Let me tell you a story. It’s about how bad service design made life worse for someone going through the most difficult time of their life.
A bank customer was getting letters and phone calls from their bank because they were consistently missing credit card payments.
From the bank’s point of view, this was justified: pursuing payments aggressively generally works, and this customer had to play by the rules.
Despite being upset, the customer eventually summoned the courage to pick up the phone and call the bank.
The customer told the customer service employee at the bank that they had used the credit card to pay for their son’s funeral. They were struggling with debt across several credit cards, having to juggle repayments month-by-month. And all this while still mourning.
In this context, the bank’s pursuit of the debt felt like hounding. It was adding to the customer’s distress and making it less likely that they’d ever be able to pay.
Instantly, the staff member switched the conversation onto a different track. They expressed understanding and triggered support procedures designed to help people in difficult situations.
The pressure was off. The customer had space to breathe.
But why did it have to get to the stage of a distressed customer calling the bank? And why did a customer service person have to bear the brunt of this difficult, emotional situation? No wonder the bank struggled to retain call centre staff.
It could have been handled differently, and better. I’ll come back to that later.
Designers are natural storytellers
As professional designers, telling stories is among the most important things we do
Telling the story above can help the client see the problem from a different angle. It puts them in the shoes of the customer and forces them to look hard at themselves.
Ultimately, without countermeasures, businesses will naturally tend to be process-driven and unemotional. They’ll probably prioritise efficiency and may end up giving the voices of shareholders more weight than those of customers.
As designers, we have a gift for empathy, for seeing the world in different ways, and for challenging assumptions.
Telling the right story, at the right time, can trigger the breakthrough that’s needed to make a good service truly great.
A story about how things could be
How can we rewrite the story above so that the bank isn’t the baddie? Maybe it goes something like this.
The bank has automated systems that are triggered if a customer misses a payment. Their research tells them that one missed payment is usually a mistake. An automated reminder is generally helpful and solves the problem in most cases.
That same research also tells them that missing more than one payment is a sign that the customer might be facing difficult circumstances.
Based on this learning, the bank replaced its system of aggressive robocalls and generic red-ink letters with an outreach programme:
“We notice you’ve missed a couple of payments in a row. If you need to talk to someone, we’ve got a dedicated helpline. You won’t be judged. It’s about helping you feel in control of your finances.”
From service design to content design, this overhaul helped customers feel more comfortable asking for help, and made customer service team members feel like the good guys again.
What stories do people tell about your brand?
Organisations sometimes think storytelling means spinning a yarn about how they were founded, or their latest PR campaign.
Most people don’t care about that.
They care about how your product or service fits into their lives. How it makes them happy, creates warm memories, and solves their problems.
That kind of story makes them come back time and again and tell their friends.
There’s a tangible business benefit to that kind of buzz.
Get it wrong, though, and those stories can be a nightmare.
Think of the tales you hear being told on social media about delivery companies, with parcels disappearing, being thrown over walls, or left in the bin on recycling day.
As a service designer, my job is to:
- tease out those stories
- document them
- test them, working with user researchers
- and turn them into actions
If you’d like to know more about how SPARCK uses storytelling to make better, more efficient, more profitable products and services, get in touch. I’m also on LinkedIn if you’d like to connect there.
