We have all been on the receiving end of poor service, whether being reassured repeatedly for 30 minutes while on hold that ‘your call is important to us’, getting stuck in an endless AI loop with a chatbot when trying to resolve a problem, or experiencing all-too-human service failures face to face or remotely.  

64% of employees spend on average 4 days per month dealing with service failures (1). This translates to UK businesses losing £7.3 billion per month. Sub-standard customer service could be the ‘elephant in the room’ of our balance sheets, one of the biggest hidden drains on profitability.

Whether your organisation provides or sells a tangible product or an intangible service, the customer experience you provide has a major impact on the acquisition and retention of customers, and the reputation of your company.

In an increasingly competitive world, where brand loyalty is no longer guaranteed and customer needs are ever-changing and increasingly demanding, how can you make sure your organisation is showing up for customers in the most effective way possible?  

Great service does not happen by accident. It is an ethos and strategy that needs to be planned and embedded into organisations. If organisations want to succeed, they must understand their own value proposition and deliver it.  

The Service Design Approach

The Service Design approach is human-centred, focusing on the needs and experiences of customers and delivering customer satisfaction. It puts the customer at the heart of your customer service, rather than it just being a motivational quote on an office wall.

The following elements underpin Assist’s Service Design model:

1. People. Service is about people, trust and empathy. Your organisation might be fantastic at product design, but are all of your people genuinely putting the customer first? What needs to change for that to happen?
2. Breaking out of silos. We’ve seen organisations talk about Service Design in terms of Design/UX, or in terms of tech and IT programmes. While these are important components of an overall programme, they are only part of the story. Service Design needs to be embedded in every process in your organisation for it to be effective.
3. Strong internal processes. Most organisations have processes that live within teams and departments, and these processes might have existed for years. Service Design is focused on the customer journey (looking outward) rather than in the way that internal processes have traditionally been structured (looking inward). Ensuring you’re your organisational culture does not get in the way of agility is one of the key components of any successful Service Design programme.
4. Show, don’t tell. Your customer needs to see the value proposition, end to end, throughout the customer journey. Your organisation needs to support the customer through every stage and every touchpoint – from research and purchase through to post-sale. How you deal with problems and issues tells your customer more about you than any glib ‘we put the customer first’ statement ever will. It also dictates whether that customer becomes a repeat customer or not.
5. Providing answers. Customer pain points and issues are problems to be solved, and it’s only by listening to and responding to customers with genuine solutions that service can be improved. Sound Service Design will give you the framework to deliver this.  
6. Common agreed standards. AssistKD believe that common toolkits, standards and language are needed to ensure great Service Design. We are thought leaders in this space, and provide training, forums and (soon) the new Service Design textbook that will deliver our approach to a wider audience. Our courses teach delegates how to develop effective customer journey maps, empathy maps, and service blueprints that will form the backbone of their own service design programmes.
7. And finally… you can’t be everything to everyone. Perhaps a more controversial opinion, but great service design does not necessarily mean providing 100% satisfaction to every single customer – that is not always possible. Meeting the needs of the majority and providing a great customer experience overall, must take priority.  

Supporting the Service Design Community

AssistKD is committed to supporting the Service Design community through:

1. The Service Design Forum. In July 2025 AssistKD initiated the Service Design Forum as a platform for discussion and events related to service design, allowing professionals in the field to meet and network with peers.  
2. Service Design training courses. As experts in Service Design, AssistKD offer a number of Service Design training courses, including the A4Q certificate in Business Service Design. This course was created for anyone engaged in designing services offered to internal or external clients working on business change initiatives and offers a path to organisational success. The course helps develop and link the 4 mindsets that lead to great service design:
   1. Systems Thinking
   2. Service Thinking
   3. Design Thinking
   4. Lean Thinking
3. Service Design apprenticeships. As Service Design is an emerging professional discipline within the digital change industry, AssistKD offer a fully audited Service Designer Apprenticeship programme to ensure exceptional standards. This includes expert one-to-one mentoring (with a low mentor-to-apprentice ratio), classroom taught courses, a suite of eLearning, and wellbeing support from Assist’s dedicated Apprenticeships team. The Service Designer Apprenticeship offers a pathway for professional development in the field, and has already delivered industry leading completion, pass and distinction rates.  
4. The Service Design textbook. Dr Debra Paul and Jonathan Hunsley, co-authors of the book Business Architecture: A Comprehensive Guide, are bringing their thought leadership to Service Design with their textbook Service Design: A practical guide to creating customer centric services, due to be published in 2026.

References:

(1) Institute of Customer Service January 2025 UK Customer Satisfaction Index Survey.

FURTHER RESOURCES

AssistKD offers a choice of business training including A4Q certified service design courses.    

The dedicated Service Design area of Assist’s Learning Zone is packed with free learning resources, with new and topical content added regularly. You will find relevant articles, thought-provoking service design related BA Brew podcasts plus free bitesize learning videos on the latest service design tools and techniques.  

You may be interested in these articles by Debra Paul:  

The Rise of the CX Professional

Putting the Service into Service Design

Find out more about AssistKD’s Service Design courses here: Service Design Course