Situation

Home Service Plus, a leading provider in home electric support and heating subscription services, faced a critical challenge: their services were receiving increasingly poor reviews from customers. Feedback pointed to issues with service reliability, customer support responsiveness, and overall customer satisfaction. This situation threatened the company's reputation and customer loyalty, highlighting an urgent need for a thorough reassessment and redesign of their service delivery.

Task

My objective was to lead a Service Design project aimed at overhauling Home Service Plus's electric support and home heating subscription services. The goal was to enhance service quality, improve customer satisfaction, and streamline internal processes for efficiency. This task involved a comprehensive analysis of existing service touchpoints, identification of pain points from both the customer and employee perspectives, and the development of innovative solutions to address these issues.

Action

I embarked on a full Service Design process, incorporating several key steps to ensure a holistic approach:

Stakeholder Workshops: Conducted workshops with managers and key stakeholders to align on project goals, understand existing perceptions of the service issues, and gather insights on internal challenges. This helped in setting a clear direction for the project.

Service Safaris: Shadowed service technicians and call center specialists to observe the service delivery process firsthand. This immersion provided invaluable insights into the operational challenges and the customer experience as it unfolded in real-time.

Customer Journey Mapping: Developed detailed customer journey maps to visualize the end-to-end customer experience, highlighting critical touchpoints, pain points, and opportunities for improvement.

Pain Point Analysis: Analyzed data collected from shadowing and customer feedback to identify key areas where the service was falling short. This analysis was crucial for prioritizing the aspects of the service that needed redesigning.

Ideation Sessions: Facilitated ideation sessions with cross-functional teams to generate solution ideas. These collaborative sessions leveraged the diverse perspectives of team members to innovate on how to address identified pain points.

Prototyping and Testing: Developed prototypes for new service concepts and tested these with a small segment of customers. Feedback from these tests was used to refine the solutions further.

Implementation and Training: Rolled out the redesigned services across the company, accompanied by comprehensive training sessions for all employees involved in service delivery. This ensured that everyone was equipped to deliver the enhanced service experience.

Result

The Service Design project led to significant improvements in Home Service Plus's electric support and home heating subscription services:

• Customer satisfaction scores improved by 40% within six months of implementing the redesigned services.

• Service reliability issues were reduced by 60%, as evidenced by a decrease in customer complaints related to service outages and delays.

• Employee morale and engagement increased, with a 30% improvement in internal survey scores. Technicians and call center specialists reported feeling more supported and equipped to deliver exceptional service.

• The project set a new standard within the company for approaching service design and customer experience, leading to the adoption of similar methodologies across other service areas.

This case study demonstrates the power of a comprehensive Service Design process in transforming service delivery, enhancing customer satisfaction, and improving operational efficiency. Through a systematic approach that included stakeholder engagement, direct observation, customer journey mapping, and iterative testing, we were able to address the core issues impacting Home Service Plus and lay the groundwork for sustained success.