Creating positive experiences is central to Service Design, and a successful service is one whose outcome is satisfactory for the user; or better yet, the entire experience is satisfactory.
A successful serviceis typified by staff who understand their functional roles, combined with technology as a backbone for tackling routine tasks, with a process to ensure reliability.
Achieving a positive experience reliably requires Service Design tools and models. They provide the means for building service frameworks, testing ideas, and implementing and improving upon designs.
When businesses adopt Service Design strategies and techniques, these are the types of results they receive:
- Bring in new revenue
- Engage stakeholders, including difficult market segments to reach, i.e. Millennials. (By the way, Millennials will make up nearly two-thirds of the buying market in the next ten years.)
- Motivate market segments
- Create or improve new lines of business or new lines of service, along with member benefits and and additional donor opportunities for non-profits
- Programs and Services that succeed (meaning they don’t waste resources, and achieve their intended objectives) reliably, and are repeatable, and saleable.
- Internal and External Benefits
- Unblock barriers to achieve solutions
- Choreograph service experiences
- Visualize what others can’t see or imagine
- Observe and interpret behaviors and transfer them into viable services (personas)
- Meet users rising expectations from a service of choice and quality
- Make use of technologies for efficiency and replication
- Determine what of a service is salvageable or useless
- Establish prototypes of programs and services for testing
As a professional Service Designer, Steven J. Slater has used skills in marketing science, systems engineering and research and analytics to launch new service designs and redesigns for private sector, including professional services, healthcare, hospitality, utilities, telecommunications and IT; in the non-profit sector for membership-based organizations, and cause-related fundraising organizations; and in the public sector for the Department of Defense and Department of Labor.
Over the period of his 30-years plus career, he has developed and improved services that have earned more than two billion dollars in revenue. Steven spent nearly a decade with Booz Allen Hamilton with evolving roles as a leader in market development for emerging global practices – including Information Technology, Financial Services, Energy and Utilities, and Consumer Packaged Goods. He was responsible for identifying markets and planning-to-deployment of services and service redesign. He helped bring global recognition to the systems engineering field.
During his earlier role as a Marketing Director for United Jewish Communities/Jewish Federation of Greater Washington, Steven conceived a philanthropic web platform for online giving, called ujc.org, and later, fedweb, which, at one time, was the largest online fundraising platform.
The system was based on a model used by Steve Case of AOL, to divide content from shared hosting. Steven also implemented database segmentation and coding to the United Jewish Communities to tailor appeals based on analysis of donor segments, an innovation that increased the number of active donors and boosted donations up 18%.
Highlights of services improved:
- HMS Host (Marriott) (Shaped market for significant Maryland contract opportunity)
- BlueCross/BlueShield (Supported leadership with research and analytics used to decide on merger with Wellpointe of Calif.),
- Battelle (Identified, redefined service offerings to meet emerging client needs – based on market trends)
- Hospices of the National Capital Region (Change Management support post M&A)
- Long & Foster (New market identification)
- FEMA (Organizational design/implementation – solving for 24-hour onsite deployment of crises communications & activities)
- National Association of Social Workers (Market shaping)
- Victims’ Rights Foundation (Crises communications – representing victims’ families throughout DC sniper shootings)
- Employment Enterprises, Inc. (New line of business)
- National Industries for the Blind (New-revenue: Assembled a public-private partnership to provide software development training – to secure a $10M grant)
- Montgomery County, Department of Economic Development (Market development strategies and implementation in support of establishing a public-private bio-tech community)
- SAIC (Benchmarking for operational efficiencies – establishing metrics, dashboards and improvement plans)
- S. Department of Labor, among others. (Service design and market development for launching America’s Labor Exchange, an initiative spearheaded by VP, Al Gore.)
These courses teach you the models, formulas and techniques used by global companies around the world to improve their services and build brand loyalty. You will learn about the factors for success in designing a service, what it means to achieve satisfactory user experiences, and how to uncover user needs.
We designed the Service Design courses so that upon completion, you will take away valuable skills that with help you when it comes to finding and leveraging new sources of revenue, connecting and engaging with ideal target audiences, and implementing the essential ingredients to successful services.
The practice of Service Design is for developing and improving lines of business, or new services – which is the reason for calling the field Service Design. Service Design is the only field that can reliably:
- Increase revenue from new or existing sources
- Boost stakeholder engagement
- Achieve greater team collaboration
- Reach and satisfy new and existing markets
- Revitalize an organization’s mission and purpose
- Provide clarity to an organization’s vision
- Grow a following, and
- Motivate others, internally and externally