I recently had a disappointing customer service experience. I know, shocker! Nevertheless I was surprised because this particular company maintains a top-tier service design team that has been doing innovative, human-centered work for a long time. To be clear, the experience was about as poor as I would have expected it to be 5 years ago. Why wasn’t I experiencing the fruits of their labor on this day? Why do companies struggle to implement improvements despite generating so many innovative ideas internally?

The word has been thrown around so much, its power has been lost in the void of empty business lingo, joining other once useful words like 'empower', 'value', 'leverage', and 'impact'. I can’t think of a better term, so I’m just going to lean into it. Innovation is the process of implementing new ideas or improvements that create value, are profitable, and meet customer needs. Implementation requires that innovation can be maintained, replicated and scaled.

Large companies are complex systems, with many interdependent parts. Trying to change one part of the system results in a ripple effect with unexpected implications. To make it possible for service design improvements to be properly implemented, service designers need to examine the underlying patterns of the system within which they are operating, understand all the practical conditions, and better predict the problems they may encounter. This is the only way they will be able to set achievable goals, get measurable results and set themselves up for continuous improvement.


Here are five things service design teams should focus on:

1. Be bold and build relationships with all stakeholders and decision-makers to ground service plans in reality.
   
   
2. Gain a deep understanding of decision-making processes and resources available for implementation. Try to predict possible implementation pain points and make contingency plans early on.
   
   
3. Be pragmatic and understand the practical conditions and concerns of colleagues on the ground who will enact and maintain service innovations.
   
   
4. Break the rollout of service improvements into manageable pieces but be relentless in ensuring implementation otherwise future work will be built on shaky foundations.
   
   
5. Follow through by regularly assessing the real-world application of the work and addressing problems. This means going out into the field to observe first-hand whether or not things are working as intended.
   
   

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that most good service design teams already do most, if not all, of these things. The problem of implementation, more often than not, is organizational.

Here are five things companies can do:

1. Actively identify organizational hurdles when transforming processes at scale.
   
   

2. Address problems quickly and bias towards action.
   
   

3. Make sure that Service Design initiatives are prominent with enough resources and a mandate that is broad enough that they are able to grapple with and improve any systemic issues that will impact outcomes.
   
   

4. Create conditions for innovation to flourish by ensuring every part of the business is equipped to support or participate in implementation.
   
   

5. Ensure leadership across the board is aligned and accountable for service design improvements. Make sure that people at the highest levels of the company remain in touch by going out and regularly experiencing the service ordinary customers receive.
   
   

There is incredible work being done at many companies and the only thing standing in the way of improved customer experience is that companies need to get much better at creating the conditions for this work see to the light of day. Time is of the essence because customers like me have other options and finite patience.