Service Design for Business

Chapter 5Organizational ChallengeUsing Customer Centricity to Move Your Organization Forward

Services are delivered by organizations—public, private, big, and small. These organizations are made up of a number of different elements that come together to create value of some kind for customers and society. There are many ways to categorize the various elements of an organization: we often break it down into people, practices, processes, policies, and systems. We can also think of the classical breakdown into department or functions.

Large organizations exist in order to create value at scale, consistently and effectively. They often do this incredibly well. The organizational challenge is the challenge of doing things differently or changing things in an organization. The very qualities of scale, structure, and solidity that organizations have also make it hard to move things forward.

In many ways having a vision for a better customer experience or an innovative service is the easy bit. Getting it to happen in your organization is less easy. Service design is not simply about painting a picture of the bright future; it is also about rolling up your sleeves and making the change.

Service design offers a better understanding of customers and how to use this insight to engage people and structure strategies and plans. The approach looks at using customer stories to align activities ...