 In this episode we'll be talking about why we shouldn't design for an ideal end state. We'll be talking about the economics of service design and finally how companies can use services as their ultimate differentiator. And here's the guest for this episode. Hi, this is Idris Moetie, welcome to the Service Design Show. If you're trying to design services that have a positive impact on people and are good for business, then you've come to the right place. Hi all, I'm Mark Fontijn and welcome to the Service Design Show. On this channel you get the chance to learn why some services fail and others succeed. For that we go beyond the usual tools and methods and talk about topics like design thinking, customer experience, organizational change and creative leadership. So if you want to take your service design skills to the next level and you haven't done that already, I'd love to have you to subscribe to the channel so you don't miss any episode that is coming out. My guest in this episode is Idris Moetie. Idris is the CEO of Idea Couture and he's right of several books, including Design Thinking for Strategic Innovation and will be giving away a signed copy of that book here on this episode. So make sure you stick around to the end. In the next 30 minutes or so, Idris and I will be talking about why we shouldn't be designing for an ideal end state. We'll be talking about the economics of service design and finally how companies can use services as their ultimate differentiator. So that was it for the introduction and now let's quickly jump into the interview with Idris. Welcome to the show Idris. Hi. So first of all the thing people will notice is the paintings behind you. What are those? Those are my paintings, my post impressionists and some of the surrealistic paintings that I have. And you said something really nice before we started the show and they help you to keep the noise out, right? Yeah, it's sort of part of my multitasking sometimes when I'm on a conference call with 50 people talking I can just sort of doing that with my right hand and powerpoint with my left hand. That's quite an interesting skill. Idris, I'm going to ask you the question that I ask everyone who gets on the show and that is do you remember the very first time you got in touch with service design? You recall that moment? I think so. I think probably about 20 something years back when we were working with a client on a UX strategy for a complete new business and they realized that there are so much considerations need to be part of that and they decided to call it sort of the team decided to call it sort of service design. But then the people that involved were either traditional business analysts and UX folks. So most people don't have an idea what it means. They know there's a gap. There's something needs to be done but there's no formal methodology or approach or process to do it and people just try to figure out okay so the implication is what's going to happen. There's a gap here so the best thing you can do is create a gap analysis but there's no dedicated team or service design and can actually look at this and handle this problem. Before we dive into that so it was 20 years ago around the dot-com boom that you got into service design right that the term started to Yeah and I think still a lot of people up till today enter the field like it's something completely new but it has been around for quite some time right and it dates back to even prior to that so it's new but then again it depends on your background I guess. Right I guess it's been around but I don't think it's I think even up to today even though there are service designer there are service design firms but I don't think it's a formal discipline that actually people recognize much as you are a you know you're an architect you're a UX designer you're a yeah so it's still a very kind of a self-organized discipline that was wanted to market needs rather than talk down like this is a profession. And people are still debating is it their field is it a profession is it a methodology what is it anyway we're not going to go into that because we can fill three hours with that topic we have much more interesting topics to talk about because you gave me three I gave you some question starters and we're going to co-create the questions and the topics we'll be talking about are you ready yeah okay all right let's let's do this first topic is called designers thinking in an ideal state do you have a question starter and you have one paper right okay so so how far how far yes um what's the question right what so what what question can you make out of this how far well I think it's the can you put it up again I forgot it's designers thinking in an ideal state yes I think most people look at this is this is where we are today this is the ideal state where we have we identify customer needs and so we've wanted close to get through a 10 thing 50 things we want to do better yeah that currently causing pain or inconvenience for customers so that's kind of like the above but I don't think that's right I don't think it should be there's an ideal state there may be some interim milestones because customer service customer service design customer experience is constantly evolving people are changing because of maturity of certain products and market shifting technologies moving and there's more getting into the ecosystems and holds a lot of reasons and so so when people look at service design they should also look at as a kind of simple future state in the current state like the before and after situation that's not no exactly it doesn't reflect reality no it doesn't it doesn't it should be a continuous state of improving the experience and understanding which are the because some require longer term fixing some can be pretty simple quick fix and some require some radical change and any radical change requires a lot of executional consideration so it should not be a state where this is in this is how we're going to do this it's possible to do this those impossible pieces it's maybe it's part of this effort to make them possible so and you can't have an answer and say look these are the 20 things we want to do but 19 things we cannot do and that's the end state I'm really curious because there are two parties here like we have the design community who might be thinking in an end state kind of way but it might also be clients who buy into the service design thing what needs to happen at both sides to change this towards a more continuous kind of way of working yeah designers need to do different and what do clients need to do different well I think I think it's a very good question I think the starting point is important I think most people started with a not have either they don't have an idea of what is needed or they have a few specific idea of fixing a few pain points now if you're talking about fixing a few small things then you can have an easy end state episode but that's more of a technical basis but you are thinking about well we're going to introduce service design as becoming part of a key competitive advantage or even service design is the sole core of this company that's what we do then you should not have an end state then you should think about well what is the core drivers of customer service experience in our industries and and what are the levers and what are the key areas that we need absolutely have to make some trade off and one of the key areas that the industry simply accept that you can't do this and then you go back and say no let's question that you know why not and we do that how would that change experience design or service design I think these are the question there are some strategic discovery needs to happen but and like these are the five ten pain points and these are the five ten solution so that's that's the call towards the design community that we should be challenging our clients to have more of these kind of strategic uh discussions right and not accept that we're here to fix to do the quick wins well exactly I think people need to understand what why they do what they do rather than just what I mean there are some elements in in that that is um that you discover uh drivers of satisfaction so there are there are not something that kind of make people wow but there's something that you need to do um just to keep customers happy and keep coming back and then there are drivers of differentiation where you look and think well that really help us to be very different and drastically change our value proposition and strengthen that now that's become a much more strategic move and you got to do both but you need to have a plan and understand what is what hmm so for me I'm trying to imagine how can we help our clients make this transition right because usually also clients are used to buying expertise and buying deliverables buying quick wins do we have to position ourselves more as strategic designers organizational designers business designers should should we embrace more of these kind of words um yeah I mean I think that's um not it's not a simple answer for that I mean in an ideal world I mean yes but in the practical world I think service designers are just learning to do their job well because it's an industry where it's driven or advanced by the practitioners not by academics yeah not by last companies yeah not by big consulting firms because large firms come in and look at it they take a different view they look at sort of operational service re-engineering is really to optimize right costs and efficiency um and it's it's it's cost-based but you know service design is not only cost you try to bring into you harmonize a trade-off between cars customers and everything else it is it is implicating part of the organization design but I don't think currently the current state of service designers um I quit or should sort of take on too much yeah that's I can agree and this is probably um again I'm trying to imagine how this how we can facilitate this transition and transformation in the community much quicker and we probably need some really good examples of companies who are in this transition right yes um because if you if you look at how I mean the most common tool for service designer is what service journey mapping right or customer journey sure everybody you know you have you have a big spectrum of like you know one slide and five dots to like complete a room full of journeys and map and we all know them yes yeah based on statistical data and ethnographic data and or some just random kind of ideas they'll make up some happy here and here yeah now I think I think that that tool is a starting point but the tool needs to be much more sophisticated because you're looking at the customer view so I think that's a good starting point now doing it right is one thing doing it is still better than not doing it then then that's only a customer view and in order for you a designer or strategist to make good recommendation you have to look at the process view of the organization right any large organizations are like a machine so there is a process view there's a system view when you look at sometimes for very complex financial products there's a lot of external and regulatory so you have a system view and then where information comes that's a data view so by the time you bring everything together you have a pretty good idea of why something needs to be done cannot be done why something that absolutely needs to be done but that's kind of like a more sophisticated way of doing mapping and get better results I'm going to wrap up this topic by saying what I've got out of this is that we can we can look at the journey and look at the gaps and look at the end state but maybe we should transform the transition our discussion with clients in towards much more which how can we prevent these gaps from happening in the first place right how can we be proactive how can we design a customer experience an organization a structure that prevents these gaps from happening in the first place that's maybe absolutely I think the practical view is that by doing that we're closing some gaps by doing that and with some unintended consequences we're opening new gaps because we identify okay these are the good stuff and by the time the operation folks take over and say look we're going to happen yes we can automate it automate it and then you're realizing by doing that you've a second different level of gaps so so this is a challenge that's why it should not be simple end state and the starting point should have operational consideration services are touched on many things it touched on marketing the front end of that it touches on operations logistic it touched on customer service because usually customer service our entire separate department handle customer complaint and service call and operation is one separate entity some people actually else has to hold operations or the logistic company so and without the full view of these things you can design what you design but how what you can impact it's a different story you're already touched upon their word operations and that is the key of topic number two we're going to talk about and let me put it in front of the people who are watching and it's called the economics of operations do you have a question starter yes very simple idea how much because it's easy to it's easy for anyone is either going and say I can see from a customer point of view I can see three things wrong you walk into a hotel you call and a service provider you walk into retails and you order online it's so easy to say that you know there are 50 things I want you to do but it doesn't mean that as a business I'll do those 50 things because if I do all those 50 things and most people will be out of business yeah so so the idea is to really understand the economics of the business for example would be you know take customer service what is expectation it's easy to say that okay we want every customer to be happy but let's be realistic not all companies can afford that and they should so how do you understand like what is sort of the service level that what level of service is required to get people happy and then you look at the variance of service failure there's sometimes you know things mishap will happen what's acceptable so there's some operational statistic to look at to identify the problem right you need 99% uptime or you need 80% uptime it's fine and then you look at the interaction between human machines and human you obviously want to automate as much as possible from an operational perspective you know whether it's a call center with the chat box all those things you want to automate everything but on the other hand you work on the human and how do conflicts count in between operational and service design and so how do you make the best of both with something that machine does really well let's use machine and people do really well and use people or overlay a layer a layer of serve a human service on top of machine automation so these are the things that service designer needs to think about which traditionally people only look at okay you click here you click here your apps here I mean these are sort of much more simple problem to solve not that this problem is not real but I think that most that one is an easier problem to solve considering a larger problem to solve when I was thinking about this topic a question that came to my mind is as soon as I would introduce economics and processes I'm sort of limiting myself in what kind of solutions insights I might get so at which stage should we introduce this perspective the this economics perspective how soon in the process should we start thinking about this well I think you should start earlier now I don't think they should sort of like I think having an analyst working side by side with service designer or team is a way better because you can save a lot of time coming up lots of ideas at the end of the day or just either simply you cannot execute it or be it's not even worth doing it there's no business case for it yeah so having someone earlier to work on but understanding the role is to not taking every constraint I mean still have to come in with a creative mind to say like why is that is a constraint real can we overcome that and how much does it cost to overcome that and the service designer team would say well if we can overcome this they will drastically rapidly change our business model then the constraint is worth sort of like overcoming but there are some constraints like okay you overcome this constraint it's small little inconvenience and nobody cares so I think with the team together understand the core drivers the drivers of either customer happiness at least the loyalty or drivers of differentiation release to innovation and so understand that it's a very important point yeah and we what you're saying is we should have that conversation as soon as possible correct yeah I think that conversation should be part of the strategic discovery so that client yeah one same page and he should be well documented as kind of like the project charter so people understand the mission of that like if the mission is like let's get get all the low-hanging fruits and make sure that we get out get out get rid of all the hiccups in in in the in the early sort of like in the service level let's do that or let's radically move certain systems over so that we have the ability to be more flexible to do a lot of things we always wanted to do because we did not have the right support back office system to do it now that's a different thing so framing that in that way help to understand scope and help to understand you know how much economic implications that we are talking about I think it's important to either justify the business case and also any sort of the activities that require to uncover these things you again you already touched upon something really important and that is differentiators the economic rationale behind services as differentiators and that is that the title of topic number three so let's just dive into that one um here it is I have it here in front of me service as a differentiator do you have a question starter okay so how can we do this so how can we make services services as a differentiator yeah I think most people are not seeing that most people saying that look let's do what we do to be up to par with our competition let's do it right so that make it so easy to use and we benchmark our competition those are all good but I think the biggest value for service design is like how can we use that to create as a core element for differentiation because you look at most businesses today you most people outsource their technology their operations logistic manufacturing yeah so they pretty much kind of we assemble it we own the brand we sell the products um and and that makes it very hard when everyone's subscribing to the same service and you buy them the same manufacturers and use the same ER systems and all of those so at the end of the day every company wants to get out of the get out the competitive kind of spectrum to become different you have to do it very differently so it comes from the human elements and the most elements of designing and service is a very powerful tool to create that connection so and that when you start thinking about that you have the most powerful tool to have to create that connection the number two reason is is actually used that to change your business model you look at some of the biggest tech companies today um you know the fb and view of the world the you know the world i mean there are technology companies but i would argue that they're all service design companies i mean technologies are complicated but not as complicated as others but the whole idea of designing service and allowing to use the economics of people you know working part-time and utilizing their homes and these are all part of the service design so you would argue that these are service and companies they're not technology companies and if you use an example every company should rethink their business model and say like if we are a service design company how would we do things differently how would we operate differently what asset do we want to keep what asset we don't want so of course i believe this everybody are watching and listening uh believes this and now we get um onto board level you you you do a lot of projects on board level you meet CEOs you meet uh operational uh chief operational officers when you have this discussion with them what is their biggest argument against this sort of fear of or why aren't there they embracing this mindset well you know every large companies have their own dogmas so they've been very successful operating that way for a long time and and most people don't see any idea to do something differently um i think so that's like the fear of change i think that's normal human being you know i've been doing this for 30 years and now you tell me to do something differently yeah exactly yeah creating our assets and stuff like that and designing our system to support this big machine and and you change part of this big machine it will have drastic implications so you have an operational challenge and headache nobody wants to deal with and you have uncertainty over the risks because currently our business is very stable we can kind of to some degree um to some accuracy we can come predict our earnings and which you know large company needs to report earnings to the street and when you start embarking on something's not proven you suddenly realize that wow okay that's too much risk and and board members and and seen exactly why we're taking that risk when we are making earnings every month and we're doing well and there's no reason to do that until someone comes in and show wow look at that it's threatening us but by then they look at that threatening us either it's too late or it's too difficult and and that's the kind of like the case right so and number three it's always that you they really don't have the challenge it don't have the the people to take these kind of bold moves and they're not in power to do that to be fair because most of these service design ideas are not proven and large companies operate on you know show me the data show me the evidence so if imagine if you are proposing to the board to start a new business where I propose um that every young woman should jump into a stranger's car and ride home no one wants to do that it's too dangerous I believe that when you travel around the world and stay in some stranger's home basically you can do research they'll tell you about it and what happened every millennial loved these products and because they think this is the best thing ever so how would the company make decisions when every data point telling you no no and no yeah it can't be done until it's proven that it's done right that's uh but this makes me kind of somewhere I'm pessimistic that uh you know all the big companies who are out there can we help them or should we you know are they lost how do we move forward with them we can't only be working for the airbnb's and the ubers of this world right we have we have the the giant factories the yeah yeah yeah I think they come to a point in time that they will respond and they have to respond I think the way they respond will be a bit different I think they will come out with their own smart companies will come up they won't I don't think they should do the same I think they should think about well if that's model is being approved and people don't mind doing all these things that's kind of new behavioral shift out there and they say well how do we benefit from that with our skill with our assets with our people so you're gonna attack the problem very differently you should let those people do the new things and when they're successful I have two options either I write the check to buy them or I'm going to respond to them by designing our own version which have the power of support from our assets or you know as a large company um I think they do stand a chance if they can move fast enough and get into pace of that because the market is constantly shifting um the the the ubers of the world will have their own problems at some point of course yeah and so large company will come and say look these are their pain point so I'm gonna out game I'm gonna out strategy them to think about what are the things that actually can beat them so if you constantly are fighting I think I think large companies should utilize serve design more um as they respond um a weapon to the threat of many um startups what have you found um to be the most successful approach when talking to board level members and trying to get them to embrace this new mindset what what words is it is it is it indoctrinating fear with them or it's probably the same formula right and fear drippings happen because everybody feel like they're not reacting to it somehow the responsible fear so you orchestrate that fear you kind of amplify that fear and the second one to show them uh the economics of that that always that you know how does that implicate earnings and the third one to show them a roadmap from here to there right because I think that if you show people look that's the future but the future nothing to do with us then you're not saying anything because you're saying okay well this is us today that's the future and you're saying that we become so irrelevant so you need to connect the future to the present what you're doing today one of the few important decisions that you make today will actually help you to be part of that future so those three things that people will listen and that last thing is a really a golden tip because that builds confidence that they can actually do this right if done well. You need to be part of this like if they cannot do it then why are they thinking about exactly right exactly um so those are the three things that always work awesome that that's really helpful that's really helpful um we're sort of heading towards the end of this uh this episode but I want to give you the chance to ask me and the people are watching and listening to this episode uh a question so is there something you'd like to know from us? So okay um I'm curious about thinking about the service design is a very community driven bottom driven and I want to know how our fellow practitioners is responding to the threat of more automation through AI and boss because that's one of the most easily deployable path is to put the service bot into customer service and that's actually it's pushed automation to a sort of a new level so I'm curious to think about how service design and think about that threat. Interesting how are you thinking about the threat of AI or the chances that has been a question on the show uh in a few earlier episodes so it's really interesting to see how this develops. Idris before we forget we're doing a giveaway uh of your book we're doing a giveaway of two books so a lucky person uh can win a copy of design thinking for strategic innovation and your other book or written by your yeah another book on the on generation seed yes and these will be signed these will be signed copies right that's really important so uh you've got a question for us and people need to leave a comment here on uh on the video and in two weeks time we'll pick a random winner who got the right answer so what's the question Idris? Okay let me think for one second okay so the book the design thinking books um it was designed based on material that they designed for a school program um so name it that school and you got to autograph copies oh at least you're getting you're making a chance to win one of the one of the copies so leave a comment and uh to the to the question Idris just posted thank you very much Idris uh it was awesome having you on the show and being able to pick your brain and listening to all your golden tips thanks so much thanks again thanks for having me if you enjoyed this episode i'd really appreciate it if you give it a thumbs up and if you know someone who might benefit from the things we've just discussed make sure you share this episode with them if you'd like to learn more check out some of the past episodes or head over to the service design show university at learn.servicedesignshow.com where you'll find courses by leading service design experts that dig deeper into the topics we talk about on the show thanks again for watching and i look forward to see you in the next video