Spirit of Creation – Service Design

Services such as finance, retail, healthcare and education make up nearly 75% of the UK economy.  Customer demand is growing exponentially for services that are reliable, responsive, trustworthy and empathetic.  But as technology and good management offer the capability to deliver more efficient and effective services, the perception is that the reverse is happening and that the quality and individuality of services are not keeping up with people’s needs and wants.       

Manufacturers have for years quite consciously included design in their production processes, sometimes invisible but always present. More recently, tools such as TQM and kaizen have ensured quality, consistency, agility and flexibility of processes. Service design recognises a service as a “product” that is manufactured by both supplier and consumer at the very point of delivery.

The missing piece of the puzzle, in a largely service economy, is the toolset and skillset to design a service so it is 100% centred around the needs of the customer, and responsive and flexible enough to change and adapt with the customer, through all the stages and many interactions of the customer journey.

Spirit of Creation has been using its own tools and customer insight processes, developed over 20 years, to enable organisations in the public and private sectors to realign services with customer need using rigorous and innovative design.  An early example of service design in use is First Direct – the “invisible bank” or “bank with no branches” that revolutionised the banking sector.  Today Spirit of Creation enables organisations to:

• Transform themselves into engines of change innovating and improving services in schools and universities, hospital and community services, banks and financial services and many more
• Reduce costs - make services as efficient and as effective as possible
• Improve performance and margins – matching services to quite specific needs – at the point of delivery, making useful, useable and desirable services for customers to buy