From the perspective of the customer, every service should:
1. Be easy to find
2. Clearly explain the purpose of your service
3. Set the expectations a user has of your service
4. Enable each user to complete the outcome they set out to do
5. Work in a way that is familiar
6. Require no prior knowledge to use
7. Be agnostic of organisational structures
8. Require the minimum possible steps to complete
9. Be consistent throughout
10. Have no dead ends
11. Be usable by everyone, equally
12. Encourage the right behaviours from users and service providers
13. Respond to change quickly
14. Clearly explain why a decision has been made
15. Make it easy to get human assistance
I find these principles often useful in structuring my thinking around questions that could be explored through research or as starting points for how we could improve an existing service. They apply equally to every service – digital or non-digital, private or public sector. Every service that aims to be truly customer-centric should follow them.It can sometimes be tricky to really think about these from the perspective of a customer. For example, to a customer the words ‘responding quickly’ may mean something different than they do to a support agent. It’s always useful to inform our understanding through research with customers. Either way, these 15 points help us ask the right questions and shape our thinking about how a service is performing.If you’d like to read more about 15 principles of Good Services, I can highly recommend the book. Or you can read the blog post that explains a bit more about it:
https://good.services/15-principles-of-good-service-designI’d love to hear how you might find these useful or if you’ve read any other books that can help us design better services!