopefully exceeds them. He can still set up a school though!

the 'leave me alone' monster

One of the benefits of having a young daughter is that you get to know the characters on children's' TV programmes. The 'leave me alone' monster is one of them. Our not so friendly monster believes he doesn't need others and keeps ordering people away, until that is, he finds himself at the playground. There, the monster has a go at the seesaw with, as you guessed, no success. He turns around to see if there is someone he can play but it is too late, everyone is gone.

The point is that I met the 'leave me alone' monster in person the other day. Well, not so much of a monster but certainly a 'leave me alone, I  know best' kind of client. While in early discussions on methods and approaches, we posed the following question: 'how about getting to know what your customers want before designing the service? Otherwise we risk designing for ourselves'. The response was "this is a risk I have to take', in other words: leave me alone I know best, I want this to be mine.

Be wary of the 'leave me alone' monsters out there, if you see one offer them a seesaw to play with, this may save them.