I’ve just completed a very successful week (5 separate sessions – 7 in total) of training people (designers, leads, account manager-level staff) on customer experience mapping and service blueprinting – as both technique and output. In order to do that though it required some schooling in services, service design, business analysis, change management, framework development. All within a four hour slot.
And I have to say my faith in people has been revitalized! Sometimes you toil in the preaching (and it feels like preaching at times) of service design as more than touchpoints, and website design, and advertising and that it’s about how customer and business connect – for the benefit of both. I’ve had the vision for this training for over a year, and finally after restructuring, change management activities, rah-rah-new-world-activities everything came together for me to run these sessions. The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, with ‘my job is to operationalise what the business wants and develop processes and brochures’-stalwarts saying, “I get it!” and even better, “I can’t wait to get back and start doing it”.
Working in a large organisation where the focus is ‘IT!’ or ‘Project Management!’ or ‘Architecture!’ or ‘Business Analysis!’ occasionally lip service is played to the role of the customer, and in a public sector agency, to the citizen. The organisation’s heart is in the right place, but the tools or mind-set is blinded by ‘requirements!’ ‘specifications!’ ‘stakeholders!’ and all that important business stuff. But that’s ok because I know this, and because our organisation has an area with ‘service design’ in the title it gives license to championing and mandating certain approaches and outputs to ensure customer, and the services they use to engage, comply, regulate and be regulated by, are factored in with all the other accepted business stuff because that is actually what the organisation wants to be able to do.
I’m just so pleased the vision I had came to fruition. But I fully appreciate the real test will be in the practice. Strike that, the real test will be in the design and delivery of services that are meaningful for the customer, efficient, effective and sustainable for the business and contribute to good feelings and trust in our citizenship about the value of the public sector.
Over the next few weeks, and with permission from my employer (they are enlightened, just risk averse) I am going to be publishing here generic versions of the experience mapping and service blueprinting techniques, and some of the training itself. I sought permission because so much of what I’ve learned and sourced and has helped in my service design knowledge development has come from similar forums.