Service Design Consulting

Find out today how to go about designing the invisible through service design

Service design holistically provides users what they need—such that often encompasses much more than yet another application or a device. It invites you to consider your offering not only from the end-to-end perspective but also from surface to core. What does it mean for your business?

Is your business stagnating, but you aren't sure of the reason?. Through service design, we will help you identify the causes and design a solution to help you thrive.
Do you feel left behind by your competition?. Through service design, we will help you not only catch up to your competitors, but overrun them.
Have your customers became indifferent towards your brand?. Through service design, we will help you discover the opportunity to differentiate your brand and make them care again.
Do you want to do something new but don't know how?. Through service design, we can help you define and create an ecosystem with a compelling value proposition.

Reinventing retail experience at Volkswagen

Creating a concept store.

Together with Netguru, Volkswagen designed their first ever concept store, VW Home. Enhanced with a few technologies, the boutique greatly improved VW's customer experience.

Volkswagen interviewed about one million customers who bought a car in the past ten years. Based on the insights from the report, Netguru team helped shape the idea for the store.

Netguru had to find a completely different way to approach clients —something they had never seen before. Research showed us that clients actually valued the service as much as the car, in some cases even more so. So we got to work resolving this challenge - how can we deliver unprecedented customer service?

€1000+ in the average sale price
20 deals closed in the first 2 months
2x more customers choose a car with a better & more expensive direct-shift gearbox (DSG)

Read the case study

We have built a grand and impressive building. But without Netguru’s insights, we would be stuck on the ground-floor forever.

Artur Kryzan
CX Manager at Volkswagen

Strategize sensibly. Data such as users’ expectations, business goals and resources will support you in making informed decisions based on evidence rather than assumptions.
Break out of silos. Co-creation shortens time to value by ensuring that all voices are heard and challenges aren't only considered from a singular perspective.
Control the narrative. Considering the experience across the entirety of your solution lets you more easily influence the users' perception of your products and services.
Explore everywhere. By looking beyond the glass, you will continuously cover the entire spectrum of your users' experience—not just a selected part of it.
Don’t let them eat cake. By adopting and continuously enacting a service mentality, you won't make the mistake of offering your users something they don’t really need or want.

USE: our holistic approach to service design

The proprietary USE framework created by Netguru ICON helps us navigate any challenge comprehensively, from understanding, through strategizing and all the way to execution.

Understand. In order to ensure we're working on the real problem area, we carefully review the current situation to formulate the right design challenge to address.
Strategize. To quickly shape the most attractive solutions, we identify the goals, generate various ideas and elaborate on the most promising ones.
Execute. Using a wide array of applicable methodologies, we validate our solutions with the target audience and make sure the service is ready for implementation.

What is service design

Contents

You'll often find that users don’t care as much for the what, as they care for the how. The ever confusing blurred lines between what constitutes goods, products, services, and so on give way to the realization that it’s secondary.

What should come first is a thorough challenge diagnosis based on which you’ll be able to make your strategic bets.

This is where service design enters the equation: a discipline that's all about planning and organising your resources to optimise your output. But simply put, service design is what ultimately lets you stay ahead of your competition by inviting you to consider the broader perspective.

Its end goal is to holistically cater to your users' needs—such that often encompass much more than yet another application or a device.

It invites you to consider your offering not only from the end-to-end perspective but also from surface to core.

What are the principles of service design?

People centric: Service design begins and ends with everyone that makes it possible for your organisation to remain prosperous.
Data-backed: Service design enables you to make decisions supported by data rather than unsubstantiated assumptions.
Co-creative: Service design encourages the participation of all the relevant stakeholders in the creation process.
In-depth: Service design doesn’t just scratch the surface—it takes the entire stage into account, end to end and surface to core.
Ever-lasting: Service design is never over—it grows and evolves together with your users, your organisation and your employees.

Key components of service design

Great service doesn't always equal revolutionary or groundbreaking experiences. It is simply meant to work well by meeting the users' needs in a way that is free of any obstructions. Our service design consultants do that by ensuring that every component is thought of and designed correctly.

People: Everyone who creates the service, uses it afterwards or is in any way indirectly affected by it, such us: employees, customers or possible partners.
Props: All artifacts (physical or digital) necessary in order to perform the service properly, such us: apps, social media fan pages or physical objects.
Processes: Relevant procedures, workflows or rituals carried out by potential service providers, end-users and everyone in-between.

The Double Diamond method

Throughout our processes we use an adapted version of the Double Diamond method, following the steps of:

Discovery
Definition
Development
Demonstration

The first half of the diamond helps us ensure that we're doing the right things, whereas the second half guides us towards doing them right.

How can an agency help with innovation?

Developing new products or reimagining ways of delivering value can be an overwhelming experience. Where does one need to begin? How do you bring colleagues together to set on a new path? Will this new product idea become viable at all?

When doing new things, information can be scarce and stakeholders can be skeptical. When innovating, there might not be a lot to go on other than intuition. However, the sooner that gut-feel and instinct becomes grounded on facts and sound analysis, the better the chances of translating that novel idea into a ground-breaking product, a viable business.

Here at Netguru, we believe — and have proven — that innovation is a disciplined process, rather than accidental or arbitrary. Our Innovation Consultancy offers structured and methodical approaches to help you sharpen your take on innovation — be it a novel product, an advanced technology, a new process, a fresh business concept.

An innovation agency with deep experience will not only help you uncover data and insights, but walk you through battle-tested processes, frameworks, and methodologies. At Netguru, we’ve built the expertise to prototype ideas and stress test them so you can make the right call before you heavily invest in its full development or implementation.

There are plenty of tools in our innovation toolkit, but here are some that can get you started:

Discovery and generative research
Trends and competitor analysis
Product prototyping and testing
R&D sprints
Hackathons
Customer behavior analysis
Business model discovery and design
Product roadmap development

A great experience for both users and employees

Great user experience doesn't always equal good services, but thoughtful service design will result in great user experience.

Direct impact of excellent service design

Nurturing growth: enhanced user satisfaction will lead to strengthening their loyalty towards your business, which will in turn affect customer retention and even potentially result in more referrals. Eventual increased use of your service will undoubtedly lead to new sales.

Increased profitability: Your users biggest pain points can directly reflect those of your business. In other words, you’ll most likely to lose money in cases where the experience you offer is considered poor. Through service design you’ll be able to streamline these processes or identify new ones that’ll generate profits through value.

Reduced turnover: Being user-centric doesn’t only mean listening to your customers, but also to your employees. The collaborative and participatory nature of service design helps them gain insights into the way processes are developed within your organisation and ensures their voice is heard.