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Steve:
Journey mapping is a helpful tool in determining how your customers experience your company. But what if we took it to a new level?

Justin:
Service design and its benefits for the business is that it gives us a way to evaluate three big questions. So one, what will this do for our current and future customers, two, how will our business be impacted, and three, what capabilities does the organization need in order to make it happen?

Steve:
Let's talk about service design on this episode of The CX Leader Podcast.

Announcer:
The CX Leader Podcast with Steve Walker is produced by Walker, an experience management firm that helps our clients accelerate their XM success. You can find out more at walkerinfo.com.

Steve:
Hello, everyone. I'm Steve Walker, host of The CX Leader Podcast and I'm glad you're listening. As we like to say, it's never been a better time to be a CX leader. And on this podcast we explore the topics and themes to help leaders like you deliver amazing experiences for your customers. Most CX pros are pretty familiar with the concept of customer journey mapping, the process that identifies the paths customers take when interacting with your company. We've done a few episodes on it already and you can check those out at cxleaderpodcast.com. But what if we did a little more than just pinpoint problems and build empathy for our customers? What if we included the customer in the process and they helped design improved experiences? In other words, we turn the journey mapping process up to 11. Well, my guest on this episode is uniquely qualified. His vast experience on this process known as service design. Justin Zalewski is director of product design and strategy at Studio Science, a design and innovation company. Justin, thanks for being a guest on The CX Leader Podcast.

Justin:
Thanks, Steve. Thanks for having me. It's great to be here.

Steve:
Well, it's delightful to have you. And full disclosure, I just gotten to know you a little bit, but I know your firm quite well. Before we get into our topic here, just give us a little bit more of your own personal journey and career background and then tell us a little bit about Studio Science.

Justin:
Yeah, sure. For me personally, I got into design from the graphic design and visual communication side of things, and that just led me into kind of I've always had a natural interest in some of the more technical side of things. And so I got interested in web design and development and writing code, and then that led me into the UX world, and that's where I really feel like it just, it really resonated with me figuring out, you know, how do we how do I combine kind of both right brain left brain sides of me to figure out how to make better user experience for people and really create the right scaffolds for people to have great experiences. And that eventually led me to lead me from UX and product design up into service design. I've kind of taken this, this zoomed out view of rather than obviously there's a ton we can do to improve the user experience of individual products and touchpoints. But what happens when we zoom out and we look at the customer journey at a broader level and not just the customer journey, but what is the employee experience alongside of that? What are the people, the processes, the technology that are happening to enable that that better experience? So that's been my journey and then I've had the chance to bring that that experience to bear at Studio Science, especially over the last several years in leading our product and service design practice, getting to work with clients large and small on a variety of different industries to improve their customer experiences.

Steve:
And how long have you been at Studio Science now?

Justin:
It'll actually be ten years.

Steve:
Ten years.

Justin:
And if this is launching in February, I will have hit the ten year market at that point. So pretty decent tenure, especially in the consultancy world. But it is I mean, it is a special place, a unique place that is really just won my heart. And I've loved being there.

Steve:
Yeah, I actually am, again, I'm very familiar with your firm, a big fan of it, and I think it's a unique story. But just tell us a little bit more about studio science and and what you guys do, because you're kind of in a unique position there in the world of providing services to other businesses.

Justin:
Yeah, Yeah, I think so too. Like you said, we're a design and innovation firm and our purpose is to help businesses design with people as opposed to for people. So we'll talk about co-creation. So we solve a variety of different problems for our clients. But if I can sum it up, comes down to this. So customer experience depends on meeting people's needs. Of course, people's needs are always changing and so businesses have to change too, and change is really hard. So the way we help is we help businesses to understand their customer's needs and then we figure out what the solution is to those needs. But it's always very customer people focused, right? It's kind of the essence of customer experience. Right? And to get more specific, because that's all real vague general language, we do a lot of work with large enterprise companies and they're typically in a place where they've enjoyed long term success. But what got them here won't get them to that next stage, right? And more often than not, and I'm sure you've seen some of this as well, the way these large companies are set up doesn't really allow them to innovate well, because they're not built to move quickly and iterate the way you have to to stay attuned to a customer experience. And so when we speak with people that are responsible for advancing customer experience at an organization like this, they're usually frustrated, sometimes even feel hopeless because they've been banging their head against the wall for so long, trying to make progress in their organization. And so that's where we can come in and we can act as their modern design team from the outset when. Not possible for them to operate that way on the inside, build an understanding based on their customer needs, their business goals. And then we use prototyping product design, service design to figure out how do we make those solutions, validate that it actually meets needs and move forward.

Steve:
Well, you're starting to talk about it, so why don't you just kind of break down what you just kind of rattle them off? Let's put them in a little more of a framework for our listeners. But what are the elements of service design?

Justin:
Yeah, we could talk about that in a couple of different ways. So the core activities of the service design process are going to be, I think, familiar to everybody that you're still starting with research, moving into ideation and prototyping and then finally into implementation know fairly standard design process. There's many different flavors of that. They use different terms and words, but that same kind of creative process is still showing up in service design. And that's actually one of my favorite things about service design, is it doesn't pretend to be reinventing the wheel or anything like that. It's the application of existing tools and methodologies and skills to the development of services. So really the the mindset is one of the more important shifts when you think of service design is that it's people centered, it's collaborative, it's co-creative, it's iterative, and it's holistic. And so another way to kind of position that of service design and its benefits for the business is that it gives us a way to evaluate three big questions. So one, what will this do for our current and future customers, two, how will our business be impacted, and three, what capabilities does the organization need in order to make it happen? So as you alluded to earlier, you know, we're all pretty good at number one. What will this do for our current and future customers? We can focus in on the journey map, figure out what that experience is going to be. But what I love about service design is bringing in those other layers. You know, how will the business be impacted by this change? And then what capabilities are required to actually make this change? I'm sure we've all run into situations where we design this really idealistic, maybe utopian customer experience like this is going to be amazing without enough consideration for like, what are the actual capabilities and who needs to be on board with this? What kinds of things need to be in place in order to actually make this a reality?

Steve:
So let's get a little more practical now and just talk to me a little bit about I don't want to give away any trade secrets or anything, but, you know, give me kind of an example of how this might be applied to a situation. Make it as generic as you like.

Justin:
Yeah, sure I can. I'll start generic and then we can talk about some examples even to you.

Steve:
Oh, great.

Justin:
But yeah, I mean, when we think of the collaborative co creative aspect of service design, when you're creating a service blueprint, I'll start there. Even with what is the service blueprint for those unfamiliar, it's helpful to see examples of this. But at the base level, I would think of it like this. If you think of a customer journey map and you're mapping the customer's experience along a journey. Think of the service blueprint is just adding some more depth and layers to that at each point of the journey. It's not just what is the customer doing and thinking and feeling, experiencing, but what is the business doing to enable that customer experience? What is the sales team responsible for there? What's the customer service team doing? What kind of tech stack is supporting different layers there? And so mapping that all out is super helpful to see all these different interrelated pieces that go into making a great customer experience. But what we found is even more helpful is actually co-creating that blueprint with employees and customers, which is kind of a core tenet of service design, right? And so how that looks is rather than us as the designers or the leaders of a business, mapping out the blueprint ourselves based on what we know or even heard from customers, employees, Co-creation invites others to bring their perspectives into direct directly contribute to designing the service. So in the case of a service blueprint, it can be helpful for us to provide maybe some structure and a scaffold for that blueprint, but then inviting customers and employees and to map out their own experiences can be a really powerful way to get them involved. Getting their perspective in a more direct way compared to, say, interviews, for example.

Steve:
Yeah. So a little more of an interactive type of approach.

Justin:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's interactive. It's a little more participatory, but it also I mean, just the the difference it can make in the mindset of customers, employees that they're they're not being handed down something they can be invited into the process of actually forming. What will the future look like? Right.

Steve:
You've used a term that I'm a big fan of a couple of times, iteration or iterative. Maybe expand a little bit on on the key part of that.

Justin:
Yeah Yeah. I mean it's it's all iterative because we don't know what we don't know. And so we're going to do the best that we can with the people that we have in the room. And the more diverse a set of stakeholders, the better. But even the best laid plans and the best prototype is always you're always going to learn something new when you share it with new groups of stakeholders, when you expand the audience, when you launch it out into the world, things are going to change. Any time that people are involved, something unexpected is going to happen in some form, and so you've got to be ready for it. So I think embracing that iteration not just in process, but in mindset, to be prepared for it, to avoid that thinking of, well, we're we're done with this, right? Like it's launched and it's done to to really be prepared to iterate before and after the launch is is super important. And I think we'll we'll evolve will avoid all kinds of pitfalls that you see a lot of organizations fall into when they treat it as a one and done.

Steve:
Actually, I'm just a big fan of iteration in business in general, and I kind of go to my sports analogies here, so in our frequent listeners will know this, but, the power of innovation is you can fail fast and you can learn quickly. And the faster you make those cycles and as you're advocating, the more people you can bring into that process and the more consensus you can drive quickly, you know, the learning there is just exponential. So, you know, they talk about like the great athletes, 10000 hours, right? And it's not just putting in 10000 hours, but putting it in intentionally in a way where they, you know, very clear about what they're trying to accomplish and what they're working on. And anyway, I think it's just a great concept for all of our listeners to to embrace this concept of iteration.

Steve:
My guest on the podcast this week is Justin Zalewski. He's a director of product design and strategy at Studio Science, a fascinating company that really helps organizations improve their approaches to innovation and and design company. We've been talking about the concept of of service design, really taking journey mapping to the to the next level. And Justin's just provided us a ton of great information. All right. You promised you'd get a little more specific, maybe even share a couple of examples. So I'm anxious. I can't wait to hear about this because I want to see how this works.

Justin:
Yeah, Yeah. I'll share a couple quick examples and we can drill in wherever is helpful. But a couple that come to mind when we think about co-creating with with customers and using co-creation in research and in designing the solution. We work with a company called Intersystems, so big health care data, financial services data system provider. And so we mapped out their customer journey with them. Their customers are developer audience and to better understand the current state instead of just interviewing them, which we prepared this remote interactive whiteboard so that they could map their own journeys rather than us just asking about it and having the typical conversation. So in this way they're more actively involved. Plus in the context where they're visually mapping out their journey rather than just talking through it, just having those super low fidelity visuals of just these virtual sticky notes, they can start to see how it's all coming together. And that will highlight different kinds of gaps, new ideas for them. So we end up getting more insights and value out of the research because they're thinking about it in a different way rather than just answering some some questions. And so we also did this with Angie's List, now known as just Angie, one of your previous podcast guests, I believe.

Steve:
Oh, yeah,

Justin:
Yeah.

Steve:
Big fan.

Justin:
Yeah. Yeah. And a great episode. We we ran workshops with customers with Angie, and we mapped where we had customers, rather, we had them map out their own experiences and their own journey of a home project. And so giving them the tools and we prepared a research toolkit for them to do this. And a lot of exercises that folks might be familiar with, with card sorting and other kinds of research methods. But having them map their own experiences did some of those same kind of things that put them in charge of defining what their reality looks like rather than it always being filtered through through us in an interview. And one of my favorite moments of that work. So some of that is the co-creation of the current state and in the research process. But even when we shared out the findings of that research with the team, we had this daylong workshop where we had a great cross-disciplinary team and we turn the opportunity areas that we found from the research into potential solutions. And what was cool about it is that everyone from the product managers, engineers and designers that be working on advancing these initiatives all the way up to leadership and even Angie herself were all in the room lending their perspective to prioritize the roadmap and figure out where we're going to focus our efforts. And so when everybody's in the room and just aligned and gaining momentum like that, not only does it build that momentum and get us started on the right foot, but it saves so much time and energy when people are aligned and actually in the room from the start, rather than developing these ideas in a silo and then getting shut down by this other department that wasn't there and whose perspective wasn't considered. So really just making sure we have that alignment right off the bat saved significant time in moving forward.

Steve:
Well, I love using Angie as a great example because it's I think it's something most people can relate to. The consumer applications are always a little bit easier to get your hands around. But for example, I am like the least handiest person I know on Earth. So I would outsource anything, I mean, literally like hanging a picture or anything that I could find somebody else to do for that. Because not only do I have no talent, I have no interest. So so just use that example of how this process actually might have helped the customer experience at Angie.

Justin:
Yeah, exactly. So, and I agree, I think it's it's much easier to relate to some of those B2C kind of examples because a lot of us can relate to whether you're in a home or an apartment. Everybody's hired somebody out to do something, even like I think of myself as fairly handy. But I also know the things that I should not do, like plumbing and electrical and tile work and things like that. Like I'm going to list things out.

Steve:
Electrical. You can kill yourself.

Justin:
Yeah, I've heard that, and I'd like to avoid that.

Steve:
Yeah.

Justin:
So when we're running these these workshops and we're hearing the customers and those within the target customer market talk about what they're going through in their home buying journey, because we're taking a broader lens, we're not thinking. Just what's happening when they're in the product today. We're thinking about like what? What's going through their mind? What are they struggling with when they go through the journey of a home project? And so some of the things that came up in that process of like, yeah, when I find the service provider that's highly rated, they do a great job and that's all that's all good. But then when I get to the end, it's like, I don't know how this is supposed to look like. What should I, what should I be checking? I've got some anxiety at this stage where how do I make sure they did a good job? Like I'm just taking their their word for it, and then how do I make sure that I'm paying them in a way that's safe and work? Sure. So there's all these different kinds of needs and what end up being opportunities for the company to create more value for customers along the way? And so at the end of that, that process, we've got a list of all these different opportunity areas of like, Hey, these are real validated customer needs that we've got from all these different workshops in one on one interviews and a variety of different methods.

Justin:
Now let's think of let's turn these needs into opportunity areas and figure out like what are solutions that we could actually design to meet those needs. And then that's only one part of the pie, right? Like you can figure out solutions that are going to meet the need and be technically feasible, which is great. But we got to figure out like, all right, and then what's going to be viable for the business as well. And so that's where having that cross-disciplinary group for people to speak to different perspectives really comes into play. If we can validate those kinds of things in real time discussions rather than having it be a waterfall linear process, you know?

Steve:
Yeah. So in all your times you've, you've done this process, what's, what are some of the big surprises or what are some of the things that have really kind of stand out to you as really significant events that that have occurred?

Justin:
Yeah, I mean, this this shouldn't be a surprise to me, but I think one of the things that did surprise me is and I'll say one of the things I've been most pleased with is how much people get in. Like early on, I had this misconception that co-creation and some of these participatory methods bring in customers and employees into it would be, one, I was worried, you know, Is this going to slow things down? Yeah. And then to I was I was where this is going to be confusing for people like will people get that? This is going to feel a little too like fluffy to people or are they just going to want to like, get back to their jobs? And what I was pleasantly surprised by is people took to it really well, especially when the right structure and expectations are set up for people to be able to come in and contribute their perspective without worrying about technical glitches or too much about formality or process. Is that people are really good about just talking about their experience and using simple tools like a remote whiteboard or sticky notes or what have you to map that out visually. It's something people just tend to be pretty naturally good at and it ends up drawing out, I think, deeper, more meaningful answers and insights than what I've seen come through in just basic interviews. A lot of times.

Steve:
Yeah. There's a real value, I think, in bringing people along through the process. You know, in any kind of change management type activity, sometimes, you know, people, they've already got the solution before the rest of the people even know there's a problem. And it just that usually doesn't end well. So there really is a value in putting people through the process, gaining that consensus, getting people to understand why, why we need to change. So it sounds like a great process that you've you've developed. Now, I want to go back. You said the elements of service design were research, ideation, prototyping and then actual is it is it implementation or what's the, what was the fourth piece?

Justin:
Yeah, implementation. And those four activities I think are fairly you know, you could put those in at a variety of different terms and you describe, you know, 90% of the different design or creative process frameworks that are out there. So I don't think that's anything radical. But yeah, I think the the mindset is really the more unique thing about service design, about the application of those things to creating services rather than creating products or touchpoints, and then also keeping it people centered, collaborative, iterative and holistic, making sure you're not just looking at the customer side, but looking at the business and employee side as well.

Steve:
Yeah, well, I'm a big fan of frameworks and I think you're right, they're simple and they're not necessarily unique, but it gives people a place to kind of go back to to check on it. And so I love the the kind of the four steps and then the four kind of guiding principles. I just I hope our listeners are making some notes here because I think this is just a really good mindset to kind of take back to your job. But, you know, once you now you've you've kind of gone through the process and you're ready to to implement. What are some of the kind of the key items there or what are some of the things that we ought to be looking at as we you know, we've we've gone through the process now we're ready to make this mainstream.

Justin:
Yeah. And I think as part of that process, we talked about different ways that we can prototype, right? And so we got to before we get to a point where we're ready to launch this and get this out there, There are certain things that we can test and validate before in certain things we got to wait until after, right? So we use prototypes to test and I can take a lot of different forms. The type of prototype most people are probably most familiar with is using like a clickable prototype and a design tool like Figma. This is one of the more common ways to prototype, and it can be done in a way that can be a really realistic experience for the participant. But of course, when we talk about services, not every experience is going to be screen based. And so we need to protect, prototype and test things that are outside of screens, things that are people based processes in person interactions, all this kind of stuff. And so it's still possible to prototype these things by staging that out, but sometimes it's helpful to run a pilot program to test as well. So for one of our clients, a Fortune 500 engine manufacturer, we co-designed, again, a pilot program with the employees that be responsible for supporting this new service. And so there's this new process for them to follow. Things are a little bit different, and so we segmented out a relatively small group of account reps and their customers that they try this out with for a week.

Justin:
And so throughout that week we check in with daily feedback prompts, see how it's going, and then personal check ins from our team at key points. So in this way we're able to try it out and kind of de-risk it before lunch. But getting into your question about when we get to implementation. Even after the pre-launch testing, we still need to keep an eye on things. Right. So any changes to an experience are going to have some unexpected impacts inevitably on customers and employees. So we got to check back in regularly. So this is the whole importance of feedback loops, right? And all all of the many rich ways that we have to measure experiences after the fact. So feedback from customers, employees has to be built into the plan, and maybe most importantly and sometimes hardest to do. Going back to that iterative mindset, we need to have the opportunity to refine the experience in light of that feedback. So we see too often like, great, yeah, and we're going to collect feedback after, but it's like, Oh yeah, but there's no, there's no budget to actually do anything about it or, you know, we moved on to other things. That's going to stay the way it is. Sorry about that. So planning and adopting that iterative mindset from the start, it helps us to be a little less painful and a little more planned for when you know you're going to learn new things, post launch.

Steve:
Yeah, that's my favorite. One of my favorite jokes is one time somebody said that we could buy the software or we could buy the training, but we couldn't buy both. So.

Justin:
Oh, yeah.

Steve:
You know, it makes no sense. So you're right. Staying with the stay and with the holistic and disciplined approach is really good. We've reached that part of the program, Justin, where I ask every guest to give our listeners take home value. It's kind of one of the hooks of our show. We we try to leave the listener with some very practical tips or your take home value, something that they could take right back to their program, implement it and improve what they're trying to do for creating amazing experiences for their customers. So Justin, give us your take home value for today's podcast.

Justin:
Yeah, I would say if you're in a place where you're seeing that your efforts to improve employee or customer experience are getting tied up within the org and they're getting hindered by silos, take a service design approach and tactically try to go from a customer journey map to a service blueprint. When you connect CX and EX with service design that way and you start to co-create with your customers employees, you're going to see a break down barriers and just unlock all kinds of new value within your team.

Steve:
Justin Zalewski, thanks for being such a great guest on The CX Leader Podcast. It was real pleasure to have you on.

Justin:
Thanks, Steve. It's great to be here.

Steve:
And if anybody would want to continue the dialog, maybe just tell them how to find you. You're on LinkedIn, I assume, And then also maybe the website for Studio Science.

Justin:
Yeah, website for studio science is just studioscience.com. And like you said, I am on LinkedIn. It's really the only social media I'm active hunt anymore so feel free to reach out to me there. I'd be happy to connect and chat with anyone.

Steve:
Yeah and I again I've known this firm for for quite some time. It's a fascinating company. And for all of us that are involved in, particularly for the more complicated B2B stuff, these guys are really a unique solution out there in the world of all things customer experience. So thanks again, Justin, for being on the program. If you want to talk about anything else you heard on this podcast or about how Walker can help your business customer experience, feel free to email me at podcast@walkerinfo.com. Remember to give The CX Leader Podcast a rating through your podcast service and give us a review. Your feedback will help us improve the show and deliver the best possible value for you, our listener. And by the way, did you know that we have a blog? That's right. You can find a ton of CX related content on our blog at walkerinfo.com/blog. Be sure to check out our website cxleaderpodcast.com to subscribe to the show, find all of our previous episodes, podcast series and contact information so you can let us know how we're doing. The CX Leader Podcast is a production of Walker. We're an experience management firm that helps companies accelerate their XM success. You can read more about us at Walkerinfo.com. Thank you for listening. And remember, it's a great time to be a CX leader. So go out there and keep doing that work and we will see you again next time.

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