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International Journal of Design Vol.5 No.2 2011

Service Innovation Through Touch-points

problems mentioned earlier and smoothed out group processes

allowing the group to focus on the innovation process rather than

negotiation of individual card meaning.

Innovation Tools Developed Using the Cards

The project explored different approaches to innovation through

touch-points using experimentation over a period of three years,

comprising 32 workshops together with commercial service

providers. A clear pattern of innovation types developed during

this process, and from these, the project identified six different

use contexts. Each of these contexts enables a different aspect of

service innovation and utilises different creative techniques. The

use contexts for the cards presented below were chosen to maximise

the divergent nature that characterises the front end of innovation.

They assist teams working within innovation projects with a wide

variety of innovation goals. These range from benchmarking an

existing service, through incremental improvements to an existing

service, and transformational innovation and the development of

a totally new service.

Use Context 1: Mapping an Existing Situation

The cards help map out an existing situation; for example, a team

can go through each stage of a service (or customer) journey and

pick out the touch-points that are relevant at each stage. From

this, many aspects can be discussed, such as which touch-point

is most important to the customer, which are used in a sequence,

which are most frequently used, etc. This helps get the discussion

moving around how customers view the service through touch-

points and how they often jump between them.

Use Context 2: Identifying So Called “Pain Points”

Once the service journey has been mapped out, there are many

options open to a project team. One of the things we find useful

is to identify the touch points along the service journey that don’t

perform particularly well from a customer point of view. This can

be a useful means for improving consistency of experience along

the service journey.

Use Context 3: Whose Touch-point is it Anyway?

In large organisations, different departments can be responsible for

the design and content available through different touch-points.

This often comes as a shock to an organisation, but is something

that is usually noticeable from the customer perspective. There

can be different tones of voice, interaction styles, use of images,

typography and especially different terminology. Identifying

who is responsible for each touch-point and finding ways of

coordinating between them can be very useful. This assists

an organisation’s coordination activities around the customer

experience.

Use Context 4: Touch-point Migration

An organisation might get lazy, or might just not have routines

in place for updating their touch-points. Over time, a touch-point

might become out of date or there could be a better touch-point

alternative that can be used as a replacement or addition. This

is particularly relevant when it comes to use of technology and

discussions regarding self service. Going through the touch-point

cards can give ideas for new touch-points and can help map out a

migration strategy from one touch-point to another.

Figure 3. The final cards added a text label to the image, and contextual information was reduced.

This was found to improve group processes. (photo: Nina Lysbakken)