Day 1 – (Remote) Service Design: A Transformation Case Study

Uber, Uber Eats, ….. Uber Freight! — in between shippers and carriers (simplify the movement of goods to help communities to thrive)

Shippers — small business, mid-market, enterprise.

All facing the same headwinds: During Pandemic!

  • Increasing demand
  • Increasing prices

In early 2021, NPS Score of the most recent Shipper.

  • What’s not right about shipper service?
  • Any evidence of it?
    • NPS, Sales / AM Emails, Surveys.

The evergiven caught in suez canal for six days; impact: in one day, affected $10 billion of global trade!

Hypotheses of root cause / challenges:

  • Easy onboarding or start
  • Dropped at critical points in journey
  • Leaving some touchpoints wide open
  • Not probably aligned towards the same goal

80% Teamwork challenge, 20% stuff needed to build the service.

Culture: Acting like an owner – ownership of a challenge — instills in every single person.

How to tackle this?

  • Org psychology
  • Service design
  • Naivete
  • Org clout.

First principles = solve the people problem, solve the service.

Enabling high performing team —

  • Psychological safety
    • Feel safe to raise a flag
    • Push the truth into the room – hold themselves accountable too!
  • Dependability
    • Know where our job ends and theirs begins
  • Structure and Clarity
    • Know what their roles and responsibilities are
    • Know what you are accountable for
  • Meaning
    • Work is doing something, it goes into a mission
    • It is contributing
  • Impact
    • It is actually bringing change

 

Service Design methodologies —

  • Workshop best practises
    • Be fully engaged, to be respectful – introverts & extroverts
    • Get the most out of it
  • Everyone’s commitment
    • Not just the doers, but the management
  • Service blueprinting
    • Structure and clarity
    • Both backstage and frontstage actors work together
  • Voice of shipper (users)
    • All this work was to improve work of shippers
  • Momentum
    • Especially in virtual world

To ensure success:

  • Enlist helpers & empower them
  • Everything is pencil and nothing is precious
  • Doing design therapy, create (informal deep-breathe) spaces

Same rhythm:

  • Day1: Align on problem definition with evidence
  • Day 2: Gaps, connect backstage pain to frontstage misses
  • Day 3: Collectively what to solve and brainstorm how

Outcomes (60 reps participating virtually over zoom): 2 service blueprints, 6 systemic big rocks, 150+ potential solutions, 9 initial concepts.

Leadership: Pick one use case, pilot an idea.

Success: NPS improvement, CSAT, OTP improvements, decreased Ops cost, Margin, 4 SLAs.

Org change is less about the what, and more about the how; Kotter’s org change model:

  1. Create urgency
  2. Form powerful coalition
  3. Create vision for change
  4. Communicate vision
  5. Empower action
  6. Create quick wins
  7. Build on change
  8. Make it stick