A Government experience that can Compete with Starbucks experience?

Across the world, the unsatisfactory services from the government become the norm. Did you ever enjoy the services offered by your healthcare provider, car licensing or issuing building permit?

Unfortunately, government services around the world are not built to satisfy customers, rather it is built to achieve government objectives.

In our daily life, We have unsatisfactory experiences when we use banks, public transportation, health services and insurance companies. They don’t make us feel happier. Why the offered experience is not similar to Apple or a BMW experience?

The ‘developed’ world has moved beyond the industrial mindset of products and the majority of ‘products’ that we encounter are actually parts of a larger service network. These services comprise people, technology, places, time and objects that form the entire service experience. In most cases some of the touchpoints are designed to last not to adapt.

As cited by the interaction design foundation (The Principles of Service Design Thinking — Building Better Services, 2020), the below are the general principles of service design:

- Services should be designed based on a genuine comprehension of the purpose of the service, the demand for the service and the ability of the service provider to deliver that service.

- Services should be designed based on customer needs rather than the internal needs of the business.

- Services should be designed to deliver a unified and efficient system rather than component-by-component which can lead to poor overall service performance.

- Services should be designed based on creating value for users and customers and to be as efficient as possible.

- Services should be designed on the understanding that special events (those that cause variation in general processes) will be treated as common events (and processes designed to accommodate them)

- Services should always be designed with input from the users of the service

- Services can and should be prototyped before being developed in full

- Services must be designed in conjunction with a clear business case and model

- Services should be developed as a minimum viable service (MVS) and then deployed. They can then be iterated and improved to add additional value based on user/customer feedback.

- Services should be designed and delivered in collaboration with all relevant stakeholders (both external and internal).

One of the goals of service design is to redress this imbalance and to design services that have the same appeal and experience as the products we love. This should include the innovation dimension. Considering that we are living in information and service design age, I believe the model introduced by (Meroni & Sangiorgi) in 2011 is much relevant now with the current capabilities and enablers.

The below model is futuristic considering putting human at the center of the design and considering the

the cognitive, emotional, physical, sensorial, and social elements that mark the customer’s direct or indirect interactions.

Enjoy the Model and will be happy to receive your feedback.