Service design

Digital journeys can be a dead end

Posted on by carolynemitchell

For just over a week I was one of the 9% of the UK population who doesn’t have a smartphone. In fact it was worse than that I didn’t even have a landline.

We’ve all done it – my Google Pixel was in the back pocket of my jeans and ended up in the loo. I had thought the model was water resistant but turns out it wasn’t. It took about a week to die then it’s replacement turned up damaged and had to go back. Eventually I dug out an old Huawei but in that nine days, even with a Chromebook and a work laptop I felt digitally excluded.

Given my job I know that organisations prefer that we transact with them online, and even better via an app on a phone but due to my circumstances I was denied access to so many things that I had previously taken for granted. Things that, now I was logged in from the Chromebook needed verification that I was who I claimed to be. And how did they want me to verify? You guessed it – a verification code sent to my phone. #epicfail

Like the majority of people I couldn’t remember my account passwords because I use fingerprint recognition on the apps on my phone. So I couldn’t access Amazon – my husband had to do it for me. I almost couldn’t pay him back via online banking but eventually I found my card reader at the back of the kitchen drawer.

Road sign showing a dead end and a turning point to the left

I couldn’t do an online shop with Sainsbury’s because they wanted to send a pin to my phone and when I phoned customer services they said there was nothing they could do – Tesco got my custom instead.

I couldn’t use PayPal for the duration either so paying for a lot of things was tricky and I had to dig out my bank cards which have been languishing in a bag in the bottom of the wardrobe since the start of the first lockdown.

These are all parts of the customer journey that these organisations’ service designers have either not bothered with or have been told to ignore if they are using the 80/20 rule. If they had half-decent call centres or webchat maybe I wouldn’t have been so stuck but for me this didn’t seem an option with the services I was trying to access.

I’m back in business now but my brief period of being digitally excluded was frustrating and exhausting – everything went round in circles with no result.

So I think my take from this is that there are varying degrees of digital exclusion, from no technology, to some technology to fully digital and it’s the bit in the middle that organisations are ignoring.

It also goes to show that we can escape from the tech hamster wheel most of us are trapped in and think about where we can reuse or lengthen the life of our digital devices.

But don’t get me started on digital waste. That’s a whole other post.

Photo by Roger Bradshaw on Unsplash

A local bus for local people

Posted on by carolynemitchell

If you’ve read my previous blogs you’ll know I’m interested in customer-centric, co-created service design.

So far the examples I have seen have been government or local government projects but I have been unwittingly been benefiting from a hyperlocal working example for a few years.

Again, if you’ve read previous posts you’ll know how much I like public transport for people watching and earywigging the conversations of my organisation’s potential customers.

If I need to be in Glasgow for an early meeting or training I catch a Parks of Hamilton coach from practically outside my house. It starts in Strathaven a few miles up the road, has a few stops through my village then goes straight onto the motorway and into Glasgow city centre. The return journey leaves at 5.15 and I’m back in the house for 6pm.

It’s a pretty much perfect service. The drivers are always courteous. Depending on the coach the seats are leather. There is a toilet. The lights are dimmed and there’s a hush reminiscent of an Emirates long haul flight. And believe me it’s a far cry from schlepping in on the service bus to then transfer onto a train. And it’s cheaper.

People sitting inside a bus

The Parks website has a timetable but the service doesn’t appear on Traveline Scotland and the timetable isn’t up at the bus stop. The service is legit though as it has a stance at Buchanan Street bus station.

If I need reminded of the times my port of call is the Strathaven Facebook page where someone helps me out within minutes.

So last week as I was sitting in heated luxury I wondered about how the service had started. Facebook couldn’t remember so I phoned Parks. The lovely lady who answered didn’t know but she would find for me. Two days later she emailed to say that she’d had to track down their longest-serving employee who told her it was a group of people in Strathaven who worked in Glasgow who had done their research, crunched the numbers and approached the company who decided to trial it and clearly it worked and is still working.

You may not find the service on any travel planning app but it is looking after itself and is well embedded in local knowledge. As people retire, others leave school, uni or college and start using the service. It’s a well-used and loved local secret.

It’s also service so-creation at its best.

Image by @anniespratt via unsplash.com

Your customers probably aren’t like you

Posted on by carolynemitchell

I’m not posh.

I have dinner at 6pm, not supper at 8.30pm.

I have never skiied.

My second name is not my nickname.

In our house we have a loo not a lavatory.

And I don’t shop in Waitrose.

I can guarantee you that the heaviest users of council services are not posh either.

By the same token I am not poor – I have a job, I can feed my family, we have a car, own our own home and can afford to go on sunny holidays. I’d describe us as comfortable.

Other than emptying their bins, collecting their council tax and educating some of their children I don’t think the majority of the comfortably off are heavy users of council services.

So when it comes to wording leaflets, creating web content and forms or designing services with actual customers in mind, how can we be sure we’re pitching it right?

As humans we like to think that other people are like us but are they really?

In the office we use PCs mostly but a look at the web stats shows me that the majority of our citizens look at the website on a phone. We need to look at the website through their eyes.

That 45-page housing application form? Yes, we need to look at the form through an applicant’s eyes but we also need to understand what life is actually like for that citizen as they try to fill it out.

Empathy and a good dose of nosiness is what service managers and service designers need.

I’ve always been nosy – that’s why I enjoyed my 14 years as a journalist.

It’s also why I like public transport, particularly the bus. I sit at the bus station for half an hour on a Wednesday and another 30 minutes on the bus home. Now, you could look on the bus station as the armpit of hell where the human flotsam and jetsam congregates to compare court orders, the price of a bag of green, who the father of the baby is or the latest rumblings on Love Island. It is all that. On the other hand these human beings are likely to be the heaviest users of council services, whether as ‘troublesome’ council tenants, at risk of becoming homeless, known to social work for one reason or another or up on a Police warrant.

Last week, a group of four 20 somethings came in, clearly out their faces on something, loud-mouthed, sweary and slightly scary. The rest of us looked at each other, hoping they wouldn’t get on our bus. As the bus pulled in they sprang into action, falling over each other, dropping stuff, looking for bus fares, all with smart phones, when one of them shouted out, “Whar’s ma dug! Ah’ve loast ma dug! Whar’s ma dug!”, as he circled round and round checking around his ankles. I had visions of the poor dug tied up outside a pub for hours and for a couple of seconds the guy was as panicked as if he’s left his first born in a pram outside a shop.

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The dug – a staffie-cross, naturally – came slinking out, shamefaced from under his seat. And we all heaved a sigh of relief.

And that was a perfect picture of just one of our customer groups – chaotic lifestyle, drug habit, friends just like him, public transport user. But he loves his dug.

Could he fill out our housing application without help? He’d probably struggle to find it, never mind fill it out on his phone.

However, should he ever lose his dug and it gets picked up by the dog warden I am pretty confident he’ll see the picture we’ll post on Facebook and Insta telling him where to pick it up.

So if you work in local government and you want to understand your customers, get out among them. Take the bus. Hit up Iceland instead of Waitrose (Iceland has pledged to remove palm oil by 2020, unlike Waitrose btw). Go into the chemist serving one of your housing estates for a browse and listen to the conversations around you.

This is real life.

A meeting room filled with middle managers deciding how to deliver a service isn’t.

Service design, transformation

Transformation can be transcendental

Image | Posted on by carolynemitchell

I’m no yoga bunny but I do find the breathing techniques relaxing and the teacher always tells that the asanas massage internal organs, lower blood pressure and heart rate.

I haven’t practised yoga for 17 years  but now I’m back at it, with a brilliant studio I am finding that I can apply it to a lot of my leisure time. I wasn’t expecting to draw parallels to the transformation programme going on at work so tonight’s unravelling of my thoughts after class surprised me.

Like most transformation programmes parts of ours feels like wading through treacle, other parts half-hearted and yet others scratching the surface. Don’t get me wrong, there are flashes of inspiration and aspiration but where can yoga help, I hear you ask.

Something clicked in class tonight, There was the in breath and an awareness of what I was about to ask my body to do, there was an exhale as I moved to a position, an awareness of any tension as I inhaled again (sometimes this was tricky and I had to imagine breathing by expanding my lungs and ribs at the back then a complete relaxation on an exhale, using the weight of my limbs to get a deeper stretch. Finally there was an inhale to raise my head and become aware of coming back to an equilibrium before moving on to another position.

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Applied to transformation, there needs to be an awareness of where you are and an understanding of where you need to be. Along the way you need to take regular breathers to take stock of the effects the changes are having on citizens, employees and processes.

You need to have empathy for all the stakeholders.

You need to carefully balance internal processes with citizen experience.

You need to feel the connections, use the breath and the transformation will come.

So maybe instead of agile we should be aiming for yogic.

Who’s up for a sun salutation?