Deborah of Dell Technologies speaks at SDGC19 in Toronto. When Deborah joined Dell Technologies, she was tasked with bringing the various offerings together in a way that made sense for customers. At first it was difficult for her to gain adoption of human-centered service design. Through relationship building, standing up a cross-business community of practice, learning how to deliver measurable wins through design pilots, and showing the power of primary research and journey mapping, she earned the trust and enthusiastic buy-in of business leadership to pursue human-centered service design in earnest. Throughout her talk she shares the steps she took and the lessons she earned along the way. Become a member! https://www.service-design-network.org Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/sdnetwork Or on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/2933277 Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ServiceDesignNetwork/ Behind-the-scenes on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/servicedesignnetwork/

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Note: I’m NOT a Graphic Designer
I wish I could be, but I’m not – and normally, I can get
design help for my decks but that wasn’t the case this time

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“The wise man learns from someone else’s
mistakes, the smart man learns from his
own, and the stupid one never learns.”
- Believed to be either a common Russian
saying… or a quote by Otto von Bismarck
Back in 2008, I failed… spectacularly

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Without that failure, I wouldn’t have worked on this

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Participatory Design

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Feedback Experiment – Let’s Improve My Talks
https://bit.ly/2ODzspb
KOALASRR8

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Vote: Agree, Disagree or Indifferent?
The hardest part of service design is getting the buy in
from organizational leadership to do it?

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How Do We Get
Everything We Want?

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We have to build
bridges to the
people, teams and
resources who can
help us achieve the
outcomes we want

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Define Desired Outcome

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My Desired Outcomes
1. To bring together the server, storage, cloud and
other offerings in a way that makes sense for
prospects and customers
2. To enable a consistent, positive experience across
all touchpoints
Can we “show up as the same company” across many
different touchpoints? (i.e. the experience ecosystem)

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How Did I Start?

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With nothing.
No customer research, few people who would listen
when I told them we needed it, and a lot of work to
do that didn’t get us closer to meeting the needs of
our users(once I understood what those were)
And no support from executives

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Identify

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What’s Available?
- What kinds of studies have been done?
- What journeys, personas and raw study data exist?
- What studies are kicking off or in process?
- What analytics and quantitative representations of
behaviors exist?

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What’s Available?
- Transcripts, notes, metrics
- Sales(many kinds – people, chat, phone, form, etc)
- Support(many kinds – people, chat, phone, etc)
- Stakeholder Goals (ex. Strategy Cascade)

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A Strategy Cascade Model For Biz Goals
https://bscdesigner.com/mission-values-priorities.htm

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Do Others Share Your Goal? Or, Your Problem?
Sales
Marketing
Support
Operations
Design
Anyone Else?

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Who Might Throw Up Barriers? Why?
Sales
Marketing
Support
Operations
Design
Anyone Else?

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Business Areas With Direct Access To Customers
Sales
Support
Conundrum: why is it that the teams in the
organization who deal directly with customers are often
marginalized?
Meaning: build a bridge to them, and mutually
empower each other with access and assistance

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What Do You Need That Isn’t Available?

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Unify

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Community of Practice
A problem shared is a problem halved…
Does an experience community of practice exist?

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Community of Practice
-OR-
Do too many communities of practice exist?
Do they talk to each other?
Do they have the right people – i.e. not just designers?

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Advocate For Your Peers and Like-Mindeds
There is plenty of work for everyone…
I promise you do not want to own all of it.
Pull your peers and others into conversations and
they will do the same for you

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Vote

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How Many of You Agree?
I have all of the money and resources I need to do
what I need to do, when and how I need to do it?

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Share Resources

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Share
If you share your data/access/connections, you may be
able to leverage what you don’t have when you need it
- Maybe someone else has budget earmarked for
something they could be persuaded is less important
than plugging your research gaps
- Maybe someone else has access to a stakeholder,
conversation or initiative that you could benefit from
being introduced to or included in

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Share
- Maybe you or someone else has access to an event or
trade show where research can be completed, concepts
can be tested, etc.
- Maybe you or someone else has access to a new role or
job opening that you or someone you know might be
interested in

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Again…
There is plenty of work for everyone…
I promise you do not want to own all of it
Pull others into conversations, share the
goodness, etc. and they will do the same for you

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Speak Language The
Business Understands

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Understand Biz Goals And How Success is Measured
https://bscdesigner.com/mission-values-priorities.htm

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Align What You Do To Their Goals
Do they want more, better qualified leads?
Do they want to decrease support volumes?
Do they want to generate more revenue(sell more)?

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Raise Concerns Constructively, With Ideas
- Old me: “That decision is going to be bad for users.”
- New me: “If we take that approach, it will likely increase
the number of fake leads to sales and calls to
support as users try to do x. Can you help me
understand what your ideal outcome is on this one? I
might have some ideas and I’d be willing to do a quick
round of user testing… maybe we can increase
conversion, too.”

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Raise Concerns Constructively, With Ideas
- Old me: “This consultancy does not know what they are
doing – they don’t have people with the skills we need.”
- New me: “If this project is done well, we’ll have
widespread buy-in and a powerful set of insights and
deliverables. The skillset required for this project to be a
success is hard to find. I propose interviewing the
proposed resources to ensure we have the right skillset.”

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VROM Is Your Friend
V – Very
R – Rough
O – Order of
M - Magnitude

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Numbers: Turns Out Sales Cares When Others Don’t
Make friends
with data
scientists and
stats geeks

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A Note: Speaking To Executives
Answer First.
Be Brief. Be Bright. Be Gone.

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Find A Sponsor
A business stakeholder who:
- Will be honest
- Possesses vision or is open to doing things
differently
- Who has the respect and trust of the people you
need to get bought in

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Maintain Trust You Build

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Always There To Serve
- It takes effort to be involved in a large number of
threads, and a high degree of organization
- It doesn’t always yield praise or recognition, at least
in the short term
- A good designer is strategic, however(long term)

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Always There To Serve
This reputation can mean the difference between
being included in that meeting or decision
-vs-
Hearing or reading about it the next week

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Always There To Serve
Your ‘fans’ will tell others about you – it’s better if you
don’t have to promote yourself
In many cases, you won’t have the opportunity to
promote yourself

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Just Don’t Over Serve
Is this going to bring me closer
to, or further from, what I want
to achieve?

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Shape/Meet Expectations Appropriately
What is going to be done?
When is it realistically going to be done?
How will they know it’s on track?

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Vote

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Agree, Disagree or Neither?
I am really good at office politics and I am rarely, if ever,
blindsided by them

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Be VERY CAREFUL About Politics
It’s not easy, but if you can be the person
everyone feels is looking out for their
interests, you will always be included

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Helpful Resources

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Feel, But Don’t Show
You will probably be put in some really terrible
situations and will rightly feel angry
Sometimes stakeholders will make really bad
decisions; or block something that you feel very
strongly must be done
Acknowledge(to yourself) that you feel this way –
DO NOT ACT ON IT

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Mantra
“When I feel angry,
I will act calm”

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Meet It With Curiosity
Why is it that they feel the way they do, in light of the
evidence you’ve provided or case you’ve made?
Is it going to cause harm to something they either care
about or are graded on?

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Business vs Customer Goals
Sometimes one area of the business is incentivized
to do things in a way that customers don’t like…
This means changing the way customers are
engaged may threaten that area of the business’s
ability to meet their goals

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Build That Bridge
How might we…
…both/all get what we desire out of this situation?

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Consider The Words of Those You Can’t Stand
Criticism
Ideas
Approaches
Consider: sometimes the best, most honest assessment of our weaknesses
come from the people we like the least

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Did I Get What I Wanted?

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All The People I Needed To Get Bought In…
In the beginning I couldn’t get the
people in this room to pay any
attention to me…
I got two full days of their time in
person, in addition to their support.

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…Aligned…

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…And A New Boss
Last 2 ½ Years Starting Next Week

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It Hasn’t Been Perfect.
But It’s Good Enough.

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Did YOU Get What YOU Wanted From This Talk?
https://bit.ly/2ODzspb
KOALASRR8

66. Thank you!
Deb Zell
deborah.zell@dell.com