 You and I know that service design creates lots of value, but often it's not easy to prove that upfront to our clients, especially not the clients who have a focus on short-term results. This can significantly slow down the pace at which you can make impact. So in this video, you'll learn a few ways how you can express the value of service design to business people. Let the show begin. Hi, I'm Mark and welcome to a new episode of the service design show. This show is all about helping you to design services that have a positive impact on people and are good for business. And in order to design these awesome services, we of course need clients who want to invest in them. And sometimes this proves to be quite an interesting challenge. Because although there is a growing number of studies by renowned companies like Foresterm, McKinsey and the Design Management Institute that proves that companies who employ design outreformed the ones that don't, this doesn't mean that all of a sudden our clients are convinced of the value of service design. We still find ourselves often in situations where we have to just define the investments in our projects using old metrics that aren't necessarily the best way to express the value of service design. But let's get one thing straight right away. I think that we as service designers need to connect with business even more. We need to become more business savvy. Or as Jess McMullen said in his service design show episode, we need to develop our business fluency, period. And this also means that we need to be able to make a convincing business case for service design. I consider this to be a vital part of our job. So let's look at a few ways that can help you to talk about and maybe even prove the value of service design. Now, before we continue, let me know down below in the comments if your clients ask you to just define investments in your project. And if so, how do you respond? Which metrics do you use? I read all of your comments and try to reply to as many people as I can. So leave a comment and let's continue the conversation there. If this is your first time here on this channel and you'd like to see more videos that will help you to take your service design skills to the next level, don't forget to subscribe and click that bell icon so you'll be notified when new videos come out. When I sit down with a client for a project, one of the first things I ask is what are your current indicators for success or KPIs? And how do you measure them now? You'll be surprised how often clients don't really have a good answer to this. And this isn't a bad thing per se because it opens up space to have a conversation about when the project will be a success. A good follow-up question here is, for instance, to ask what would happen if this project got canceled or delayed by year? What would happen if we didn't move forward with this project? Or if you wouldn't invest your budget in this service design project, where would you otherwise invest it in? And do you think that would render a higher return on investment? Our goal here is to figure out how much is at stake with this project for our client as early as possible. Now, what if your client does have clear KPIs and actually measures them right now? This, for instance, could be something like the net promoter score which they monitor. Well, that's great too because now you can have the conversation about how high do we want to set the bar for this project? So how much do we want to impact the net promoter score and what are we willing to invest in order to achieve that? It's really great if you can have this conversation too. And actually one of the easiest ways to make a business case for service design is when you know what the costs are that are associated with delivering a service in its current state. For example, the cost could be the number of phone calls a support center gets related to a specific part of a service. Let's say the number of phone calls they get regarding something really trivial like people asking how to change the postal address. In this case, you would just have to show the potential cost reduction if you're able to improve the service on this specific point and thus reduce the number of phone calls to the support center. This is the type of business case where you focus on fixing the leaking bucket. And this works pretty well if the number of leaks that you're trying to focus on isn't too big or in service design terms, if you just focus on fixing one or two touch points at the same time. But hold on for a second, I hear you thinking in many service design projects, KPI is really hard to quantify or express in financial terms. You're much more likely to express the value of service design in terms like increased stakeholder engagement, deeper customer insights, or maybe even something like faster innovation cycles. And unless your client is collecting the right metrics which is almost never the case, it's really hard to put a price tag on these outcomes, isn't it? But this doesn't make them less important or valuable. And this is where a lot of us get stuck because we know for sure that we are creating value but we have a hard time expressing this in metrics that are actually measured by an organization which is a challenge when you actually have to sit down with your client and justify the investments in your project versus the benefits it will provide, right? So how can you deal with this situation where it's really hard to quantify the value of our work? Of course, it all depends on your project and on your client. But one approach I like to use is to have a very specific conversation with my clients before we even ever talk about pricing. And the conversation goes something like this. So let's say you're investing a million dollars to develop a new service that expands your current offering into a new market. Now, which percentage of debt budget do you think would be smart to invest in making sure that the service we're going to deliver actually addresses the needs of customers in this new market? Or think about it in this way. Let's say you're going to build a house. How much would you be willing to spend on an architect who creates an artist impression of your house that gives you a first sense if the house you're going to build is actually what you desire before the constructors actually start pouring concrete into the ground. What's happening here is that you're framing your work as a service designer as an investment in something that is larger than just your project and an investment that is going to significantly increase the chance for a successful overall outcome. And you can even take this conversation one organizational level up. You could, for instance, talk about which percentage of the yearly revenue is currently invested in innovation or how much is invested in making sure that the company stays in touch with the needs of its customers and is able to translate those needs into profitable offerings. On this level, you're positioning service design as something that is a core activity of the organization rather than just a one-off project. And just to give you one more analogy, I like to refer to service design as organizational fitness rather than a short-term medicine. By investing in service design, companies are investing in a healthy organization, an organization that is close to its customers where employees feel involved and which is able to quickly respond to changes in the market. And just like keeping yourself fit and healthy, it's not something that you have to do. It's something that you consciously have to choose to do. And you might not notice the benefits right away, but at some point, you'll still be running a marathon while other people around you have a hard time motivating themselves to even get off the couch. There are many ways to talk about the value of service design and I'm really curious to your clients actually ask you to justify the investments in your projects and how do you respond? Leave a comment down below and let's continue the conversation there. If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to share it with someone who might benefit from it as well. And if this is your first time here, I would love to have you to subscribe to the channel so we can keep bringing you more videos that will help you to become a better service designer. Thanks so much for watching and I look forward to seeing you in the next episode.