Welcome, Wonder Weapon!

The more advanced among us will remember integrated brand communication, service-, customer- and other foci, all kinds of branding and other terminologies which came, went or stuck around. Welcome, service design!

Our “nach mittag” in Berlin witnessed some lively debates: is service design a new set of tools, a buzzword, a completely new approach? Is it the new wonder weapon? Or nothing new, just a new name?

Erik Spiekermann with Creative Director Katja Grubitzsch._

Following the welcome by Erik Spiekermann and Jürgen Siebert, Marc Stickdorn, lecturer in Service Design at the Management Center Innsbruck (MCI), supplied some theoretical principles in his “Buzzword Bingo” keynote speech. He made links to the theme by asking simple questions – “What does it feel like?” and supplying convincing answers: “We shape experiences”. He listed the following 5 principles of service design: “user-centred” (focusing on the customer), “co-creative” (looking behind the statistics), “sequencing” (conceiving of service provision in terms of contact points), “evidencing” (creating anchor points for narratives) and “holistic” (taking an overall view).

Jürgen Siebert, Erik Spiekermann, Alexander Schmid (Volkswagen), Marc Stickdorn (Management Center Innsbruck).

Steven Cook, Monika Frech (Dark Horse), Oliver Schmidthals, Ute Wibral _ .

Robindro Ullah (DB Services Nordost), Thomas Rietig of the dapd Nachrichtenagentur._

As project leader for car sharing at Volkswagen, Alexander Schmid reported on this new proposition, and on how service design links in with social media. Beyond the established business segment of Sales, VW is dealing with the shift from vehicle ownership to vehicle use, and with it the demands of mobile, urban target groups. The Quicar service will be launched in Hannover in the autumn.

Stefanie Hering (Hering Berlin), Robert Stulle, Wiebke Lang (Journalist/Designer), Ann-Christin Warntjen (Service Designer) with Ulrike Meyer (Connecting Talents)._

Oliver Zeyen, Jeong Hong Oh (Dark Horse), Fabian Rottke, Katia Musiolek._

Jakob Schneider, designer and (with Marc Stickdorn) editor of “This is Service Design Thinking”, told the story of how the book came about: from crowdsourcing, with 23 international authors, around 80 online contributors and more than 1,200 votes on editorial questions emerged a “book as service” – from the three-coloured bookmark ribbon to the colour-coded index and glossary – which embodies the current state of the debate. A book which, as Jürgen Siebert notes, was created by the resources and methods which it records, and as such also affirms them: just as when magazines were reporting on DTP (the wonder weapon of the time) and being produced using DTP.

Jakob Schneider (“TiSDT”), talking with Jürgen Siebert._

Also interesting is the fact that in “This is Service Design Thinking”, large volumes of text are processed because (another result of the discourse in the creation process) they convey trustworthiness and seriousness.*

Pia Betton, Guest, Jakob Schneider, Joost Holthuis._

Joost Holthuis, Creative Director at Edenspiekermann Amsterdam, entertained his audience by illustrating the practice and astounded them with statistics: 80% of all businesses believe they offer great service – but only 8% of customers agree. This discrepancy is reflected in poor or non-existent service design, which turns the “customer experience” into a catastrophe. In order to prevent such own goals in matters of marketing communication we must, according to Joost Holthuis, find the “hidden desires” of the customer, under their world and, quite simply: create better services.

Simple as that.

Which takes us back to our starting point. Here once again are the 3 questions – already answered in brief in the interview with Jakob Schneider – which emerged as the heart of the debate and were addressed during the “nach mittag” at Edenspiekermann:

1. What is service design?
The consistent design of a service, access to and use of this service in accordance with customer wishes. The design of positive brand experiences at every contact point: “Service Design aims to ensure service interfaces are useful, usable and desirable from the client’s point of view and effective, efficient and distinctive from the supplier’s point of view.” (Birgit Mager, since 1995 Professor of “Service Design” in the faculty of Design at Cologne University of Applied Sciences, 2009)

2. Why service design?
Because it gives us a wonderful set of tools to consistently tailor service processes to customer needs. And because it enables us to better convince our customers of the necessity of good design. (Thanks to Fabian Rottke!)

3. Is service design more service or more design?

Both.

And both conceived of together. 

And consistently so.

Benjamin N. N. Schulz (Volkswagen Service Innovation Team) with Markus Kirsch, on the right Robert Stulle in conversation._

Many thanks to Robert Stulle, Partner and Creative Director Web at Edenspiekermann Berlin, for the establishment of the service design expertise at our agency and the “nach mittag” theme, and for the stimulating discussions beforehand.

Many thanks from all of us to Jürgen Siebert, Fontblogger, TYPO Berlin programme director and FontShop chairman for his charming and enlightening moderation.

The book of the event: This is Service Design Thinking. Basics – Tools – Cases. BIS Publishers (Marc Stickdorn, Jakob Schneider and the co-authors), 2010, ISBN 978-90-6369-256-8.

More details here on Joost Holthuis' “Customer Insights”.

• Similar to the effect of type-setting (and the prevention of it), asserted Martin Tiefenthaler, co-founder of Typographischen Gesellschaft Austria (tga) and lecturer in typography and semiotics, in his brilliant talk at this year’s TYPO Berlin conference: Dicke Bücher sind gute Bücher (Thick Books Are Good Books).

Photos: Mathias Schormann, Film: Robert Schatton.