www.ijdesign.org

International Journal of Design Vol.5 No.2 2011

Service Innovation Through Touch-points

design, and the term is often used when describing the differences

between products and services. They form the link between the

service provider and the customer, and in this way, touch-points

are central to the customer experience. It is not surprising then,

that touch points are mentioned as one of the three pillars of

service design (Koivisto, 2009, p.142)

Due to the importance of touch-points as part of service

design, there is considerable interest regarding how a project team

can innovate within the area. This article considers existing touch-

point research and describes the development and use of a card-

based toolkit used to help project teams develop innovative new

services. It focuses on how project teams can innovate services

through the use of touch-points and contributes new knowledge to

the ﬁeld of service innovation.

Research Questions & Outline of Article

The research presented here contributes to the limited discourse

around touch-points by identifying categories of touch-point

innovation. It proposes a methodological approach to innovation

suitable for cross-functional project teams. Further, a toolkit is

described, along with its implementation and evaluation.

Two related layers of research questions are also addressed.

First, at a broad, contextual level it is asked: 1) What role might

the notion of touch-points play in further conceptualising the

design of innovative services methodologically? 2) How may

card based methods oriented to touch-points be incorporated in

a workshop based approach for fostering service innovation?

Second, at a more operational level, two additional questions

are asked: 3) How may cross-functional teams innovate service

touch-points during the early stages of a project? 4) In what ways

can design-based tools assist team integration at the ﬁrst stages of

a service innovation project?

In answering these questions, the article takes the following

form. The next section surveys existing research into touch-points.

This is followed by a section relating touch-points to the innovation

context within which methods in service design function. The

paper then moves on to present the design and implementation

of the designed methods to a speciﬁc case. Further, a section

evaluation describes the results obtained from multiple iterations

of the cards when used in business innovation contexts. Finally,

the concluding section discusses the implications of the use of

card-based methods in service design and the broader issue of the

materials of service design. Overall, the article argues that touch-

points are a valuable innovation area for service design, and that

a card-based approach ﬁts the service innovation context very

well. It also suggests that there is a similarity between the broader

methodological approaches used for product design/interaction

design and service design, but that the materials and application

of methods are different.

Research into Touch-points

Despite touch-points being a major part of service design, there is

little, or no, documented research within the area (Howard, 2009).

In order to ﬁnd research into touch-points, one has to move to

other disciplines, yet this research uses a different terminology and

has a different focus and approach. Within service design, existing

knowledge comes mainly from practice-based consultancy

and can be traced back to literature from marketing and CRM

(customer relationship marketing). This literature generally

focuses on the need for strategies for the integration of multiple

channels, often with focus upon integration into a CRM system.

In marketing and CRM, the term multi-channel delivery is often

used instead of touch-points, and the focus has been mostly on

CRM systems themselves, rather than customer experiences or

touch-point interactions. Design of individual touch-points is not

covered, and neither is innovation through touch-points other than

at a cursory level.

The concept, however, of designing points of contact

between the service provider and the customer is not new.

Shostack (1984) introduced thinking around touch-points as

part of services, using the term tangible evidence as part of what

she termed “service blueprinting”. Shostack describes touch-

points as, “Everything the consumer uses to verify their service’s

effectiveness. The setting, including colour schemes, advertising,

printed or graphic materials and stationary, all proclaim a service’s

style. The design should not be carelessly delegated to outsiders

or left to chance” (p. 137). She also used the term “orchestration”

to describe how these points of contact should be designed.

In the medical domain, the term emotional touch-points has

started to appear in the research literature (Dewar, Mackay, Smith,

Pullin, & Tocher, 2009). The use of the touch-point term here is

more in alignment with usage in service design, since it relates

directly to the customer experience along the customers service

journey. However, the term is speciﬁcally applied in their article

as an interview tool for eliciting critical incidents during a service

journey, i.e., as an evaluative tool for completed services, rather

than as an innovation tool during the early stages of the design

process. This application of touch-point thinking to user-insight

work is interesting and can be incorporated into service design

approaches.

Within marketing, integrated marketing (Iacobucci &

Calder, 2003) is the area that places most importance upon touch-

points. Integrated marketing combines three elements that are

closely related to service design; an understanding of consumer

behaviour, focus upon brand and the link to customer experience.

Integrated marketing takes a holistic view of services in which the

coordination of touch-points is one major part of linking what is

termed contact experiences to the brand. Fortini-Cambell (2003)

describes touch-points as being: “in a more complex consumer

experience ... there may be literally hundreds of small elements

Mr.

Clatworthy

is a professor of interaction design at the Oslo School of

Architecture and Design (AHO). He has an MBA in Design Management and

an insatiable interest for how companies can work together with designers at the

strategic level. After a professional career in interaction design, he built up the

interaction design group at AHO. During the past ﬁve years, he has focussed

upon service design, and initiated and led the AT-ONE project, which developed

models, tools and processes for Service Design. He started the ServDes, the

research-based service design conference series, which he hopes will become a

regular bi-annual conference within the service design ﬁeld. He is now leading

one of the main themes of the Norwegian Centre for Service Innovation, an eight

year collaborative effort between research partners and business. The theme he is

leading is focussed on brand and customer experience in services.