Thomas Brandenburg
Author - Thomas Brandenburg

Interview with Dennis Hambeukers, Strategic Design Consultant at Zuiderlicht. Article by Thomas Brandenburg.

"In order for organizations to be more effective and efficient they have to become more humane. They have to challenge people to step over the boundaries of their departments and roles and give them the freedom to do so. Incentives have to be redesigned to honor experimenting and learning instead of just focussing on time and money." — Dennis Hambeukers

What are the key ingredients necessary in delivering an exceptional end-to-end service experience at scale? How do service designers help?
"In the end it's all about the people: employee engagement and continuous stakeholder feedback loops. New services mostly involve change for people. The sustainable success of the service depends on people's willingness to change which keeps on changing when circumstances change and new insights emerge.

People have to work with the right mindset and keep an open communication line with all stakeholders is a key part of that: not just the end users, but all of them. One of the ways service designers can help is by making things visible and concrete. By doing that they can create a platform for people to come together and communicate on the same level."

How should an organizational structure be adaptive or change to deliver new services with speed and scale?
"Being agile is key to dealing with the complex challenges in the fast pace we are facing them today. And with agile I don't mean following a method like scrum and sticking to it no matter what, but honoring the principles from the Agile Manifesto.

In order for organizations to be more effective and efficient they have to become more humane. They have to challenge people to step over the boundaries of their departments and roles and give them the freedom to do so. Incentives have to be redesigned to honor experimenting and learning instead of just focussing on time and money."

What is a key lesson(s) you learned over the years in scaling service design?
"Scaling service design for me is about the little things. Service design might seem easy at first. The methods and principles are not difficult to understand, however, success is about the small details you pick up with experience.

Service design is not about tools, methods and diagrams, but about moving people. I believe that if you scale service design without an understanding of the little things, the ways you can use the service design tools to move people, you will not reach the full potential of service design and will be disappointed with its results."

Are there any organizations that come to mind that are successful at incorporating service design into their process?
"Organizations that successfully deliver a sustainable service are successful at incorporating service design. Whether this is textbook service design or not does not matter. Whether you stumbled upon the right relevant service or followed an ideal service design process is not the measure of success.

On the other hand, following the service design method to the letter does not guarantee a successful service. I imagine a lot of organizations have a process in place that delivers successful services and don't even call it service design."

What are the most useful framework(s) for measuring impact of the design of services?
"External impact of services can be measured using tools like Net Promoter Scores or other experience grading systems. But what's equally important in the long run is the internal impact of the service design method. Are employees more engaged? Are they willing to take more risks? Are they collaborating more? How much did people learn? These things are hard to quantify but can be felt throughout the organization. If service design is applied successfully magical things happen in the areas of motivation, inspiration and sense of purpose. Measuring things is all about the questions you ask, but I imagine that an Employee Satisfaction Index might work in this regard."

Be sure to see Dennis speak at the upcoming Service Design Global Conference!
Check out other conversations at https://5by5.blog/

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