Automated transcript 

## Introduction and Welcome

I'm super happy that tonight we have Isabelle Fringer with us. Isabelle is a service lover and community organizer. She's a partner at The Path Group, a consultancy that wants to empower startups, scale ups, and enterprises to drive their businesses, services, and products forward with the help of journeys.

Tonight we're very excited to have Isabel here with us for a talk on how to not sell service design, a talk that will be also an engaging talk with moments of breaks in the middle where you can also ask your questions.

Once again, I'm very happy to have Isabel here with us. Welcome again to everybody. Isabel, the stage is yours.

## Isabelle Fringer Takes the Stage

Yeah, thanks so much, Daniel, for having me. 

How to sell service design, how not to sell it, and better pitch the value of it. And also maybe something I would love to say as a context up front. I assume that everyone here in this webinar has one thing in common. So a shared interest in service design and how to better sell it and pitch it effectively.

But of course, we all come from different professional backgrounds or work in different contexts, I assume. Maybe you're still a student or you work as a freelancer or you're in house or you have even your own agency or you work in an agency context. So I try to keep the tips and the content rather broad.

And of course I try to ensure that you can apply it in the end of the day. But yeah, it's not specific to either a freelancer or someone seeking for unemployment. So I may in fact. That's good to note. 

## Understanding Service Design

Yeah, and with that one happy to jump in how to better not sell service design or as stated already in the title, to put it a bit more eloquently, how do we better position actually the role of service design in the really business context because this is where we are in 99%.

And I have structured the presentation in two parts. Of course, we are service designers, so that's why we want to look at the problem first. And it's really about facing the brutal truth. Why is it actually that hard to pitch service design? And then secondly, it's really about how we can do this better in the end of the day.

And this is also again as mentioned at the start, please jump in and I'm sure that every one of us has great tips over there as well. Yeah facing the brutal truth. I divided in two parts. First, I would actually love to ground us on a shared definition because there's already a small problem.

We don't have one shared definition. Danielle is laughing, so you know the problem. So I think many people have tackled that already, but we just don't have it. And then just to basically ground us there, because from there and saying, of course, if you have a value proposition, why is it still that hard to really convey that value in the end of the day?

And. Yeah, good question. 

## Defining Service Design

So what the hell is actually service design? This is what many people always ask out there. And maybe you still know it from your own family. I still have it when I come home and my mom is asking, what the hell are you actually doing? It's still not understood after many years. And I think we all face that the challenge.

So of course I could have come up with another definition. And I think all of us have the potential in some of our PowerPoint slides, but I didn't want it to do that. Rather, I took, as in again, actually our own tools, I would say, but I did very, let's say. tactical approach in the end of the day. I went out and I came up with an universal definition which is built up on really what industry leaders are saying at known institutions.

So I took about, let's say, 50 different definitions in the end of the day. That's a bit nerdy, sorry. I think it's part of being a service designer. And I said, on the one hand side from known institution, of course, from the service design network, from IDEO, the Interaction Design Foundation, the Niels Norman Group, and also Mark Fontaine has done a fantastic job of interviewing 30 people with exactly this question, what is your definition of service design?

And what I did, as video service designer, I synthesized all of that and basically looking for the common dominators. And basically the common dominators, of course, like what are the core activities actually in service design? What is really our playground? And most important, what is the value creation we are doing?

And here it is. So if you ever seek, please take a screenshot of that. Also happy to send it around or post it on LinkedIn. Basically, I would say a universal definition, which encapsulates, again, the most common denominators of what all of those institutions and people have said, and maybe just dismantling it for a second.

Of course, what we are doing, what is really our customer in the end of the day, I think it's always organizations in the broadest sense. So services are usually not embedded in like a solopreneurship, so it's always when it gets really complicated and the bigger the organizations they are, the more our chops are needed.

And what are the jobs to be done from those organizations is, of course, offering relevant service. And when I say relevant here, what I really mean relevant, of course, for the customer, for the employee, for the markets, but also for business successes as in a larger sense. And what's really the outcome we want to achieve as service designers looking into the front stage.

Of course, we want to create those delightful experiences for people, let it be the customer or the employee, but we wouldn't be service designers if we don't look at the backstage processes. So it's all about the streamlined processes at the end of the day. And tying those sides really together between the front and backstage, it's of course, we want to create those meaningful interactions between people, again, can be customer, employees, partners, and of course, with the business.

And last but not least, and I truly believe this is what sets us apart. And what I love, it's really the approach we are taking because in the end, we really want to work holistic. We always have the human at the heart, whatever we do. And while of course we want to foster this collaboration, I would say we are the bridge builders and we want to foster this collaboration and cooperation.

And when I personally look at that value proposition, I'm like, Oh, that sounds fantastic. Everyone would just love to buy that because it's just amazing. So I bought in already, of course, because that's what we are passionate about. So here comes the big question. 

## Challenges in Selling Service Design

Why is the volume so hard to convey that?

Because it actually sounds fantastic. And I want to come up now with eight challenges that came across at least my path very often. And before doing that, I just want to give a very quick context. So where do those challenges stem from? So on the one hand side, it's of course, very own experience. So I work roughly now in the design field for about 15 years, but about 10 plus very strictly in service design, usually have advised really big corporations, usually 10 K plus larger corporates.

And I have worked in a longer in house position. So my last one was a co leading a global service transformation for McKinsey and about two years now, I switched into a different setup basically running an own business consultancy, as Daniel already mentioned, called the Path Group founded by my beautiful business partner, Malte Kroslowski.

And also very important. A lot of those problems come from a community which is called Service Design Next founded by myself and Yuli Mata. Big shout out to her because she initiated really a super important conversation about two years ago. I think she called it the article, the road of the design maturity is getting longer.

So I think it sparked a discussion amongst the community service design really in the crisis. Why is it so hard to sell and what's really this design business value gap there? And that's then we initiated this, I would say it was a kind of close knit community with about 40 people around the globe.

It's a really whole high profile people, managers, directors, people running agencies themselves, really sticking their heads together and say, what is actually the hell the problem out there? Why is it so difficult for us? And what could be potential solutions? So many people contributed to what you see here.

So a big thanks to that community. It was a really great exchange back in 2023. So I'm happy also to share that knowledge now with everyone. 

## Community Insights and Experiences

And I start with the challenge number one, and it starts sadly with what we are tackling at core and this is services and services are something by nature, which are intangible.

And therefore it's just harder to convey. And I think this intangibility also sets them truly apart from what, for example, a product is. And I think this is just human psychology. So if we go, for example, in a store, so I can go and check out the MacBook pro and see, Oh, Is it something that suits me, or I can test an audio system, or I can say is the pizza in front of me, does it smell good, so I can make a decision if I want to buy it.

With the service, I dig into this intangible black box and I'm not sure what I'm getting. I can maybe rely on reviews, but that's what I can do. But with services, it's this problem, they can't be seen, they can't be tasted, they can't be felt. It's really, it can't be heard or anything before a purchase.

Yeah, so there's also no tangible proof, I would say, of the outcome beforehand. And as a result, I think for consumers, but the same as also for businesses, they're often very unsure what exactly they are getting and how it will impact them. And I think while this sounds very straightforward, I think it's sometimes good to remind us that we have that difficulty at hand when designing services.

And also so just to give a quick example, maybe on that one. Everyone who knows me always come around with restaurant examples when talking about service design. It's just like an easy transfer. And I think it's the same, I think, for food. At the end of the day, the food is front and center stage.

When you go into a restaurant, it's the star of the show, or if you go on Instagram or wherever. But what we don't see is actually the kitchen and all of these great workflows. It's nothing they, of course, promote. But in the end of the day, and you don't walk into the restaurant because of that, you do it because of the food.

So it's not. Of course we don't do it for that experience behind the kitchen, but it's super important. We notice service designers, everything would collapse if this system and all of the workflows back there would not work perfectly. This is exactly where service design comes in and what makes it possible, but this is rarely visible on the one hand side again or valued, but yet it defines actually the success.

And we know that as service designers, but not everyone else does it. And also I found it super interesting. I just thought when I worked on that presentation, I was like, okay, let's look into, of course, the masters of customer experience and design branding. And I wanted to see like, how is Apple doing that?

How are they showcasing services, for example? And I was super surprised because of course, when you look at the product, so this is by the way, the very current website, you could check it out yourself. Of course, like a very neat product design, branding is super clear and recognizable and iconic. And when you look at the services, I had, in my opinion, it really lacks completely on this emotional pull what the products are doing.

And there's no distinct identity even. As they mastered for the product. So I was also surprised in that one, that not even just as a year, of course, from a branding perspective. They have not mastered it. So it's very interesting to see. So yeah, intangibility of services. So that's a big one we are tackling.

And the second one. I'm a really nitty gritty a bit here of bad language, but the second thing we're doing is designing. It's the core activity of service design, of course. And also here we have a big issue because what design really is, it depends completely on who you ask. And service design, as we just said before.

Everyone has a different opinion and I'm sure that everyone today in the room, if we would take 20 opinions about design and service design, we have 20 different opinions. And design in itself is super stuck still in the beautification box. What we realize, I think, outside of our bubble, where we have a clear understanding of strategic value in business, other people don't.

If you go out in a random conversation, I'm sure you have experience, and you say you are a designer. It's what? Fashion? Graphics? Posters? What are you doing? But no one would have the idea of it being very strategic. So it's pretty interesting. And I digged a little bit, there are some really interesting studies out there, so you can follow up after that if you're interested.

McKinsey had a really interesting one I think between 2015 and 2020, for example, there have been about of the top hundred companies, about 40 CDOs have been hired, which is amazing. So I think finally we got there. We had really CDOs embedded in the exec boards. But super interestingly, like 60, 60 percent of the CEOs, they didn't really quite grasp what the CDOs are actually doing.

They just did not really understand it. And that most companies, also the heads of design, they have been very ineffectively embedded basically in these exec boards. So super interesting to hear again. And another one, and I think you might know him from the service design community or maybe Daniel, you know him Mauricio Mahé.

And he did a super interesting study and I think he also presented it here in the service design network. I think maybe there's a video out there. It's worth to see. And I think he talked about 40 or 50 industry leaders. And he also say in the end, we as designers are partially really discriminated even in the workspace.

And I think it's good to be aware of that. And there was a really interesting insight also out there. And I think we all know that saying, we as designers, we have to speak business. But actually, he really clearly found out, we do know business, especially of course leaders and managers too, but the main problem is that the business doesn't know design.

And I think it's again, something, I think it's out of our influence, I would say, it's not something we can potentially change with a lot of education, I think we can, but it's good to be aware of that. that this is just a fact we have to deal with partially. But we can gather the solutions in a bit.

But yeah, a second big problem is actually this design being just completely not fully understood. And with service design, there's a small other one. We know as service designers, our workspace is like digital and physical touch points. That's what we love to do to blend it all for a perfect experience.

But usually in business, this is solely understood as digitally. So yeah. That's another one. We have to tackle the service designers and reoccurrently explain ourselves. Yeah, but we said what we want to design is delightful experiences. All of the stream plan processes and meaningful interactions. But the challenge here, I think, is that Businesses are mostly focused on immediate gains.

I don't have something to back that up by numbers, because I guess no one would say that out loud as a business leader or manager, but out of my experience, and I don't know what other people are saying, it's usually the case. So that's something we have to be mindful about. That we always have to show quick wins.

And jumping us immediately to the challenge number four here, because they're very tightly intertwined. Of course, we want to take this holistic approach. As I said, I think this is what I'm at least super passionate about and what I love to always zoom in and zoom out. And of course, like then blend basically the people, process and systems and the line, all of those, but that's effort.

That means for every organization, it's a huge effort to do that. You don't do that from two days. You don't do that in a week, usually the month. And This transformative nature, I think, what service design always has per se, very often I see it's underestimated. So you come in and then basically as you get started and the more deeper you dig, you also see it might need some organizational change, but then out of a sudden the work is getting larger.

And a good friend of mine, she also a service design expert herself studied underneath Birgit Mager a long time ago and runs now Why Does Robert? And she said it, I think, very nicely. So yeah, at the beginning of every project and you come in as a service designer and everyone is super enthusiastic and you start with design thinking and you unfold everything and everyone is happy.

But this moment when you uncover really this deep rooted problems, because you have. Of course your siloed departments and then yeah, the to do list is getting bigger and then it's getting a bit basically also partially pushback. And I think in the end of the day, even if we have at times a plan and we have our to do list, it's still yet a big question.

And everyone who has worked in big corporate before, does the mountain want to be moved? Maybe not for everyone. So this change of version is just real. And I think everyone who worked on transformation has experienced it, and another one, the challenge number five. I think it's not to blame the businesses. It's more blaming ourselves as a service and community, as we talked about before. We don't really have standardized, I think, our own practice, so to say. So there's no standardization in even a definition, what it is or our principles and values or metrics or what's the quality control and all of that.

So it's a bit of a diluted field, which makes it sometimes harder, of course, from our counterparts in the business. Even they have heard from services and there are there, they have heard something different potentially. So it makes it sometimes difficult with language to build up on something. And I think it's a big one we all have experienced.

It's just sometimes hard for service design to really get this correlation. What's the business impact because it's not direct. Always. Sometimes you can, but not always. So that's why I think this effect of service design, while we try, of course, to tie it to business impact or to ROI. But we also don't really own a specific metric.

Then, of course, we are not prioritized. And we see it with recent layoffs, for example, also. That sometimes then it can fall down the cracks. That we are more in the, sadly, nice to have bucket at times because of that. Because we can't tie it to business impact all of the times. Just good to be aware of that.

And you also, I think everyone who has experienced that it's a bit similar, I think what we said before at the first moment when you start to introduce this new workflow and agility and you go into testing and prototyping it, getting quick feedback and everyone loves it. But in the longterm, very usually the organizations tend to fall back and of course it's also very hard.

At the parts to tie the waterfall approach, which is there because of budgeting and planning cycles with the basically more agile process of service design. There are, I think, concepts like the safe environment to deal with that, but it's still very tricky for corpos who have worked in that matter for a very long time.

Which makes it also harder because everyone, when you start a new project, it feels like you have to start from the beginning because this process has never settled in. And for an organization to really go a hundred percent agile takes years. And for large corpus, sometimes also not easy to do. And last but not least for a very long time.

And I think it's changing now, which is great. We don't have tools. Yes, we just somehow don't fit into this Microsoft world, which is usually out there. And yes, we have Miro and Lego, just like a short side joke. But yes, we have Miro. But thinking about it, what is Miro really? Just as an example, it's a whiteboard.

So it's just digitized paper, but it's not intelligent. It's static. I put it out there once and it sits there, and usually with services and the fast paced world, when I work on a journey map nowadays, it's different already tomorrow. So it just sits there, there is no API, and it's not integrated with anything.

So it's not really a smart tool, so to say, which is luckily changing also. So this is in a nutshell, I would say what I have seen in the last years, and of course, potentially 20, 000 more of them, but what are the biggest challenges, so to say, in selling in service design? So just like a quick sum up, services are intangible per se, yes, we have this design perception gap out there, which we, I think is out of our influence.

We have this, as businesses are just fixated more on the short term. And this change of version is just real. So it's a form of psychological for people. We have not standardized our own practices, which we are sometimes stumbling over and you have business impact to show that the services line is partially out and this workflow rigidity, I think sometimes falls on our shoes and with the missing tools we have just somehow.

Didn't manage to be deeply integrated into the business as of now.

This is what I said already before we are going into the full solution mode, I want to pause and basically hand out the mic to everyone because I'm sure next to those eight, you have experienced like a lot more out there of the challenges. 

## Open Discussion and Audience Interaction

So happy to hear about them. And also any feedback. Hi, my name is Boris. I'm from a future works, creative consultancy in Zurich. And fortunately I'm more from a branding and design background, graphic design background, and I think the whole, and but highly interested in service design. We also offering service design as a service in our company, but, this problem of selling design is not just limited to service design. It's in my career from the very beginning and it's not, I know this very well, having a hard time just explaining branding or even graphic design is complicated. It's and telling the story of the value you bring, and it's always it's quite peculiar because it's it's so important for many people. It's important for us, but it's so hard to bring over the value. And I almost know, I don't know any other practice where it's so hard. Even the brain surgeon, which has a very complicated job, it's easy to understand what she actually does or what she does. So what's the value of it?

And why is it for designers so complicated? For product design, it might be a bit different because if you see product design as a very limited field, then it's easy to understand why it's needed because products need her. Need to form basically in order to exist. So you need a product designer to do it.

But apart from this, it's very hard. And what I find interesting is that, service design has so much potential and actually overcoming this gap, because if you see service more as part of the product, so as part of what. company or the organization is actually producing and doing, and you're part of this to make it possible to be at the market at all.

It could be somehow the key to do this, but it's so hard to to do this also as a designer, because you don't speak the language, you don't know the codes, you don't know all these things. And this is what makes us um, because that's such an idealistic background also to it. So you want to do.

You don't want to make business. You want to make the world better somehow. And this is some kind of conflict. I, or we also as a as a consultancy encounter, which is next hard to sell because it's so much effort also for us to tie it to a business value, but I see so much potential. So I think it's worth pursuing this really.

But I understand all the points you mentioned, and it's no, there's no obvious solution also.

But I think it's a designer's issue. Yeah. And maybe we should get rid of the design.

## Addressing Service Design Challenges

I have a question, Isabel. A, an experienced slash product designer, so I've designed like entire like infrastructure products and things like that before myself like by like practically by myself. And a lot of un unsurprisingly information architecture and service design is a natural, huge part of that general equation.

I am potentially. Getting involved in like pure service design roles, or pure service design roles. But my question for you is in terms of, dealing with and try to sell and convince service design to other domains and areas and things like that. Do you notice any other domains where it's any other parties where sometimes maybe a little bit easier?

To sell to and help explain and do you notice any group of people that's maybe like harder for them to learn and understand what services line is meaning? Do we have any? Are there any? Are there any folks that are there any folks that may be quicker to become? Allies and advocates for service design versus some groups that might be harder.

## Convincing Stakeholders of Service Design

I believe that there is no general answer to that question, but I think there's an answer in your question already. So what I have experienced over the years, never tried to sell to someone who's not believing into design in general. That has never worked. If you already realize that there is no base understanding of what design can bring into the table, it's hard to start from there.

It's like selling a burger to someone who's not hungry, basically. So what we have done, for example, also as a consultancy, but it's typical for sales, I would say to look actually who are the right leads. So let's say we, for example, switched a little bit to talk to companies who have a higher maturity level already in the special ACX because we focused on journey management.

So it's a little bit different, but we know we can't work together with companies who have no basic understanding of. What customer experience is, and what does it bring? So I think from that front I believe in that it's about searching for that people. And I think when we talk about in house, it's also pretty similar because you talked about alleys, and I think you will find those when you start to speak about service design.

So what we, for example, do in organizations, we build journey teams, so around a customer journey. And also, it's not about forcing someone. So you have now that role of being involved in that journey. It's rather who you realize and experience has a natural interest of being part of that. Let's say you run a town hall on service design and you'll see who is already naturally coming up and has naturally that understanding.

So these are the people you should. Take on the journey to journeys, the journey to service design or product design, I think. Thank you.

## Navigating Uncertain Roles in Organizations

Hi. I'm doing service design in Iran. It's about three years and a half. And actually my problem is similar to what Naan said now because, I talked with organizations and organizations often ask me to design my own role in that organizations.

They say that, yes, we need you. We need such a person and which feels uncertain and risky to me because I think that if my role isn't clearly needed by the CEO, like the C levels of that company, I cannot work with them and it won't be accepted. So avoiding these roles limits. My projects opportunities and.

I want to know that am I doing the right thing or is this how can I define my role in an organization without feeling like I am imposing myself, it is because it's mostly like that, or as you said, like in the answer of nothing that avoid. to these companies. And there's another question that I have because it's about navigating a certain uncertainty into introducing myself, because we are working with a wide range of clients from Individuals to large organizations.

And I see that my roles vary from like closing to marketing roles to UX roles, and some like organizations called me community makers from this. And how can I introduce myself effectively now when my role shifts across different projects and industries? As you said, it depends to whom you are explaining design definition, after years of working as a service designer, it has become more complex because in some parts, I am not a service designer, I'm UX designer, I'm community maker, I'm You know how it is.

It is still a problem for me. How do I balance between being approachable and maintaining a professional identity that fits different client expectation because it is what that how I can sell myself as a professional. Yeah, I have all these in my mind. Yeah. 

I totally feel you and I think many have the same issue.

It's about what sticker we basically using in the end of the day because service design is such a broad field, which kind of encapsulates all what you just have been saying. So I'm not sure if all of. That will be answered in the next part, but I think some of it, but I did not go explicitly into the part of how to, what's the college, let's just call it.

Are you giving yourself? I don't have the solid answer on that one. I changed quite a bit. Also over time, a bit of just monetary speaking considering yourself as a consultant is very broad. And still encapsulates most of the things while being usually better paid as hard as it sounds, but this is the reality.

It's maybe one answer. I think so. You might hate the word consultant, but it can be an answer. So I'm not, of course, pushing that to anyone, but I think a setlist can be so broad and. What I'm realizing, especially in service design, this is what you usually do. You advise organizations of how to tackle things differently.

And of course we go to step further because you have to design the solutions and think solutions through, but this is also what consultants are doing. Thank you so much. And I think some of them still will be addressed a bit later. 

So jumping in, and I think that's actually that also we should have a big conversation also on that one. 

## Selling Service Design Effectively

So how to better pitch the value of service design. And yeah, here we come to the point Boris. I personally, and I don't like to say it out loud because really deep in my heart, I'm a designer and I'm a service designer.

That's who I am. But what I learned for myself, these are two different things, what you're doing, what you're passionate about. And service design for me is a practice. It's the methods and the toolkits we have underneath. Selling is a completely different art and service design is not what you should sell.

That would be my tip number one. Call it however you like it. What's the best for the organization? What I see in design, so this is just from the last years of experience in the kind of sequence, what is really important for a business in the end of the day. And this is also how I would approach everything.

So if you want to buy a situation in house or to sell a service design to anyone, first what you do foremost, you sell a solution to a problem. And that might be very different now, of course, depending on the context, but you have to be aware of what's the problem of this person standing in front of you.

What's the problem of that business, what they want to tackle, what are really their worries and what could be a solution out there. And this is also really, of course, where storytelling kicks in, because this is where you can tag people. Here we have a problem out there, we have understood you, and also we have a solution.

Solution can be, of course, a process you are taking, but of course, the more sharp you can also make the solution already, the better, I think, is the success of selling. And secondly, this is the language of business, we might like it or not, that solution you're talking about, will it make or save money to the business?

And I know it's a tough one for service design. So let's go there in a minute, how we can do it better. And I know it's tricky, but of course there are some ways. Going a little bit further down. So it's a little bit like with an eye test, but this is, I wanted to talk about the priority. Yes, of course, on the third line, we also want to ensure that the solution is relevant because we have customer insights.

That's our main take. And again, what I talked about before, when I say relevant, it's really, we know there will be a market fit because we have understood our customer. We have prototyped, we have tested, we have iterated, we got all of the customer insights basically. So we ensure that there's a relevant service out there or product.

And last but not least, of course, what we also do, we bring people, processes and systems into sync. But this is also usually not the one which is getting bought, because again, it's difficult, it's transformative, it's heavy. Yes, we will do it, but don't, I would not put it center stage. Something you know you will do later with your support toolkit you're having.

And that comes for me something super fantastic now, while I would not put design into the foreground of what I'm selling, we design is our superpower. And this is so perfect for selling a solution and selling problems because we as designers and especially service designers are so tremendously good in making things tangible.

And in every single project I have been in, this has been the aha moment. In the moment where you do your SE journeys and your S processes, and you do, of course, you come out of your research phase and say, we have uncovered the problems. And. Explicitly along the customer journey. And these aha moments within the business are just like amazing.

I have one of our last projects, the CEO himself told us, wow, the first time I understood my business completely. Thank you. Because we just showed him all of the workflows. And then of course we can show solutions. Again, we are designers. It's so powerful to make those things tangible. And I think this is really also how you can convince people and get buy in because you show it, you make it tangible.

What is this problem out there? And out of a sudden people can talk about it by making it tangible and making it visible. People can have a conversation about it and it gets into their heads. So this is just, I think, amazing. And I love it that this is our superpower because it helps a lot in selling.

And what's just as an example also out of previous work. I love to work with Vision Blueprints also because they do exactly that. So this is of course, when you're in a project already, but what you can do, you can also like how I usually set up Vision Blueprints, what is really the problem at every stage of the customer experience, what is the solution at this very moment and what's the impact of that solution already, maybe not just monetary, but in overall for the business or the service provider and on the customer, and then.

Yeah, we have, we can make it tangible. Yes, services are intangible, but we can at least with visualization and illustrations, prototyping, we can go there and actually make it tangible for them. And usually also, of course, maybe it's not the service designer's main domain, but starting then to prototype those different touch points out, you can make it discussable and you can start to go and just exchange that with people, which I think is super powerful.

And this is a little side tip, in the end of the day, do not sell the solution or the discover problems as yours. Take yourself back, basically is what I'm saying here. I think at least in the corporate world, I don't know if this is really true for agencies, but the more you can say for whoever your sponsor is in house or whoever is paying you and can say here, you have done that, you have discovered the problem and the solution.

I think the more easier it is actually to drive by. I see you Daniel is nodding, so I maybe made that experience already, I think. Yeah, I'm hearing that over and over for people. Take yourself, you're in the background. That's the service line. Of course, we have that empathy also. To understand our stakeholders, we have that empathy that they want to shine.

And the more easier you will drive by, for sure. And here we're coming to that aspect again. So fingers really tip number two, and it's the reality. At the end of the day, we work for businesses and the language of business is simple in the end of today. So we have to talk about monetization and this can go in two ways.

So usually I would say. Actually, I think a business has three things they have to do. They want to deliver amazing products and services, so to drive revenue through like market excellence, that's the one side to the outer world. And inside they want to optimize the resource effectiveness and workflows.

Again, very strong process and systems. Third one I'm leaving out for the moment because this is more about business modeling, which is not usually the service design domain. So let's focus on these two because I think we operate on those two. And this is also usually how we build our argumentation line.

We usually put journey center stage because you have your service designer. So we don't work usually on that one solution or that one touch point. So we rather think more journey centric. And what we always tell our clients, so still, of course, we know that an increased revenue is the goal out there. The reality is as service designers, we don't get there from one day to the other.

That's just not how it works. That is a process we follow or have to follow in sense of order to get there. It's not that we build a solution out there, like a baby or a feature, like a product designer can do, and out of a sudden it makes more money, the product. We have to go for the process of defining the problem, revealing opportunities.

Or that one we can make a decision and prioritize and then actually in that moment we can improve something if we have taken that decision. This improved service then can lead in turn to a higher satisfaction from an employer or customer and that in turn actually gives you an increased revenue. So we are usually trying to ensure that everyone understands that lettering effect or cascading effect of what is happening through service design.

And the same is true on the other side. If you work for operational excellence or even for processes, it's absolutely the same. You can have rebuilt opportunities there because there are process inefficiencies, or you could just strive for better alignment, and by there you improve the processes of either, I don't know, can be a business workflow, but also can be how people work together, can be all of that.

And this, of course, in turn is a higher efficiency and lower costs. So this is something we usually build our augmentation line. And yes, again, it's especially super tricky when you start a project to tie that to revenue, but of course you can at least try to make exemplary our eyes again for business leaders to make it somewhat tangible what it can mean for business.

Taking here. And that's what we did for an insurance in an offer. Basically, very simple. Also to say, first of course, we have to identify the high impact journey, so to say, where we believe also we can improve something. This is an own process in itself, but once we have done that, of course we have that experience to find opportunities along this journey.

And I think every one of you in here in this call. And if you work as designers, you will have that ability to look at the journey end to end and say, Oh, at these moments, there is something which we can do better. And basically, of course, from there, actually start to really build relevant solutions. And of course, then with the hypothesis, what can be and return of invest for the business.

So even if it's hypothetical at the beginning, I would always aim to, if there are business stakeholders involved to do that. Also, a nice example here from Daydue, which is a journey management platform. It's a kind of a bit similar approach. It's not really with this cascading effect. But yeah, but same storyline in here.

You start about choosing a journey where you know it has a high impact. Because there are many people involved here. For example, it was about, what about 5 million of customers, which have really an issue with their credit card. And here also, they wanted to improve in both sides. So reduce the customer service costs.

It's actually something which happens very regularly. That's what every business wants to do, because service calls are very expensive, and improve overall effectiveness of how this is done, maybe with self services, etc. And then, of course, again, you start to go through the process again. You map journeys, identify those pain points, get the opportunities and the solutions, and then If we trust our process and we hear that very often, but I strongly believe in that because I have seen it working in life, we come to those moments of having this efficiency gains.

We can definitely improve on use cases like this.

And chatting a step further, while we can make hypothetically our our eyes or also have strong use cases where we can prove that we've done that, I think once explicitly when you're in house, so I don't know for how many this is applying here, but if you work in a house, look that you at least have a specific KPI you can tie to because otherwise you can't prove the business what you have made better.

And I know this is a bit of a tougher one sometimes to crack because it's a question of how those things are really highly tied together. So the, let's say if you're on a journey level and you are working on the journey as such, this KPI you are defining should of course tie into overall, let's say customer experience metric in the best case, which should in turn tie into a business KPI.

And I think this is something not every corporate is that far already. So I think also corporate needs support in doing that. So sometimes they are not even CX KPI established, let's say typically, of course, that promotes a score or like a CSAT, personally, not a big fan of them, but better than nothing.

I think a good one, for example, would be customer lifetime value. Because I think it's a good indicator to have if you have a successful service and then on a journey level, you have to see how can they tie back again. So I think this can help tremendously of working intern to prove that basically changes you're doing or all opportunities you're working on can have an impact.

## Tools and Techniques for Service Design

And I want to talk about tools and definitely I want to state that because please don't get me wrong, because implementing a tool is definitely not the holy grail, because sometimes people come around and now we have a tool and everything's going to be like, no, this is maybe it's just like 5 percent of the journey, but I have seen it making a significant difference.

So since we have tool out there, like Smapley, Deidre, Castellans, SX Omni, just to name a few. And what they do, they take those journey maps, what we had previously in Miro on paper on Figma, wherever, and actually help us to turn this into this orchestration tool and start to bring us a bit of a business perspective inside.

And I just grabbed here a screenshot from Deidoo. And I think it illustrates it perfectly fine because you can start to Build it really out like dashboards. So for example, we worked for Lufthansa recently and helped them to implement journey management over the course of three, four months throughout the pilot.

And we did exactly that next to mapping, of course, journeys, we also identified what are the key goals and the key metrics, and then really having this as a kind of dashboard where you really quickly see again, what changes are made. How are they influencing actually my business KPIs, solutions implemented?

I can track that. Oh, what are tools? So out of a sudden I start to get an intelligent tool because also I can integrate via APIs, things like Qualtrics and survey results. So what I said before, like Miro being, for example, super static. I think now we are going into a world where, yeah, there's a little bit smarter to it.

But I'm still doing, of course, the same exercises. We still need to research, we still need qualitative research, and we still need to embed even, let's say, insights manually. But I'm getting this research databank to it, and I also can start to track more long term. So it's a more of a continuous approach and a more of a systematic approach to things.

And I've seen business stakeholders, when we started to present that to them, act very differently and react very differently on it. And they see the benefit of what is happening here. Maybe it's just also because they see the numbers, but yeah, there's definitely value on it because even as I say, you're a business manager and you're overseeing two to three of those journeys, you have indicators of what is happening there.

So it gives you that oversight. So this is really, I think, as I just said before, where I see a little bit of that difference now. So all of the great things we always have done, journey maps are such an incredible, the core tool, I would say for my service designer and blueprints where we show like the essence of the future stage, and it's such an incredible, super exercise.

We get those inputs and we get this knowledge and great insights, but usually it's this one off exercise. And when we shift more into this approach of continuously doing it and getting into those cycle, it gets really beneficial for organizations. And also to do it across journeys, then it even gets more powerful because you're out of a sudden CEO on those 30 journeys, we have a pain point, which is happening across.

And again, it can be an higher impact, basically. And last but not least, because we talked about it before, I'm going to close with that one. I know that most service designers hate it when someone is saying from the business, you're not I think I didn't like it for a long time. No, service design is not about quick wins, I was always used to say.

Service design is more this holistic lens and I think changing things a bit more on the broader scale. But yeah, I'm definitely quite convinced now it is also, you will always need those quick wins. We have to demonstrate the value over and over again. And I say it a bit with a smile, but it's also, but honestly, keep the big strategy to yourself.

With yourself, of course, your team or with whoever you're working, but I think there are two approaches to transformation on a very broad scale. I can say, this is my big vision out there and I show everyone the vision and I'm trying to, that everyone understands it and I gear everyone towards that.

But it can be very overwhelming for people. And also for a business. Rather, I don't know how to translate it in German. We say the Zwiebelschalenprinzip. I don't know if anyone has a translation for that. It's like you peel an onion, and you do it a bit step by step. You take the first journey you're having, and then basically you get two, three people on board, like what you said, is it Nathan?

Then basically you grab the right people and say, now we're going to work together. Work on the journey. And out of a sudden you have your first journey team, for example, who works already across Silo. And then always coming back to you, Lely, it's, I think. Because you're just actually in that, I won't say luxury situation of that you can shape your own job role.

I would rather say there are those areas where you see within the business where you can have a great impact. But this doesn't matter about your role or how you call yourself. So not rather is if you have already a tendency or hypothesis that those areas can be. I think this is, I think, the best that you can do.

Show value from the very first moment and identify those customer journeys, so to say. where you can have that impact and show it to business. And yeah, I think these are just five of them. And again, open, open the mic for everyone, whoever wants to stay. But to sum it up, I think these are five tips which have helped us tremendously to get service design hiddenly through the door, I would say, or drive by.

## Concluding Remarks and Community Engagement

Thank you so much, Isabel. It's been a super interesting journey that you've brought us in. I want to say a big bravo. A big thank you to you, Isabel for.

preparing this for the community, for taking the time to share it with the community, to be such a lovely internet friend who jumped in a few months ago and said, Oh yes, absolutely. I would love to help out the community. 

This is all volunteer work. This is important for me to mention it. It's work that people do, on the side of all the other things that they have to do. And so this has even more value when we see it like that. So again, a big thank you to you, Isabelle.

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