Working for an established organization, you’d like to introduce and successfully implement meaningful changes.

You’re interested in helping modernize the organization and delivering compelling customer experiences while considering your strengths and duties.

As a champion of digital transformation, you may be searching for service design’s role in your overall agenda. You probably also want to enhance how you pitch digital transformation and design thinking to your corporate stakeholders. This means revisiting current processes, from internal systems and teams to customer interactions both online and in-person.

Digital transformation is changing the way business gets done. Forrester’s report states that 85% of companies are to invest in digital transformation. It’s likely that your organization is looking to do the same. You appreciate the value even if that means potentially walking away from long-standing practices.

Now, you’re facing the opportunity to transform your customers’ experiences. Make smarter and faster decisions based on data-driven insight. Also, your company becomes increasingly agile and innovative.

As more forward-looking companies invest in digital transformation, your role as a digital advocate is gaining prominence. If you’re influencing your company’s digital transformation, let’s break down the role of design in your overall strategy.

Challenges of digital transformation

“Every digital transformation is going to begin and end with the customer, and I can see that in the mind of every CEO I talk to.” — Marc Benioff, Salesforce Chairman, and CEO

First, let’s consider that transforming your systems are not all about products (let alone digital touchpoints). Transformation heavily involves your own operations team. We’ll expound on this later.

There are several challenges that a company may encounter during digital transformation. It can differ depending on your company’s culture and size. A survey conducted by Jabil, reveals the following challenges:

Jesse Himsworth, VP of Strategy & Integrated Solutions of Clearlink, notes that “Digital transformation presents problems that are complex and undefined. So, using design thinking to embrace your organization’s digital transformation helps tackle these problems by using a fluid, flexible, hands-on approach to interact with consumers and come up with solutions.”

When integrating service design, the biggest challenge is the organization itself. You’ve heard of cultures where a team may feel animosity towards another team. The developer vs. designer or sales vs. marketing team scenario, for instance, is a common issue.

Enter service design

Service Design plans and organizes activities involving stakeholders, internal processes, technology and other essential components of the service. It involves the entire experience and journey of the user (including customers and internal stakeholders).

See how service design isn’t just limited to optimizing digital touchpoints:

As a result, you deliver a seamless experience and transform people and processes in the “back-office”.

This is what will eventually keep the operations running and users happy.

Why Service Design

“When you have 2 coffee shops right next to each other, that each sell the exact same coffee at the exact same price; service design is what make you walk into the one and not the other, come back often and tell your friends about it.” — Marc Fonteijn

We know that design is key. Why “service design”, however?

Unlike UX or CX, service design is a perspective that focuses on a more holistic view, making it excellent for creating digital transformation changes.

According to the research conducted by Altimeter Group, companies who are undergoing digital transformation gain an increase in market share, customer engagement, and revenue, as well as higher employee morale.

Service design assures that customers are delighted in their end-to-end interaction with a company, product, or service. No matter how great a product may be, it’s bound to fail when surrounding systems are unable to sustainably support the customer’s journey.

By integrating design, you can lower costs due to errors, create services that target the needs of users, boost employee satisfaction, and improve internal collaboration.

How to integrate service design in digital transformation

Now that you’ve seen how experience design can be an integral part of your business strategy, you should communicate with the decision-makers and promote the importance of design for your organization.

Here are some actionable tips:

Collaborate with everyone involved in your service, including the management, staff, suppliers, and customers.

A successful project relies heavily on trust and transparency. Involving your customer support team, for example, allows them to communicate with customers more effectively and gather feedback that can help your organization come up with creative solutions and innovations.

To emphasize, it’s the frontliners who truly understand everyday operations. They’re the best source of information and getting their support helps ensure successful implementation.

From your research, create mockups and prototypes. Then, present them to your organization. This allows you to test, gather data, and discover which feature or service works well for your target users before deploying for everyone.

Releasing a big feature in one go, without careful testing, increases the likelihood of failure and the difficulty in tracing which part could use enhancement.

Develop a culture of ongoing iteration. By introducing and testing small changes, they will later compound into significant transformation.

Altimeter concluded that 31% of companies lack digital talent and experience among their workforce and leadership. You’ll want to rally the team with the right talent. Especially when introducing big changes, it’s critical to inspire trust.

If you happen to need help in leading digital transformation initiatives, take this as an opportunity to look for an expert in the field. You can hire a specialized service design agency, like Somia, to take the load off your back. Involving external specialists allow you to focus on your strengths while delegating the rest.

Over to you

Digital transformation is beyond simply implementing new technology. Service design can add a whole new level of interest to the journey of delivering your product, service, and also, your brand story.

Ultimately, you provide a positive change, foster good relationships with the people interacting with your company, and contribute to the achievement of your business goals.

Looking to integrate design into your Digital Transformation agenda? Let’s chat.