F RO M T H E E D I T O R S
Selling Service Design
Service design practitioners are rarely seasoned salespeople. While they may be comfortable with all the challenges that a service design project can throw at them, they are often less sure of themselves when it comes to securing the project in the first place. Despite the growth of service design as a discipline - as evidenced by the number of practitioners, academic programmes and in-house capabilities springing up around the world - it still faces a difficult challenge: How does one sell service design? It’s a so-called wicked problem, made of intertwining questions that often have no clear answers. Who are the right people to speak to on the client side? How can potential ROI be measured and justifiably presented as part of the sales process? What can trigger an interest in service design when it is unfamiliar to the prospect? What does a project proposal consist of? And can service design projects be “pitched” in the same way as other design projects? These challenges and more are at the heart of this issue of Touchpoint. We asked the service design community to share their experiences of how to best to sell service design, and we have collected that advice to share with our readers. From Paula Giles’ encouragement to speak the language of the C-suite (page 28), to Transformator Design’s Daniel Ewerman and Anders Landström’s plea to service designers to become more “buyable” (page 54), there is a wealth of tips within the following pages to help get the commercial side of service design projects off to a successful start. I hope that the articles in the following pages help to effectively grow the market for service design, by improving the way we acquire new work. Here’s to a successful (sales year) 2016!
Jesse Grimes for the editorial board
Robert Bau is a strategist and thought leader in service innovation, branding and marketing with more than 15 years’ agency experience in shaping customer expectations and experiences. Robert is a former Professor of Service Design at SCAD and played an instrumental role in building and directing the first MFA and BFA service design programs in the U.S. Melvin Brand Flu is a partner at Livework where he is director of strategy and business design. He has over 25 years’ experience working on the cutting edge of customer, business and technical innovation in industries ranging from telecommunication and financial services, to public sector and entertainment. Stefan Moritz is an entrepreneur, corporate change-maker and customer experience champion. Leading a unit of researchers, designers, digital experts and strategists he works with global service companies, governments and public sector organisations. He is Vice President Customer Experience at Veryday, one of the world’s top-ranking design and innovation consultancies. Jesse Grimes, Editor-in-Chief for Touchpoint, has fourteen years experience as an interaction designer and consultant, specialising in service design. He has worked in London, Copenhagen, Düsseldorf and Sydney and is now based in Amsterdam with Dutch agency Informaat. Birgit Mager, publisher of Touchpoint, is professor for service design at Köln International School of Design (KISD), Cologne, Germany. She is founder and director of sedes research at KISD and is co-founder and president of the Service Design Network.
Touchpoint 7-3
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