Service design for contact centers: building service around the customer

Oleh Koss starts with a definition: service design is designing a service so that it meets customer needs and business constraints at the same time, making it pleasant, reliable and profitable. Here "design" means engineering, not aesthetics. Every service was designed by someone, just not always deliberately. The key point for a contact center: the customer lives their life outside your phone line, something happened before the call, and their task continues after it. So a contact center can be part of service design, but never its only object.

The case of the US railway Amtrak illustrates this. The company wanted to fill its first-class cars. The agency first asked where people travel first class and found it was mostly business trips. In the ten-step journey of a business traveler, the train car turned out to be only step eight: before it, an assistant has to learn the train is an option, the schedule has to fit the meeting, the traveler has to get to the station, park and pass a security check, and after arrival still reach the meeting. The railway changed its schedule and arranged parking, lounges, car rental and a separate security checkpoint for first-class passengers.

Next, the speaker suggests seeing the contact center as a tool for changing customer behavior. Recalling his time at Kyivstar, he says the key support KPI became growth in the lifetime value of a customer who got through. To change, a person needs to see a problem and a benefit, but the comfort of the status quo and doubts about the new hold them back. One example: clothing buyers did not return items because they assumed it was complicated, although the process was trivial: bring the item, give a phone number and get the money back. The speaker sees the difference between influence and manipulation only in intent: a contact center should change behavior so that people end up better off.

In an apartment sales project the team ran about two dozen in-depth interviews and found three segments: young people buying their first home, families with children, and well-off people near retirement buying as an investment. Their motives differ: confidence in the right choice, keeping the familiar neighborhood and school, fear of losing savings. Two or three natural questions early in the call, such as who will live in the apartment and whether it is a first purchase, help identify the customer. According to the speaker, communication tailored to these needs doubled conversion.

Customer support gets the most attention. Each typical request topic needs its own design, and that is realistic if requests are categorized from the customer's point of view rather than by department or root cause. The wording "I can't add my card to my wallet" describes the problem better than a technical diagnosis and builds empathy across the organization. In a bank project about 10 topics covered more than half of all requests: blocking a card 6%, a card payment not completing 7%, failed online payments every tenth request. Some calls are welcome, such as a lost card or a loan, but most should be removed by changing the product. The answer to the same question differs for experienced, busy and novice customers.

In the Q&A Oleh advises that anyone who cares can take on the service designer role, and that for research you should pick operators with the longest average call time, because they listen better. AI still takes answers literally, so it is an assistant in analysis, while people should define the segments first.