 In order to deliver great services, you must work in a cross-functional manner. But the reality is that most organizations are still organized in departments slash silos. In this episode, you'll learn how you can use customer insights as a way to create a shared and common language within the organization to bridge those gaps between the different departments. If you're interested in that, stick around, because here's the guest for this episode. Let the show begin! Hi, I'm Emma and this is the Service Design Show. Hi, I'm Marc and welcome to the Service Design Show. This show is all about helping you to design organizations that put people at the heart of their business. The guest in this episode is someone that I've actually worked with in the past. She's had different roles within agencies and now is a service designer at H&M. Her name is Emma Lawrence. So the reason why I'm so excited to share this chat with Emma with you is that she brings the agency perspective, but also the in-house service designer perspective and those things mean different things, bring different challenges and also allow you for different ways to design great services. If this is your first time here on this channel, I would love to have you to subscribe so we can keep bringing you more videos like this and we try to do that at least once a week. So hit that subscribe button and that bell icon to be notified when new videos are out. Now having said that, let's jump straight into the chat with Emma. Welcome to the show, Emma. Thank you, Marc. Nice to see you again. It's been a long time. It has been a long time, yes. For the people who don't know what our connection is, could you give like your background of where you've been and what you're doing these days? I can. So I'm currently at H&M as I'm a service designer at H&M since a year and a half ago and then before that I lived in New York City for a couple of years doing agency work and prior to that I had a moment where I worked for Marc a few months. In the Netherlands? Yes. And I also did some in-house at Philips and prior to that I was in Stockholm. So I've been on a little bit of a tour. You've seen a little bit of the world and I think that will bring an interesting perspective to our discussion in a minute. Emma, the question that I asked to all the guests on the show, what is the first time that you got in touch with service design? Oh, it's a good question. I studied for education. I did industrial design engineering. And so I did one of my master years I did in Milan. And I took some courses there in system design and stuff like that. And I really started to think that that was a better fit for me. I did some contextual design thinking and I started digging into those methods. And then I applied for to do master thesis, my master thesis at the service design studio in Stockholm. And that was quite rare at that time in 2010. So we found one that was a kind of a pure service design agency. It's quite known for the audience of the show, I think. And so we've got to do a really interesting project in healthcare, which is good. And that was part of it. And then I continued there for a couple of years. Nine years ago already. Yes. Emma, you're bringing some agency experience, some in-house experience to the table. We'll be talking about that, right? Yes. All right. The classic service design show, interview jazz. Are you ready? Yes. Okay. I'm going to pick topic number one, which is cross functional. Which question starter goes along with that one? Okay. Okay. What if we would work as cross functional as the customer moves in a customer experience? Who is we? Who is we? I'm thinking organizations right now, like any type of organization. And so the one thing that really has struck me, I think, coming from agency world moving into in-house world. I would say is that when you're in an agency setting, you usually have someone who's paying for this. You're in contact with one part of the organization. And it's your clients. And they're usually maybe from maybe some marketing department or business development or innovation department or something like that. And then you have those stakeholders to kind of deal with and learn and all of those things. But then you always lack the rest of the organization. You never really get in contact with all of those owners of the touch points that you're actually working with. And so I think coming to an organization such as H&M, I'm sure that there are many out there that feel the same. One of the first things I learned in service design is that we have this really nice ecosystem drawn up where we have the physical channels, the digital channels, the customer service. We have communication and it's usually illustrated in a little circle. And then you have the customer just moves across that circle like all over the place. And there's no real order for the customer where it's one brand experience. But the way that we work when we're developing these services are anything but that. It's very, I would say usually very waterfall and very linear. And so everyone's working in their own silos and then you do a handover to the next department who has another set of skills that will develop another part of the service. But it's very much. I think a lot of people will sort of recognize this. And the question would be like, have you found some insights, lessons on taking a step towards working in a more cross-functional way? Exactly. And I think that cross-functional can almost be a little bit cliche these days. I mean, we've used that word so much in all the design thinking trainings and service design trainings and we're trying to become more innovative and more outside in. That's what I've experienced here. And also prior to coming here is that when you do an inside out project, when you're actually out talking to customers and doing, you know, whether you're doing an evaluation of a service or if you're trying to come up with a new one or something in between. When you're talking to the customers and analyzing those type of insights, you always come across insights covering almost everything. So we'll have things that touch upon tone of voice. You'll have functional, emotional insights. You'll have things that regard the, maybe the staff, IT, how, you know, how things function. So you'll always have a really good way to, it's a good conversation starter because there's no way that you could go around and just talk about one part with one unit or department. You'll have to gather everyone around because you realize it's an ecosystem and that you need to be in the same. You need to be, you know, agreeing about what are these things that we need to. So would you say that that's the first step, like actually raising awareness and showing from a customer perspective why it's needed? Is that, is that still the most important thing? I think it's just very effective because if you're doing, let's say that you have some sort of service. We have, I mean, in my case, we're working with retail experience. So it could be store experience, could also be online, could be anything in between. But if you would go out and interview customers or even documents, you know, filming and quoting and all of that, you know, you would, you would realize that all of those insights would cover everything. Right. Because it goes in there and that becomes very strong when you're back, even if you're presenting back to the core team. In my case, that would be something within business development. Then you can't avoid also involving all of the other units because everyone kind of understands. And sometimes I have a similar experience, but sometimes it's also like paralyzing because usually you get an assignment from marketing or innovation and they just have a limited scope of what they can actually do. So you come in with all these holistic challenges and they're like, yeah, but I just work on the app. I just work on the app. Like what's your experience with that? I think that's, I mean, that's the big frustration about being a consultant. I would say I think that's the luxury I have being in-house. Even though I belong to a certain department, I can still make a case by inviting marketing or whomever I want to discuss these things because we're all under the same roof and we're kind of, we're working towards the same goal, even if we have different KPIs and different set of skills. So I think that's one of the, I think powerful parts about going in-house. So you have access to the organization in a different way. But I would say as an experience from the agency side that we have had examples where we got an assignment from an innovation officer, someone who wanted to make a digital experience for a health company or a health insurance company. And we ended up doing these interviews in really the outskirts of the city of New York City and people living in basements and nowhere near need of digital innovation in these cases. And so with the documentation and everything that we came with from that research, we managed to flip it around. And so it wasn't about that anymore. And so I guess it also has to do with evidence. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And going outside, like it's collecting is you can even challenge some assumptions about what the problem is or the briefing that you got from a client. Yeah. Let's let I think you're sort of already hinting upon this. So let's move into topic number two. And for the people who have been listening closely, it won't be a surprise customer insights. Again, which question starter goes along with this one? Let's do this one. That's your favorite. How can we, of course? Okay. So how can we create better and more powerful value with customer insights? Okay. I'm going to ask a question again. In which sense more powerful? I would say because in working again, working in this, you know, like I'm doing now in a huge corporation that has been, I think. You know, over the time, it's very successful, but we're now we're still successful, but we're going into a new era. Everyone knows that we have to, you know, everyone has to change all the details. We have to rethink everything. And I think that when powerful, I really mean how can we create other sets of insights and KPIs that goes along with the business insights and KPIs that we're used to. So really trying to balance that world that we're entering or have entered. How would you describe how customers insights are used right now? I think so just to back up a little bit when we're four years ago or five years ago, the first services I started at H&M. And I think that's what has really been, you know, my team has really contributed with is making customer insights an important currency. So with that, I mean, we've been providing the company at a large scale, but also if you think top management that, you know, type of people who are actually that are actually visible and also have power and providing them and the company with insights that are actionable and understandable and tangible has been, I think, very effective, but also really giving them a story to tell, as opposed to talking about, I guess, other types of data points are really important, but they are lacking in the story. And in this case, we'd be really trying to balance that out with also talking about customers with their emotions and experiences and attitudes and all of those things that really matter when it comes to shopping. But many other things as well. And how do people respond when you present these stories, the thick data? I think what, I mean, what we hear more and more is that, well, so you can still argue that services sign or, you know, customer research projects, all of those things are still, well, you need to motivate them heavily. And always like, oh, you know, we have a lot of, we have a lot of Intel, we, we don't have time right now, all those things. And then once you do them, it's there, you know, people are screaming for them because obviously having customer knowledge is key. It's that that's a, you know, knowledge is power in that sense here. You know the customer and I'm not saying that qualitative insights are the only, that's not the only data point. But if you have that as well, together with the story of the customer, so you can actually build empathy around it, then you're going to go much further. Then just talking just talking about transactional data or data points from the past. I think a lot of people still struggle with getting clients also in-house to actually get resources in the time to do qualitative research. Again, with the question, what is your experience? Like, you know that it's valuable, but how do you get permission to start? So we have done, so first, when my colleagues started here, they did a really, because of the, we hadn't had any service designers. There was no customer journey math and stuff like that. So they started out with kind of a research project the first year and did a very basic set of tools. So customer journey, different types of modes, like profiles and a set of insights. But I think we can read those and proving how efficient and valuable those were during that time. So using them in every sense you can think of. This time around, it was, you know, it still takes a lot of planning and management to get where you actually get to go to and do all of those interviews. But it's really working, I think, do it in a smaller manner first and you have to kind of prove your way forward. Because, you know, for anyone who works with services, we always know that it is quite, it's slow and it's fuzzy. But it creates a tremendous amount of value. So you just, you need to look at it more as a, you know, we'll do version one first and then next. And we get to do more because you can always prove your. Yeah, and I wanted to get into it to details because I think that's the really interesting thing. Like when you say you get to improve your way into doing bigger stuff, like what kind of proof are we talking about? When are people convinced? What do you show them? When do they get the aha moment or when do they start questioning for more? What has happened? I think, I mean, it's a good question. We work a lot with documentation just in general. I think we've proven many times where it seems as if things are going great. If you look at the data or if you look at the kind of basic metrics that are set up around projects or products. And then you do a, you know, a small follow up and you can do filming or you can interview. You do just a kind of a random sample and you pretty fast can, you know, motivate that there's something, there's something off here. And it might be that some of the internal processes are not working. It might be that attitudes doesn't shine through in our data. And also what it does with, you know, how a happy customer talks to her friends versus an unhappy customer. So I think for our, in my experience here at least, you know, working with such a big set of stakeholders. I would say that, you know, the documentation together with, you know, actionable kind of insights is always there. Yeah. Yeah. So the proof part is really about finding insights from research where you can actually base decision upon decisions upon where decisions have been made based upon because you learn something through five interviews. And then you can sort of track that down. Is that, is that the kind of proof that you're talking about? Yeah. And I think, you know, most of the people working with a product in a non-services way or, you know, a traditional role are rarely in contact with the actual setting. There's a big distance. Yeah. But you might, you know, you might have yourself as a user, might have friends that are used it and you use their stories. But very rarely they have the real experience of standing and looking at someone who's trying to use something. And so really trying to push for that. I think we've also had experiences where things, you know, like we wanted to test something. And then we said, let's just put a pilot in one of the stores. And then when I ended up testing it before and it didn't work at all. So I think also just trying to push for just small amount of interviews, testing and just making sure that, you know, the basics are covered. But I think really not being afraid of being out there and creating those type of, I don't know, infrastructure to reach out to the customers or even just, you know, observe. Because there's so much in reality. And I think as a service designer you're so used to it working closely with the customer and most of the people who are in an office setting are not. So anything becomes very powerful, I would say. Talking about the people who don't get to interact with with the customer on a daily basis. I'm sure there must be. And this is a bridge towards topic number three. I must be there must be a challenge in creating a common language between how we we slash the service design community talks about the things we do versus how people actually work. This is how people actually perceive the things what we do. So my question would be what is your question around common language. Yeah, I think I will go with a simple why. Why? Why should we try to aim for a common language so between who and who. So I think one of the things that you also realize after many years of trying to sell services sign is that there are many design thinking and all of those type of methods and approaches and mindsets that it is quite difficult for a person who's not involved to understand what they're going to get out of it. But it brings but also why this method or approach your mindset is so important. And so why the journey also is you know. And so I think working again coming back to the setting I am in here. I think that's creating or at least aiming to create a common common ground and a common language has been super. And I think that was the first the first step that was to that that my team took was creating that first project which was so important because it laid the foundation of talk even talking about a customer journey or different types of customer that customer moves in and out of different type of traditional segmentation. And so trying to use those very simple tools and not so much to demonstrate you know what services sign is by giving the giving the I mean the colleagues in our office and and and anyone working within H&M just giving them a tool that they can use in there. So even if you're not out to do any type of concept development you can still look at the customer journey and say where are we in this process. Yeah, are we doing great. Yeah, so yeah go ahead. A common like trying for everyone to have a common view on what are the you know what's what's the states that we are dealing with right now and apply your own. Yeah. And then the interesting thing that has come up quite a lot is there's there's basically just one thing within every business slash organization which people can agree upon and that is the customer we're serving like that is that is the common thing. Everybody do is doing something for the customer for the patient for the student for the citizen like right so that's the that's the most logical thing to get around and create that shared language around right. And I think also important aspect of this is really because we have so many so many people within this company and you know traditional organizations that work with different types of data points and insights and analytics and customer profiles and I mean. It's that it's a whole Academy, I would say, but we all have our different approaches and I think what's really services sign and design thinking does to create that common ground is also visualizing and making it tangible. So instead of working with, I don't know what the alternative will be an Excel file or something like that, you would actually create something for everyone to look at so that we know that we're talking about the same thing. Yeah, visualize a vision with images instead of words because of, you know, that you you have different you have different references to, you know, different, different descriptions so really trying to bring it into the tangible visual. A manner, I think has really helped because it does it does also take it down one level so that you can look at it and say, Okay, so I can, I can take this and I can pair it up with my knowledge and they're not in conflict. Hmm. So if you, yeah, if you if you think about common language and look at your learnings from the past 18 months, what is like the if you could start all over again, regarding creating common language, what, what would you do sooner? What, what would you do different? It's a good question. I would probably I think I just I think for my sake, I would have used our our customer journey even more. So as, you know, as I use it in my own work, but more towards the rest of the organization, because obviously you also you learn by seeing it by seeing other use it. And so stuff like that, you know, leading by example, I think that's a good reminder that you can, you know, and why the customer journey map is that is that specifically a document where people have a strong response to? Yeah, I think it's been good because because also because it's simple enough for anyone to play or they're part of the organization in. So if you're working with whatever you're working with, if you're in a store environment, or if it's marketing, you can always attach yourself where your areas are to the customer. And probably I would have, you know, pushed it even further because I think it's, it's a really valuable tool. And, and as we talk about a lot, a lot in the service design world, it's not a really deliverable. It's really a tool. So exactly. It's a means to an end. And for the people who are watching, most of them probably know that I'm big on journey mapping. So if people are linked to a few journey mapping resources and the show notes, Emma, as all the other guests, I want to give you the opportunity to ask us the listeners and viewers of the service design show a question. Is there anything that we can think about? Is there something a question on your mind? Yes. Let me think. So I, one thing that came to mind was prototyping, because I think I working in different agencies and different organizations, I think there's always like a different culture and a different set of tools that people are accustomed to. And, but I would, it would be interesting to, to learn a little bit more about, except the traditional, you know, mock up digital prototyping, what other ways there are to, to work with maybe even physical environments. So what kind of prototyping methods are people using? Yeah, maybe we can do a special episode on that. I have some ideas. Let us know down below in the comments, or if you're listening to the podcast head over to the YouTube channel. Emma, time has flown by. Thanks for sharing your experience with being in-house versus being in an agency. I think these are the topics a lot of us can relate to. So the conversation isn't done yet for sure. So getting back to Emma's question, what methods and tools do you use for prototyping? Leave a comment down below. Let us know and join the conversation over there. If you enjoyed the things we've just discussed in this episode, grab the link and share it with just one other person today who might find it interesting as well. And in that way, you'll help to grow the service design show community. Thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next episode, which you can find over here. See you there.