Touchpoint Session - idea generator

Written by Rose-Innes Designs on 25th October, 2011

Armed with one very large whiteboard, a couple of Sharpies, nice thick pads of neon post it’s and my new service design icons, we began our journey. Thursday 20th was a full day with service design taster sessions that were a really good way to look at businesses and how they offer their services. We had a quick case study, to set the scene, which happened to be a friend’s recent visit to Clarks for school shoes! It involved a few touchpoints, and different service levels and proved a great conversation starter about good/bad service. Touchpoints were shown as blue circles, hearts for services that we describe as relational, and arrows for services that are purely transactional. Pre/present and post service was explained. So, we came up with all sorts of creative ideas around the Clarks shoes scenario, including a service plan to buy shoes over a 5 year period, and an in-store stock control booth. With ideas and conversation flowing, they ‘got it’!! Then we cleared Clarks off the board and started with their businesses. With only an hour or so to each session we managed to plot customers and their services, products and methods of service. Interesting to look at the business from a service point of view. For this exercise we tried to keep the focus on how the service is presently working. Could have done with time to explore each touchpoint in more detail, but we had enough momentum to keep ideas going and I believe each client found value in the session. Ultimately, we're thinking that conclusions will be drawn, through a process of testing their services, collecting and analysing information. Then we can properly address issues, and come up with creative ways of doing thing differently. We did see where the brand was working or not, and its values could be explored. We’ll be helping one company with a re-brand, another with a brand new website and another company take a close look at their documents and forms and procedures. We really enjoyed the sessions and learned lots about our clients businesses! We hope they did too.

Hi Michelle Thanks for today, I found it very useful and I hope that we can connect up all those points of contact! See you soon Mostyn Thomas Technical Director Astrix Integrated Systems Ltd