PROJECT 3 Service Blueprint

BACKGROUND

Time:
11.2016 - 01.2017

Practice:
Stakeholder Interview
Desktop Walkthrough
Service Blueprint
Co-creation workshop

Team:
Yuan Wu (Sr User Researcher)
Jing Luo (Sr PM)

The research team conducted Service Blueprint approach to investigate and visualize the Didi Zuche (DZ) service system in holistic view. Collaborating with multiple stakeholders, the research team discovered the current pain point in major service process. One senior researcher and me closely worked with senior PM to facilitate the co-creation workshop and stakeholder collaborations. The project came out with a set of visualisation artifacts, including service blueprint of main service journey and several sub-service journey. Those artifacts were utilized to facilita PM and stakeholders to walkthrough current service and conduct refactoring design.

OVERVIEW OF THREE PROJECTS

The research team bridges the front-end and back-end, utilized the knowledge from field study and real user(end user and internal user) to identify the pain point and facilitate on redesign the service journey. The three projects dove into the system structure and created a big picture for stakeholders.

PROJECT STATEMENT

The car rental service boosted in past two months, the service system was under challenge that several significant KPIs were not reached to the expectation . Meanwhile, the customer service team was in short of human resource and the complaints were increasing along with the user growth. The project started with its focus on improving customer service, but later on, the team were assigned to deal with the refactoring whole back-end system. In nutshell, the objectives included visualising the current service system and blueprint, redesigning the sub-service process, facilitating the co-creation on refactoring system.

IN DEMAND OF BIG PICTURE
LACKING COMMUNICATION TOOLS
BACK-END SYSTEM REFACTORING

PROCESS

DESKTOP RESEARCH

In order to discover the problems in current service process, the team walked through the internal Wikipedia and utilized LEGO Serious Play (LSP) to role play the (Standard Operating Procedure) SOP. We used post-it notes to record each action and marked the pain points from different roles in the scenario. LSP translated the complex documents into more visible and touchable storytelling and came with several visual materials. At this stage, we generated basic knowledge of current development status and prepared further discussion with stakeholders.

STAKEHOLDER INTERVIEW

The team invited the stakeholders from customer service and operation team to dive deeper into their works. In this step, I also conducted stakeholder interview to understand their day-to-day work in the development process.

We found that three teams have problems in documenting, communications and their web-based operating system. We also walked through several typical but complicated case studies of customer service, which already became the serious challenge for OP and customer service team.

PMs were invited to explain the current task flow; The team utilized LSP in discussion with OP managers; Stakeholder interview

Insights

Customer service team was in short of enough human resource and their system low down the efficiency. Meanwhile CS team had to contact different stakeholders to update the one piece of work order. The low-efficient process took much waiting time and increased customer complaints.
Operation team lacked efficient tool to communicate, and the service process was often blocked due to the communication issue.
Product managers focused on their own system modules, which were only the parts of the whole service process. However, the customer service specialist or operation managers had to trace the whole work order. The work order hand over process lacking notification and the interface lacking unified design. The information architecture was not suitable in many cases.

lacking of unified document

Three departments held different documents, which made the standard service process untraceable. Meanwhile, three departments have the distinct way of working and communication.

A support visual material such as Service Blueprint was demand.

Wasting human resource

The systems failed to afford necessary functions to assist efficient. And the current back-end system mix the operation surface and database.

A new system was demanded with less manual operation and more flexible authority mechanism.

Lacking of big picture

The stakeholders only focused on their own area and lacking empathy with other team or internal users. Meanwhile, the whole system was run under unsuitable system architecture.

Therefore, the refactoring had to conduct with a more holistic view.

VISUALIZAION

We utilized the post-it notes and A4 paper to draft the first service blueprint edition, while we invited the stakeholders to discuss the details. With several iterations, I synthesized the drafts in Visio and Sketch, then printed out into large size for the workshop.

The blueprint was validated firstly within a small group and then printed out for co-creation workshop. The team also found it was impossible to create one service blueprint to visualize all sub-services. Therefore, the team decided to host a set of development meetings to develop several sub-service blueprints for important cases.

CO-CREATION

Co-creation Workshop

Reviewing main service blueprint

Once the main service blueprint was done, the team organized a workshop and invited stakeholders from front-end PMs, backstage system PMs, online operation, offline operation and customer service team. The workshop aims to interpret insights from user research and review service blueprint with relevant stakeholders. The participants were facilitated by researchers to introduce and discuss the current tricky problems throughout the service journey. The workshop facilitated the stakeholders to further understand the service in holistic view. The form of blueprint was appreciated by customer service team and product managers.

Discussion Sequence The participants/stakeholders had their seats beside their represented channels.

10 development meetings - 2 weeks

Reviewing current service process & Create new service process

After the workshop, the team focused on a set of selected sub-service cases based on the customer complaints and user research. These cases required better back-end system, service process, better user experience and collaboration across multiple channels in service system. The participating stakeholders included relevant PMs, online and offline operation team leaders, customer service coordinators and back-end technical developers.

REFACTORING

During the development meeting, the team documented the SBPs into Axure with very rough visualizations. At the same time, the senior PM designed the task flows and information architecture for the service system. The SBPs were used as supplementary materials to describe the task flow and internal user cases.

A set of meetings were host by the senior PM to discuss about the outcome with developer leaders. At this stage, researchers attended the meeting and provided necessary assistance with explanation of the service process and scenarios.

LEARNING

In agile environment, the artificial outcome could be kept as simple as possible, when stakeholders understood the concept and PM was able to conduct her work we just delivered the blueprint with very basic visual elements.
In mobility service research, the operation and customer service play a significant role, where user researchers should really dive into the stakeholder requirement and system level;
Throughout the process, the service design techniques such as mobile ethnography and customer journey map were adopted to integrate with some user research methods to evaluate the current online offline services.
Interpreting and visualizing the user research findings, and facilitating collaboration with human-centred design thinking was the researcher/service designer’s most important contribution in agile development process.

SELLING SERVICE DESIGN

Throughout the project process, the research team kept on introducing the service design thinking and “SELLING” the service design thinking. In department meeting, service blueprint was introduced to the PMs that it could be used to solve the several problems arose from discussions. Meanwhile, the research team cooperated with operation and customer service teams to improve customer experience in various project, which validated the value of service design. The impact of the three projects was visible when the human-centred design was adopted in new projects.