Case study: using service design methods to remove hindrances for digital self-service : Challenges inherent in fitting the service design method with pre-existing company conventions and structure

Abstract

The Fast development project was done as a 4 months work assignment for Fujitsu. The Fast service channel is a web service, through which Fujitsu customers can get help when facing any IT problems. The main aim of the project was to find out the flaws, and im-prove Fast to be user-friendly, thus making it an attractive channel for Fujitsu customers to contact the service desk. The research was done using service design methods. The main research method was interviewing Fujitsu employees and customers to get a clear picture of the possible problems. Also a background research was made to shed light on where the service desk industry is going. Only customers using Fast were interviewed in this project, for further development, including customers using other tools than Fast (even when they have access to Fast) should also be included. After the research phase, re-designing of Fast was done based on the interview findings. The main findings had to do with the service desk part of Fast, which is also the biggest expense. It seemed that end-users were reluctant to start using Fast because it was not properly introduced to them at the launch phase. This lead to end-users sticking to the familiar tools (e-mail and phone) instead of using Fast, despite its clear benefits. Fujitsu employees also had a quite different view on the current role of Fast than the end-users, who viewed Fast as simply a service request channel, but both felt that Fast could become an encompassing problem solving service in the future. Despite the project being about developing Fast, a sugges-tion to improve the launch process was made. A new layout for Fast was introduced which was simple, intuitive and only presented one task at a time. It was suggested that this new layout, together with the new launch process, should grow the usage percentage of Fast in the future. Development suggestions on improving the service design method to fit existing company methods and structures where presented.