You hear what works and what doesnt straight from the customers mouth. – Pia Rautio, HR Director, shares Finnkinos experiences of how service design has kindled new ideas and improved quality. Drawing conclusions on customer experience based only on customer satisfaction surveys is part of the old world and no longer enough. Partnership with a service design company has taken listening to customers – and personnel – to a whole new level.
Drawing conclusions on customer experience based only on customer satisfaction surveys is part of the old world and no longer enough. Partnership with a service design company has taken listening to customers – and personnel – to a whole new level.
A customer satisfaction survey mainly provides feedback on the current offering. But how to ideate something completely new?
Coming up with new ideas is the starting point for the new operating method we developed on the basis of service design thinking. We begin by asking our own personnel and customers to ideate. The first, project-based ideation round accumulated a total of 270 new ideas. We then recruited a group of eleven customers via social media, including an elderly lady, a student, a parent with small children, and so on, for jointly processing the ideas. We ended up testing a total of twelve different ideas.
Let me share a couple of my favorites:
The first idea was by a mother whose children wanted candy every time they went to the movies. Instead of having to supervise the amount of pick & mix candy they chose, she would value containers of a specific size that you can fill up at a set price, say two euros. The idea was tested and seemed to work. Before Christmas, the Tennispalatsi venue in Helsinki offered pick & mix containers of two different sizes.
Another nice idea is linked to employee experience.
Board meetings begin by discussing employee idea cards for an hour or so. This boosts our strategy and develops our corporate culture in the right direction.
Cinema employees work in frontline customer service tasks. We tested employees giving a speech before each viewing, which could involve trivia about the movie, wishing the audience welcome, explaining something about the theater, or drawing a hidden movie ticket from under the seat. The concept has worked well: willing employees get to try out a new role, and even those who initially havent felt up to the task have become increasingly involved. Nowadays, the Scape theatre in Tennispalatsi always includes a speech before the movie.
Im especially happy and proud that gathering and testing ideas wasnt a one-off project. We developed an idea card that each employee can fill to make new suggestions. At the same time, they have to think about the impact of the idea: will it increase the number of visits, improve the experience, or result in more sales, and what are the pros and cons for employees and customers. All of the ideas are discussed, and potential ones are live-tested and rewarded.
Nowadays, jointly creating and developing ideas is part of our regular activities. Board meetings begin by discussing employee idea cards for an hour or so. This boosts our strategy and develops our corporate culture in the right direction.
Aalto PRO's program Service Design – innovate, design and develop your service to a new level provides a comprehensive view of service design as a user-driven approach to service development. Aalto PRO has been the forerunner in Service Design program in Finland already ofr ten years. The program is held in Finnish.
Read also:
RAY - Power of Service Design: Involving Customers in Designing the Service