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 We recognise the value of sustainable services in our economy and have partnered with design research company Supplejack to provide service design know-how and resources. The comments below show you how service design can help make your service more sustainable and productive.
What's service design? Service design creates higher value customer experiences by designing better services and service touchpoints (the points at which you deliver value).
Service design starts by looking at the experiences and outcomes customers desire, then at how best to deliver these. This can also mean looking at the business as a whole: how it can generate the best value for all.
Service design and sustainability are closely connected because they start with desired outcomes and design a service to meet these.
What's the potential impact of better services? Services can generate huge social and economic benefits for relatively small environmental costs.
Our service sector represents about 70% of our GDP but only about 40% of our carbon footprint. The size of the sector means small changes across the sector can have huge impacts. For example, a 1% gain in the value of the service sector is equivalent to the GDP of the forestry sector. A 2% gain equates with mining or local government, 3% with petroleum-based manufacturing, 6% with central government, 7% with education and 9% with health.
Sustainable service businesses can make a huge difference! How?
How can services improve their sustainability and make a huge difference? The basic service business model is charging for time. This means every hour creates three types of value:
- Money -economic value
- Energy and resources -ecological value
- Interactions and relationships -social value
Every hour also creates value for staff (production) and customer (consumption). That's two design directions:
- Decreasing costs across the three areas for both staff and customers
- Increasing benefits across the three areas for both staff and customers
So that's services' sustainability opportunity in a nutshell.
Want to know more?
You can view a brief presentation on service design here and on service sustainability here. SBN Members can also join our service design ning to share learnings, start initiatives and create higher-value services together.
Below are some links to useful service design sites;
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