Service design consulting is the work of deciding what a service actually does for the person using it, what has to be true inside the company for that to happen every time, and what the business earns back for delivering it. It is not styling a screen and it is not drawing an object. Vivaldi has done this work since 1999, and it is the practice behind the research, concepts and product roadmap that produced McGraw Hill’s Sharpen study app.
- Since 1999service and product design
- 200+published case studies
- 10 officeson four continents
- 5xWirtschaftsWoche Best of Consulting, Strategy and Innovation
When companies bring us in
The trigger is rarely “our service is badly designed.” It is usually one of these.
- The customer satisfaction score is fine at every individual touchpoint and poor for the relationship as a whole.
- A new proposition has been sold but the delivery organization cannot keep the promise at volume.
- Customers are asked to repeat information the company already holds, and nobody owns the point where it gets dropped.
- A digital product is being specified and no one can say what the service around it has to do.
- A redesign has been approved and the business case for it is a preference argument rather than a number.
Why journey mapping rarely changes the service
The standard engagement produces a journey map, a set of redesigned moments and a deck of concepts. The moments genuinely improve. The service does not, and nobody can quite say why.
The reason is structural. A customer experiences a service as one continuous thing. The company delivers it as a relay: sales to onboarding, onboarding to servicing, digital to human, one system to another. Every handoff is a point where context is dropped and the customer is asked to supply it again. That is where trust leaks, and it is the part almost nobody owns.
- Journey maps describe the handoffs but rarely assign them. No function has the incentive to fix a problem that belongs to the gap between two functions.
- Research is run on the moments, because moments are easy to observe and easy to test. The failure happens in transit.
- Digital work concentrates on the interface, which is the surface of an interaction rather than the interaction itself.
- Operational constraints arrive after the concept is approved, and the concept quietly degrades into whatever the existing process can support.
The useful question is not whether each touchpoint is well designed. It is whether the context a customer has already given the company travels with them, or has to be rebuilt at every step. Winning on customer activities rather than on the journey is the same argument stated from the customer’s side, and our service design methodology guide sets out how we work through it.
What our service design consulting services include
Six capabilities. Most engagements need two or three of them, and which ones depends on whether the service already exists, whether the product that carries it exists, and whether the decision on the table is a question of evidence or of execution.
1. User insights and research
We start from what the person is trying to get done rather than from the steps your process already contains, because the activity is stable and the process is an artifact. The work covers behavioral and qualitative research, segmentation where the differences are real, and a written account of what customers do when nobody is asking them. Our user insights and research team runs this stage.
2. Customer experience design
This is where the handoffs get designed as objects rather than treated as plumbing. We establish what context has to travel across each boundary for the customer not to repeat themselves, which handoffs are load bearing in the sense that the service fails when they fail, and who owns each one after we leave, because an unowned handoff reverts within two quarters. See customer experience (CX) design for how the end-to-end experience is modeled.
3. Interaction design
The exchange between a person and a system, designed before the screen that carries it. The question is what the company already knows at each point and whether it uses what it knows, and where an interaction should be removed rather than improved, because the best version of many steps is no step. Our interaction design (IxD) practice covers this.
4. User interface design
Once the underlying model is settled, the surface has to carry it without making the customer work. This is the stage where a service that is conceptually sound either reaches people or does not. Our user interface (UI) design team builds the system that does it.
5. Prototyping and testing
Design decisions get cheaper to change the earlier they are tested, and most organizations test late enough that the answer arrives after the money is committed. We build prototypes good enough to provoke a real reaction rather than a polite one, test against behavior rather than stated preference, and keep a written record of what was disproven so the next team does not rediscover it. See prototyping and testing.
6. Digital product creation
Most services now run on a digital product, and the product’s structure quietly decides what the service can promise. We define what the product has to do for the service to be deliverable at volume, where it should absorb work people are currently doing by hand, and what should be built, configured or not exist at all. Our digital product creation team takes it from there.
Handoff ownership
Touchpoint quality
Not sure which of the six you need first?
Start with a working session. We will map where your service asks the customer to supply context the company already has, which of those handoffs is load bearing, and which capability would move the number you are being measured on.
How a service design engagement works
- Frame. Executive interviews, customer research and a walk of the service as it is actually delivered, including the systems and the people between the steps. The output is a model of the service with every handoff named and its current owner recorded, or recorded as having none.
- Decide. Concepts for the service and the product that carries it, developed with your operations people in the room from the start rather than consulted after approval. The output is a small number of options with their operational cost written next to them.
- Test. Prototypes put in front of real customers and real frontline staff, tested against behavior rather than stated preference. The output is a shortlist with a record of what was disproven and why.
- Specify. A specification the delivery organization can build against, the owner assigned to each handoff, and a measurement approach that shows when the service begins to degrade. The output is something your teams can run without us.
Our service design process guide goes through the same sequence in more detail, and the service design thinking guide covers the underlying method.
Service design results
McGraw Hill: from student research to a launched product
McGraw Hill has been a Vivaldi client since 2016. In 2022 the company launched Sharpen, a student-focused study app, and the design work behind it is a fair illustration of the sequence above. Vivaldi ran qualitative research and a quantitative student segmentation to establish learners’ goals, motivations and unmet needs, alongside a market analysis that identified competitive white spaces. Those insights fed ideation workshops that produced several concepts, which were narrowed, written in consumer language and validated in focus groups before anything was built. Vivaldi then mapped the user journey with key use cases, feature sets and a product development roadmap to guide the creation of the final product. Sharpen launched in the fall of 2022 and holds a 4.8 rating on the App Store.
Read the full story: From traditional to digital-first, McGraw Hill’s digital transformation journey.
Why companies choose Vivaldi for service design
Three reasons come up repeatedly in the first conversation.
- We design the operation, not only the experience. A concept that the delivery organization cannot run is a concept that will be rebuilt into something the customer never tested. Operations are in the room from week one.
- We are a strategy firm that designs. The work starts from a decision about what the service is for and what it is worth, which means the design brief is derived from a commercial argument rather than written independently of one.
- We hand over owners, not just artifacts. Every handoff in the model leaves the engagement with a name attached to it, because that is the part that otherwise reverts.
How to evaluate a service design consultant
Worth asking of every firm on your shortlist, including us.
- Ask what they do about the handoffs. If the answer is a journey map, they will describe the problem accurately and leave it where they found it. Ask who owns each transition when the work is finished.
- Ask whether operations are in the room from week one. A concept validated only with customers will be rebuilt by the delivery organization into something the customer never tested.
- Ask what they will design that is not a screen. Many firms that call themselves service designers do interface work with a wider vocabulary. That is legitimate, and it is a different purchase.
- Ask how they test, and how early. Testing after the build is a quality check. Testing before it is a design decision. Ask which they mean.
- Ask about the business case. A service redesign that cannot state what it changes in cost to serve, retention or price realization is a preference argument, and preference arguments lose to budget cycles.
Service design consultancy, digital agency or management consultancy?
| Criterion | Service design consultancy | Digital or UX agency | Large management consultancy |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it decides | What the service promises, how it is delivered across functions, and what the product has to do to carry it | How the interface and the digital journey look and behave | Operating model, cost to serve and process design, with the customer experience treated as an output |
| Typical deliverables | Service model with named handoff owners, tested concepts, product specification, measurement approach | Wireframes, design system, prototypes, front-end build | Target operating model, process maps, business case |
| Who signs it off | Chief customer officer, head of product and operations together | Digital or product team | COO and CFO |
| How success is measured | Cost to serve, retention, resolution without repeat contact, price realization | Task completion, usability scores, conversion | Cost savings, cycle time, headcount |
| Best when | The promise is made in one part of the company and kept in another | The service model is settled and the surface is the constraint | The constraint is operational rather than a question of what the service should be |
Related work
Service design sits inside our Marketing Strategy and Acceleration practice, alongside brand acceleration and experimentation and ventures. If the question is what customers are trying to get done before any of it is designed, start with our guide to customer journey mapping. For who we are and how we work, see Vivaldi Group.
Service design consulting in the US and worldwide
Vivaldi is headquartered in New York and has a second US office in Los Angeles. Outside the US, our teams work from London, Zürich, München, Hamburg, Düsseldorf, Singapore, Buenos Aires and Lima. We work with US companies nationwide from our two US offices; for city-specific information, see our pages for Chicago, Dallas and Houston.
Start with the handoff that breaks
In one working session we will walk your service as the customer meets it, find where they are asked to supply context you already hold, and name who would have to own each of those transitions for the fix to survive. You leave with the shortlist and a view of what it is worth.
