vendor landscape: service design agency overview, 2015 · for customer experience professionals...

Vendor Landscape: Service Design Agency Overview, 2015by Leah BuleyDecember 1, 2015

FOR CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE PROFESSIONALS

FORRESTER.COM

Key TakeawaysService Design In 2015 Is In FluxThe service design field has grown organically and through mergers and acquisitions in recent years. Today, it reflects a mashup of five different approaches: fuzzy front-end innovation, physical and face-to-face experience design, digital experience design, organizational change management, and business process consulting.

The Field Is Moving From A Lineup Of Small Boutiques To A Full-Service Provider ModelAmong service design agencies, some continue to specialize in targeted offerings like physical service design and organizational change. But full-service digital and business systems providers have joined the game and bring new capabilities like quantitative analysis and business analytics to the field.

Is That A Good Thing? It All Depends On Your CX GoalsWhen shopping for a service design partner, CX professionals should ask a lot of questions -- some obvious and some not so obvious -- to find the right fit.

Why Read This ReportThe service design provider landscape has changed dramatically in a short time. Just two years ago, it was a sea of smaller firms concentrated in Europe. Today, a more varied profile emerges, with full-service design agencies and management consultancies claiming service design among their offerings. This report examines today’s provider landscape and offers guidance to help customer experience (CX) professionals assess the right service design partner for their goals.

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© 2015 Forrester Research, Inc. Opinions reflect judgment at the time and are subject to change. Forrester®, Technographics®, Forrester Wave, RoleView, TechRadar, and Total Economic Impact are trademarks of Forrester Research, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective companies. Unauthorized copying or distributing is a violation of copyright law. [email protected] or +1 866-367-7378

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Table Of Contents

Service Design In 2015: Mergers And Mash-Ups

Agencies That Offer Service Design Vary Widely

Most Agencies Practice Two Or Three Flavors Of Service Design

Specialized Firms Are Small And Focused On Social Services

Agencies With Breadth Also Bring A More Traditional Business Approach

And A Small Crop Of Atypical Agencies Foreshadow Coming Trends

Recommendations

To Assess Potential Partners, Ask Some Personal Questions

Supplemental Material

Notes & Resources

We used data from Forrester’s Q3 2015 Global Service Design Agency Online Survey in the writing of this report.

Related Research Documents

Service Design Agency Overview, 2013

The State Of Service Design, 2013


Vendor Landscape: Service Design Agency Overview, 2015

by Leah Buleywith John Dalton, Anajali Yakkundi, Sarah Sikowitz, Kelly Price, and Kara Hartig

December 1, 2015

http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=RES107721


http://www.forrester.com/go?objectid=BIO8584





Vendor Landscape: Service Design Agency Overview, 2015December 1, 2015

© 2015 Forrester Research, Inc. Unauthorized copying or distributing is a violation of copyright law. [email protected] or +1 866-367-7378

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Service Design In 2015: Mergers And Mash-Ups

2013: Accenture acquires service design agency Fjord. 2014: EPAM acquires service design agency Great Fridays. 2015: Wipro acquires service design agency Designit. Notice a pattern? More traditional agencies are jumping into the service design game with both feet. As a result, a wider range of players than ever now talk the talk of service design.1 But how can CX professionals be sure that an agency also walks the walk? To find out, in Q3 2015, Forrester surveyed service design agencies from across the globe. We applied exploratory factor analysis to the self-reported survey results to see if subtle differences separate one type of service design provider from another.2 The result? Rather than one homogenous discipline, based on reported capabilities and channels, we found five flavors of service design that agencies mash up in different ways (see Figure 1 and see Figure 2):

› Fuzzy front-end innovators. This group emerged from a pattern of respondents that all reported qualitative customer research, brand strategy, experience strategy, conceptual design, detailed design, and employee experience design among their capabilities. It’s not surprising to see these activities together; as a sequence, this looks a lot like the customer-centered innovation process, with its emphasis on what customers need, what the brand stands for, what the big idea is, and how it all pays off in delightful details. About half of the agencies that responded to our survey fall into this group.

› Physical and face-to-face experience designers. These are firms that report that they design for face-to-face interactions, the physical environment, printed materials, and the contact center. This is canonical service design — with its emphasis on a human-centered approach to planning and organizing back-office and front-office associate-to-customer interactions. And yet just 37% of the agencies that responded to our survey exhibited this pattern.

› Digital experience designers. Service design as a discipline is channel-agnostic, but a strong theme around digital experience design emerged among these service design providers. These are firms that couple business strategy with specific design for Web, mobile, and tablets. The 69% of firms that fell into this group have entered that gray area between service design, digital customer experience strategy, and digital technology. In fact, a few firms in our recent overview of digital experience service providers appear in this report as well.3 Expect to see more of this crossover. As digital permeates an increasingly wide swath of your customers’ experiences, service designers will find themselves thinking in increasingly digital terms.

› Organizational change partners. This category reflects the hard truth that to improve how customers experience an organization’s services, it is often necessary to take on the messy business of change management, training, and organizational design. This will come as no surprise to many customer experience professionals, but it is significant to see that service design firms also recognize the necessity of this and fold it into their offerings. Half of the firms that responded to the survey claimed these capabilities.




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› Business systems consultants. Firms that combine capabilities in quantitative customer research, business analytics, and technology development fall into this group. These companies were also more likely to design for software and software-as-a-service (SaaS) than those outside of this group. These are firms that help organizations design and deploy business-facing systems. Surprised to see firms like this on a list of service design agencies? Don’t be. These firms are leading some of the most noteworthy mergers and acquisitions (M&A) in the service design space. This was the smallest pattern to emerge from our analysis: It applies to only about a quarter of our survey respondents. But it encompasses the largest, most globally dispersed, and most widely recognized consultancies on our list.

FIGURE 1 Factor Analysis Found Patterns In Service Designers Based On Capabilities And Channels

Source: Forrester’s Q3 2015 Global Service Design Agency Online Survey

Fuzzy front-endinnovators

• Qualitativecustomerresearchcapabilities

• Conceptualdesign capabilities

• Experiencestrategycapabilities

• Brand strategycapabilities

• Detailed designand speci�cationscapabilities

• Employeeexperience designcapabilities

Physical and face-to-face experiencedesigners

• Face-to-facechannel

• Physicalenvironmentchannel

• Printed materialschannel

• Contact centerchannel

Digital experiencedesigners

• Business strategycapabilities

• Web channel

• Mobile/tabletchannels

Organizationalchange partners

• Changemanagementcapabilities

• Organizationaldesigncapabilities

• Trainingcapabilities

Business systemsconsultants

• Quantitativecustomerresearchcapabilities

• Business analyticscapabilities

• Tech developmentcapabilities

• Installed software/SaaS channel

Base: 70 global service design agencies




4

FIGURE 2 Patterns Among Service Design Providers By Self-Reported Capabilities And Channel Strengths



• Catalyst InnovationPartners

• Cnote

• Comotion

• Comrade

• continuuminnovation

• Criativia

• Deloitte

• Designit

• Doberman

• Edenspiekermann

• Engine ServiceDesign

• EPAM

• Experientia

• FCV

• Fjord, a part ofAccentureInteractive

• frog

• gravitytank

• Hello Future

• Hellon

• Holon

• Huge

• Idea Couture

• Interbrand

• Kristina ToolStudio

• Macquarium

• Made by Many

• McKinsey DigitalLabs

• MU/DAI

• Razor�sh Global

• Red Privet


• Comrade


• Designit

• Doberman


• Experientia


• frog

• Hellon

• Holon

• Huge

• Idea Couture

• Livework Studio


• minds & makers

• MU/DAI

• Palmu Group

• Red Privet

• Rocca CreativeThinking

• SapientNitro

• Service ScienceFactory

• strategybuilders.eu

• We Question OurProject

• WorkPlay-Experience

• Ziba Design

• Zilver Innovation


• AKQA

• Brand Manual


• Changeful

• Cnote

• Comrade


• Daytona

• Deloitte

• Designit

• Doberman

• Edenspiekermann


• Experientia

• FCV


• frog

• Hello Future

• Hellon

• Holon

• Huge

• Idea Couture

• Interbrand

• Livework Studio

• Macquarium

• Made by Many

• MAYA Design

• minds & makers


• MRM//McCann

• Nile

• Nurun

Organizationalchange partners• Brand Manual

• brightspot strategy


• Cnote

• Comotion

• Comrade

• Criativia

• Deloitte


• EPAM

• FCV


• Hellon

• Holon

• Huge

• Interbrand

• Intersezioni

• Kristina ToolStudio

• Made by Many


• minds & makers

• Palmu Group


• SAP

• SapientNitro


• STBY


• TransformatorDesign

• User Studio

• Via Design

• AKQA

• Deloitte

• Designit

• EPAM


• frog

• Huge

• Idea Couture

• Macquarium


• MRM//McCann

• Nurun

• Palmu Group


• Red Privet

• SAP

• SapientNitro



• Rocca CreativeThinking




5

FIGURE 2 Patterns Among Service Design Providers By Self-Reported Capabilities And Channel Strengths (Cont.)


• We Are Snook


• Zeewaardig



• OceanObservations

• Palmu Group

• Red Privet


• SAP

• SapientNitro


• Smith


• TransformatorDesign

• Usability Matters

• User Studio

• We Are Snook

• Zeewaardig

• Ziba Design


• SapientNitro

• User Studio

• We Are Snook


• Ziba Design




Organizationalchange partners


Agencies That Offer Service Design Vary Widely

What do these patterns tell us? It’s not just a simple sorting exercise, because these patterns are not mutually exclusive across agencies. Many agencies exhibit two or three patterns simultaneously, a handful of them show all of the patterns, and others display none. Knowing which patterns an agency exhibits — and how many — gives CX professionals valuable clues as to whether a particular agency is better suited to help with a focused CX challenge or a longer-term partnership for a broader CX program.

Most Agencies Practice Two Or Three Flavors Of Service Design

If the promise of service design is holistic end-to-end experience design for the front and back of the house, about half of the agencies that responded to our survey deliver on multiple parts of that promise — but not all of it. Forty-seven percent of the 70 agencies in our survey matched two or three of the five patterns (see Figure 3, see Figure 4, see Figure 5, and see Figure 6). For these firms:




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› Factor patterns vary by firm. Digital design, fuzzy front-end innovation, and organizational change are the three most common patterns in this group: 79% of firms in this list matched the digital design pattern, and 61% matched fuzzy front-end innovation and organizational change. Some firms lined up exactly on these three patterns. However, 55% of the agencies in this group combined one or two of those patterns with the physical and face-to-face design or the business systems consulting patterns.

› Capabilities center on experience strategy. When we asked these agencies about their top capabilities, they cited experience strategy most frequently, with 73% in this group listing it among their top offerings. Conceptual design and qualitative research were common as well, with 39% and 42% claiming them as a top capability, respectively. About a quarter of the agencies in this group also cited business strategy and technology development among top capabilities.

› Web and mobile beat out physical and face-to-face channels. Web and mobile are the top channels here. Seventy-six percent of the respondents in this group cited the Web as a top channel, and 67% cited mobile/tablet. About a third of the firms in this group also report that they regularly design for the face-to-face channel.

› Financial services tops the list of clients. A whopping 85% of the firms on this list report that they have done work for clients in financial services in the past two years. Consumer products, government, retail, and healthcare are also top employers; about 60% of the agencies in this group have done work in these areas in the past two years.

› Sizes range from one person to teams of 500-plus people. A majority of the firms in this group are relatively small — 67% have 10 or fewer service design employees. But 18% of the firms on this list swing the other direction, with 51 or more service design employees. Given the size of the field at this point, it’s doubtful that those employees are practicing service design exclusively. They’re more likely to be consultants who do service design as one part of a more broad-based consulting practice.

› Headquarters cluster in North America, Benelux, and Great Britain. Europe maintains the lion’s share of these agencies, with 64% of this group. However, the country with the largest single number of agencies is the US, which represents 27% of these firms. Eighteen percent of these firms hail from Benelux countries, especially The Netherlands, which represents 15% of this list. Firms headquartered in Great Britain represent another 15%. Just one firm in this group is headquartered outside of Europe and North America.




7

FIGURE 3 Service Design Agencies That Match Two Or Three Patterns By Size, Experience, And Targets

Agency name

AKQA

Brand ManualCatalyst Innovation

PartnersCnote

Comotion

continuum innovation

Criativia

Doberman

Edenspiekermann

EPAM

FCV

Hello Future

Interbrand

Kristina Tool Studio

Livework Studio

Macquarium

Made by Many

minds & makers

MRM//McCann

MU/DAI

Nurun

Rocca Creative Thinking

SAP

Service Science Factory

strategybuilders.eu

Transformator Design

User Studio

We Are Snook

WorkPlayExperience

Zeewaardig

Ziba Design

Zilver Innovation


Headquarters

Servicedesignemployees

Years ofexperience

US

Estonia

US

The Netherlands

UK

US

Brazil

SwedenGermany/The NetherlandsUS

Sweden

US

Italy

UK

US

UK

Germany

US

US

Canada

UK

Germany

The Netherlands

Luxembourg

Sweden

France

Scotland

Germany

The Netherlands

US

The Netherlands

101-500

6-10

6-10

2-5

2-5

51-100

2-5

11-25

2-5

101-500

6-10

6-10

2-5

1

11-25

2-5

11-25

6-10

500 or more

2-5

51-100

2-5

101-500

2-5

1

26-50

6-10

6-10

2-5

2-5

6-10

6-10

16 or more

6-10

2-5

6-10

2-5

11-15

2-5

6-10

6-10

6-10

2-5

2-5

1 or less

6-10

11-15

6-10

6-10

6-10

16 or more

1 or less

2-5

2-5

6-10

6-10

11-15

16 or more

6-10

6-10

6-10

2-5

6-10

6-10

Phy

sica

l and

face

-to

-fac

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esig

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s

Dig

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des

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Org

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Canada

Experientia Italy 26-50 11-15




8

FIGURE 4 Service Design Agencies That Match Two Or Three Patterns By Top Capabilities

Agency nameAKQA

Brand ManualCatalyst Innovation Partners

CnoteComotion

continuum innovationCriativia

DobermanEdenspiekermann

EPAM

FCVHello Future

InterbrandKristina Tool Studio

Livework StudioMacquarium

Made by Manyminds & makersMRM//McCann

MU/DAINurun

Rocca Creative ThinkingSAP

Service Science Factorystrategybuilders.eu

Transformator DesignUser Studio

We Are SnookWorkPlayExperience

ZeewaardigZiba Design

Zilver Innovation

Primary Secondary


Qu

alit

ativ

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sto

mer

res

earc

h

Qu

anti

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sto

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res

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h

Bra

nd

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ang

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anag

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mp

loye

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per

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ce d

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n

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Experientia




9

FIGURE 5 Service Design Agencies That Match Two Or Three Patterns By Top Channel Experience

Agency name

AKQABrand Manual

Catalyst InnovationPartners

CnoteComotion

continuum innovationCriativia

DobermanEdenspiekermann

EPAM

FCVHello Future




MU/DAINurun

Rocca CreativeThinking

SAPService Science

Factorystrategybuilders.eu


We Are SnookWorkPlayExperience

ZeewaardigZiba Design

Zilver Innovation

Primary Secondary


Contactcenter

Faceto face

Installedsoftware/

SaaSMobile/tablet

Physicalenvironment

Physicalproducts

Printedmaterials Web Other


Experientia




10

FIGURE 6 Service Design Agencies That Match Two Or Three Patterns By Industry Experience

Agency name

AKQABrand Manual

Catalyst Innovation PartnersCnote

Comotioncontinuum innovation

CriativiaDoberman

EdenspiekermannEPAM

FCVHello Future




MU/DAINurun

Rocca Creative ThinkingSAP

Service Science Factorystrategybuilders.eu


We Are Snook

WorkPlayExperienceZeewaardigZiba Design

Zilver Innovation


Au

tom

oti

ve

Co

nsu

mer

pro

du

cts

Ed

uca

tio

n

En

erg

y

En

tert

ain

men

t

Fina

nci

alse

rvic

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Gov

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men

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Hea

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care

Man

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ctu

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Med

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np

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t

Ret

ail

Tech

no

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Tran

spo

rtat

ion

Trav

el

Uti

litie

s

Oth

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Experientia




11

Specialized Firms Are Small And Focused On Social Services

Thirteen agencies exhibited one pattern only, indicating that their service design activities are narrower and more specialized (see Figure 7, see Figure 8, see Figure 9, and see Figure 10). These agencies report that they are:

› Purveyors of qualitative research and experience strategy. Nearly all of the firms in this category list qualitative research among their top capabilities — 85% altogether. Experience strategy comes close behind, with 69% reporting it as a top capability. Forty-six percent report that training is a top priority, and 31% say that conceptual design is.

› In industries that provide social services. Education, healthcare, and government are key clients for this group of agencies. Nearly all of the 13 said that they have done projects in the education field in the past two years — just two did not. Healthcare comes second, with 62% of agencies doing work in this area. A further 46% report doing projects for government clients. The only outlier to the trend is retail, for which 54% of respondents have done projects in the past two years.

› Relatively small. Fifty-four percent of the agencies in this group have 10 or fewer service design employees on staff. Thirty-one percent have 11 to 25 service design employees, and another 15% have 26 to 50 such employees. But none on this list have the hundreds of service design employees that other firms report, making these single-pattern agencies relatively small, compared with those that show multiple patterns.

› Varied in experience. Forty-six percent of firms have two to five years of experience in service design. Another 38% report having 11 to 15 years of experience. Just two of these firms say that they have six to 10 years of experience in service design, suggesting a reverse bell curve, with agencies clustering at the junior or senior end of the spectrum and relatively few landing in the middle.

› Concentrated in Northern Europe. Out of 13 agencies, 62% have headquarters in Europe. The remaining agencies are found exclusively in North America, with 31% headquartered in the US.

Service design is end-to-end experience design for the front and back of the house. About half of agencies deliver on multiple parts of that promise — but not all of it.




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FIGURE 7 Service Design Agencies That Match Only One Pattern By Size, Experience, And Targets

Agency name

brightspot strategyChangeful

DaytonagravitytankIntersezioni

MAYA DesignNile

Ocean ObservationsSmithSTBY

Usability MattersVia Design

We QuestionOur Project


Headquarters


Years ofexperience

USUKSwedenUSItalyUSScotlandSwedenUSUK/TheNetherlandsCanadaDenmark

Spain

6-10111-25 26-50111-2511-2511-2526-506-10

2-52-5

2-5

2-52-52-5 11-156-1011-152-56-1011-1511-15

2-511-15

2-5

Fuzz

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d in

nov

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13

FIGURE 8 Service Design Agencies That Match Only One Pattern By Top Capabilities

Agency name

brightspot strategy

ChangefulDaytona

gravitytankIntersezioni

MAYA DesignNile




Primary Secondary


Qu

anti

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ust

om

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esea

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14

FIGURE 9 Service Design Agencies That Match Only One Pattern By Top Channel Experience

Agency name



MAYA DesignNile




Primary Secondary


Contactcenter

Face toface

Installedsoftware/

SaaSMobile/tablet

Physicalenvironment

Physicalproducts






15

FIGURE 10 Service Design Agencies That Match Only One Pattern By Industry Experience

Agency name



MAYA DesignNile





Oth

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Au

tom

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mer

pro

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Gov

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Agencies With Breadth Also Bring A More Traditional Business Approach

Fifteen of the 70 agencies that responded to our survey matched four or all five of the patterns, indicating that their approach to service design encompasses innovation activities, physical and digital experience design, organization change, and even help with business systems (see Figure 11, see Figure 12, see Figure 13, and see Figure 14). These agencies are:

› Inclined toward business strategy. Experience strategy and conceptual design are top capabilities here, just as they are for firms exhibiting two to three patterns. But unlike the other groups in this report, these agencies also lean toward business strategy. Forty-seven percent of this group reported that business strategy is a top capability, significantly more than the 27% of two- to three-factor firms that said that it was.

› More likely to incorporate a business systems approach. Twenty-seven percent of the agencies in this group show all five patterns, and the remaining 73% match four patterns each. Business systems consulting is one of the least-matched patterns, but with 73% of these agencies matching the pattern, it’s still significantly more prevalent in this group than in any other.




16

› Large and experienced. Fifty-three percent of agencies here report that they have more than 100 service design employees, and 47% of them have 11 or more years of experience with service design. But it’s worth asking, how are these firms defining a service design employee? It’s doubtful that any company in the world has more than 100 fully dedicated service designers — the industry is still just too small for that. They are most likely experience strategy or design consultants who do service design as part of their work.

› Concentrated in North America. This is the only group that flips the trend on European-based service design agencies. Sixty percent of agencies in this category have headquarters in North America — with 53% in the US alone. The rest of this list trends toward Europe.

FIGURE 11 Service Design Agencies That Match Four Or Five Patterns By Size, Experience, And Targets

Agency nameComrade

DeloitteDesignit

HolonHuge

Idea CoutureMcKinsey

Digital LabsPalmu Group

Razor�sh Global

SapientNitro


Headquarters


Years ofexperience

USUSDenmark

Global

SpainUS

Canada

US

FinlandUS

US

11-25500 or more101-500

2-5101-50051-100

101-500

51-100500 or more

500 or more

2-56-1011-15

2-511-156-10

2-5

6-1016 or more

11-15

Fuzz

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ont

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d in

nov

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Engine ServiceDesign UK 11-25 16 or more

500 or more 16 or moreFjord, part of

AccentureInteractive

frog US 500 or more 16 or moreHellon Finland 11-25 2-5

Red Privet US 11-25 6-10




17

FIGURE 12 Service Design Agencies That Match Four Or Five Patterns By Top Capabilities

Qu

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Oth

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Primary Secondary



Agency nameComrade

DeloitteDesignit

Engine ServiceDesign

Fjord, part ofAccentureInteractive

Hellonfrog

HolonHuge



Razor�sh Global

SapientNitroRed Privet




18

FIGURE 13 Service Design Agencies That Match Four Or Five Patterns By Top Channel Experience

Agency nameComrade

DeloitteDesignit



Hellonfrog

HolonHuge



Razor�sh Global

SapientNitroRed Privet

Contactcenter

Face toface

Installedsoftware/

SaaSMobile/tablet

Physicalenvironment

Physicalproducts


Primary Secondary






19

FIGURE 14 Service Design Agencies That Match Four Or Five Patterns By Industry Experience

Agency name Au

tom

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ern

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care

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ail

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er

ComradeDeloitteDesignit



Hellonfrog

HolonHuge


Digital Labs

Palmu GroupRazor�sh Global

SapientNitro



Red Privet

And A Small Crop Of Atypical Agencies Foreshadow Coming Trends

Nine agencies in our survey matched none of the patterns, so we examined their offerings in more detail to understand what makes them unique. Like many of the agencies above, these firms do qualitative research and experience strategy, often for healthcare and government clients (see Figure 15, see Figure 16, see Figure 17, and see Figure 18). But as a group, they also have some unique characteristics that offer signals for where the service design field may be heading. These agencies blend standard service design activities with:

› New engagement models. Several of the agencies on this list offer novel engagement models that challenge the classic slow-burn, single-client, project-based model. Claro Partners does global foresight research that multiple companies sponsor together in an offering that it calls open innovation research. And tiny LinksRechts Service Design advertises more modular service design




20

offerings, like an accelerated and inexpensive cocreation phase that can be done with two weeks of lead time that it refers to as a “User Circle QuickScan.” It suggests this as a quick way to ensure that the start of any project is linked to users’ real needs.

› Tools and training. A quarter of the agencies on this list not only practice service design but also teach and enable it. Some, like Good Innovation and NEA OG, offer training as a complement to their core service design practice. ExperienceFellow focuses exclusively on training and developing tools to support service design research and journey mapping.

› Futures and trends. Three of the agencies in this small group offer services in foresight and trend analysis. Firms like Dowayo Foresight and Claro Partners mix service design methods with research into customers’ emerging behavior, technology change, and societal trends to explore longer-range considerations and opportunities for their clients.




21

FIGURE 15 Service Design Agencies That Match No Patterns By Size, Experience, And Targets

Agency name

Headquarters: Spain6-10 service design employees2-5 years of experience

Claro Partners’ approach to service design is focusedon disruptive shifts to society. In addition to clientwork, it conducts open innovation projects that arepartially sponsored by multiple clients at once.

Headquarters/service design employees/years of experience Description

Claro Partners

Headquarters: Spain2-5 service design employees2-5 years of experience

Dowayo Foresight describes its work as a blendof experience strategy and strategic foresight.

Dowayo Foresight

Headquarters: Austria6-10 service design employees6-10 years of experience

ExperienceFellow provides training and tools forservice design, including a SaaS product to collectand organize service design research data and createjourney maps.

ExperienceFellow

Headquarters: UK6-10 service design employees2-5 years of experience

Good Innovation has expertise in charity-relatedinnovation and service design and providestraining in how to create an innovation culture.

Good Innovation

Headquarters: The Netherlands11-25 service design employees6-10 years of experience

Koos blends classic service design offerings likejourney mapping and service blueprints with novelapproaches like its “Proposition Generator” — anaccelerated prototyping offering.

Koos

Headquarters: The Netherlands2-5 service design employees2-5 years of experience

LinksRechts Service Design is a small �rm with afocus on social design. LinksRechts also offers trainingand an accelerated cocreation phase that can bedone with two weeks of lead time.

LinksRechtsService Design

Headquarters: Austria2-5 service design employees2-5 years of experience

NEA OG is a branding and service design agency thatalso offers training in service design, preferably inconjunction with a practical case.

NEA OG

Headquarters: US2-5 service design employees6-10 years of experience

Pinpoint emphasizes that it uses a range of researchmethods (primarily qualitative) to help organizationsunderstand new markets and growth opportunities.

Pinpoint

Headquarters: Norway11-25 service design employees2-5 years of experience

Halogen’s service design offerings include the usualsuspects, web and mobile, as well as systems forbusiness safety and process improvements.

Halogen AS






22

FIGURE 16 Service Design Agencies That Match No Patterns By Top Capabilities

Agency name Qua

ntit

ativ

e cu

sto

mer

res

earc

h

Qua

litat

ive

cust

om

er r

esea

rch

Bra

nd s

trat

egy

Bus

ines

s an

alyt

ics

Bus

ines

s st

rate

gy

Exp

erie

nce

stra

teg

y

Co

ncep

tual

des

ign

Det

aile

d d

esig

n/sp

eci�

cati

ons

Tec

hno

log

y d

evel

op

men

t

Tra

inin

g

Org

aniz

atio

nal d

esig

n

Cha

nge

man

agem

ent

Em

plo

yee

exp

erie

nce

des

ign

Oth

er

Claro PartnersDowayo ForesightExperienceFellowGood Innovation

Halogen ASKoos

LinksRechts ServiceDesign

NEA OGPinpoint

Primary Secondary






23

FIGURE 17 Service Design Agencies That Match No Patterns By Top Channel Experience

Agency nameContactcenter

Face toface

Installedsoftware/

SaaSMobile/tablet

Physicalenvironment

Physicalproducts


Claro PartnersDowayo ForesightExperienceFellow

Good InnovationHalogen AS

KoosLinksRechts

Service DesignNEA OGPinpoint

Primary Secondary



FIGURE 18 Service Design Agencies That Match No Patterns By Industry Experience

Agency name Au

tom

oti

ve

Co

nsu

mer

pro

du

cts

Ed

uca

tio

n

En

erg

y

En

tert

ain

men

t

Fin

anci

al s

ervi

ces

Gov

ern

men

t

Hea

lth

care

Man

ufa

ctu

ring

Med

ia

No

np

ro�

t

Ret

ail

Tech

no

log

y

Tran

spo

rtat

ion

Trav

el

Uti

litie

s

Oth

er

Claro PartnersDowayo ForesightExperienceFellowGood Innovation

Halogen ASKoos

LinksRechtsService Design

NEA OGPinpoint






24

Recommendations

To Assess Potential Partners, Ask Some Personal Questions

Customer experience professionals who are looking to assess potential service design partners have some basic homework to do, as they’d have with any other consulting project. They need to clarify their firm’s goals, ask candidates about industry and channel experience, and request examples of capabilities. But CX pros: The complicated nature of the service design provider landscape today also requires you to ask some deeper questions of your firms and your potential partners:

› Ask about the vibe. Does the agency see itself as a Spock or a Kirk (i.e., is its approach primarily analytical or emotional)? Be aware that you can’t have it both ways. The difference between a specialized firm that places qualitative research at the core of its process and a full-service partner with strength in business systems consulting is more than just size. They may use the same words, but they often don’t speak the same language. The meaning of an insight, an opportunity, a strategy, and a touchpoint — fundamental ideas to service design — may take on very different forms depending on the partner you choose. Consider carefully: Do you need a service design partner that will seek and probe for the deeper human meaning or a partner that can talk about service design, and by extension customer experience, in more business-focused terms? Neither is right; it’s just a matter of what’s right for you.

› Ask, “Do we know the answer already?” It’s likely that you’ll have a sense of what channels you aim to address in a particular brief with a partner. But if your goals lie more in the realm of innovation, you should find a partner that has the potential to come back with new insights that challenge your thinking about the use of specific channels and touchpoints. In that case, look for an agency with fuzzy front-end innovator characteristics and at least a few other specialties — one that exhibits two to three patterns at a minimum. On the other hand, if you know that you have a more focused issue within a discrete area of customer experience such as a core customer-to-agent interaction, a critical physical environment, or an organizational issue to address, then one-pattern firms will suit you just fine.

› And when in doubt, ask to meet the team. The best shortcut for all of the above is to ask to meet members of the team with whom you’ll work. Ask them to talk about what service design is and what benefits they deliver through it. How they describe their process, the work they’re most proud of, what type of tangible benefits they key in on, and where their eyes light up — that’s all of the information that you really need.




25

Supplemental Material

Survey Methodology

Forrester’s Q3 2015 Global Service Design Agency Online Survey was fielded to 71 service design agencies. For quality assurance, we screened respondents to ensure that they actively participate in the service design community through either agency-level membership in the Service Design Network professional association or explicit service design content on their websites.

Forrester fielded the survey from August 13, 2015, to September 23, 2015. Respondent incentives included a copy of the resulting reports. Exact sample sizes are provided in this report on a question-by-question basis.

This survey used a self-selected group of respondents and is therefore not random. This data is not guaranteed to be representative of the population, and unless otherwise noted, statistical data is to be used for descriptive and not inferential purposes. While nonrandom, the survey is still a valuable tool for understanding where service design agencies are today and the industry is headed.

We determined classification of our survey respondents by factor-analyzing agencies’ self-reported service design capabilities and channels. We performed the exploratory factor analysis using polychoric correlations, a principal-axis-factors extraction method, and a direct oblimin rotation. We chose a five-factor model due to the absence of factor cross-loadings and the logic of the organizational patterns that it revealed.

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26

Endnotes1 Service design is a human-centered design approach that seeks to design end-to-end experiences and the underlying

business systems that support them. Agencies that practice service design talk in terms of the “front of the house” and the “back of the house.” The “front of the house” is everything that the customer sees — the sequence of tangible and intangible interactions that a customer collectively experiences as a service. The “back of house” is all of the internal interactions and systems that must be properly orchestrated for a positive customer experience to ensue.

Agencies that practice service design have a wide range of deliverables. They conduct research to understand how customers experience the front of the house and what’s really going on in the back of the house to create that experience. They redesign instantiations of the service at specific touchpoints, which can range from creating a new digital interface to producing a new physical tool or product and scripting how an agent-to-customer interaction should unfold. And they make recommendations for improvements to back-of-house operations. Service design practitioners were the first to develop and use tools like journey maps and service blueprints — tools that have been adapted for wider use by the customer experience community today. For more information, see the “Service Design Creates Breakthrough Customer Experiences” Forrester report.

2 Factor analysis is a statistical method that reveals underlying relationships between measured variables. Here, we used this methodology to uncover latent structures in the data to meaningfully organize survey respondents. Note that the survey data is self-reported, so when doing deeper research into a particular agency, customer experience professionals should ask to see examples of capabilities from past client work to vet agency claims.

3 For more information on agencies providing digital experience services, see the “Market Overview: Digital Experience Service Providers” Forrester report.





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