One is hard pressed to read any media offering at the moment without stumbling, in one shape or another, across something ‘as a service’. Turning your offer into a service is en vogue, yet a closer look often reveals a misunderstanding of the term.
What constitutes a service?
A service enables someone to do something (see Lou Downe’s book ‘Good Services’), and preferably do it well. Whoever sits at the other end of your service needs to achieve their goal, easily. The true art of creating a service is to change perspective and look at the world from your client’s point of view. “What are they trying to do and how do they want to do it?” is the question to start off with and repeat over and over throughout your business lifecycle.
To create a good service, end-to-end thinking is crucial. A technical solution alone is not a service, even if it is called a service. Neither is a pure pricing shift to a subscription model. ‘Service’ is, by definition, ‘the action of serving someone’[1], and the shift to services represents a deeper mindset change in consumers, B2B and B2C alike. Much as businesses like to separate themselves from ‘fluffy’ topics, there is no denying that younger generations think differently from their predecessors. And the buyers of today and tomorrow have turned more inward, and away from the consumerism that was prevalent a decade ago.
Many millennials and GenZs are convinced that too many things bog them down. So instead of owning things, they use them until they no longer need them (there is also a strong sustainability argument there). Sharing, and services become more relevant. That playing field has extended into B2B; shockingly, people bring their values and beliefs to work.
To truly embrace this shift in buyer thinking, media industry players can turn to service design. A big field with several currents, service design is unified in one goal: to intentionally create and improve services so they can serve their purpose. This too is a mindset shift, and one the industry needs to get used to. Great technology alone has long since stopped being enough.
Applying service design as a mindset makes sense for any stage in your business lifecycle. If you are just starting out, you can set your business up for success from Day 1; if you are already operating, mapping your services out and filling gaps is the single most powerful thing you can do to improve your bottom line.
Services are complex ecosystems, which can make them difficult to grasp at times. To support your journey into service design, you will find some inspiration to investigate where you are and could be below.
A (non-exhaustive) list of elements you need to create a really working service.
- Company Identity
Irrespective of your maturity, your company identity and brand is always the place to start. “Give them a flag and a song and they will follow” is probably the best way of explaining why a brand identity is so crucial for any company’s success (we heard the quote from David Bradbury, a branding expert). How your service is delivered is a direct representation of who you are as a company. The clearer that is, the better your services will end up being. Combined with a powerful strategy, it will provide clarity for your staff on what you are going to do and how. This alignment is often overlooked and distinguishes an ok bottom line from a great one. - Behaviours
Many companies state their values, yet behaviours are not always defined. Values can be vague (especially the ones anyone can get behind like integrity), and everyone has their own interpretation of what good looks like. Defining expected behaviours clearly will help staff behave consistently and helps you find and keep your performers. - Customer Needs and a Feedback Methodology
You will only make money if you are solving a problem, and to understand a problem you need to identify customer needs (not wants!). It is no small feat to identify root causes of customers’ behaviour, but your investment will yield returns both for your top and bottom line. Many a company measures NPS; our recommendation is to go much deeper. Add qualitative research and match your operational data with customer feedback to get a true feel for where you need to make changes to impact your bottom line meaningfully. - Designed Services
Once you know who you are and what your target market needs, creating a functioning service is much easier. You will want to design a service that is easy to operate, interacts nicely and is supportable, so you need to think about how things will be operated from inception (testing). Don’t build components in siloes; you need to look at the end-to-end, and to do that, involving all stakeholders along the customer journey is crucial. Together, understand and catalogue your entire services model from start to end, and, crucially, include scenarios in case of things not working as planned. At the end of this process, you should have a service that truly feels like you to the customer. Knowing what to expect from a brand is a major decision factor for choosing and staying with a provider. - Operational Support Model
You need a standard formula to deliver your technical solution that represents your entire service ecosystem. Ensure you have three types of Service Level Agreements: Yours towards your customers, amongst your departments internally and from your vendors. Ensure that your back-to-back agreements with your providers allow you to perform vis-a-vis your customers, especially if you depend on them to provide feedback to your clients.
This may feel overwhelming, so we’ll leave you with one place to start: If you already offer services and want to improve your bottom line, the first thing to do is to map your services out.
Need help? We’ve got you covered. Reach out to us at [email protected].
[1] https://www.oed.com/dictionary/service_n1?tl=true#23371395