On our quest to see the whole picture of a product, service or experience, it’s always worth taking time to peer down into the detail and find those handful of pivot points upon which the whole service might turn.

A while back, I had a really frustrating experience with a local telecommunications provider after my prepaid phone was suddenly disconnected. It took the better part of a week, several hours of online research and several long phone calls to find out what had happened and then resolve it. On one hand, once I explain, you might say, ‘That’s your fault.’ But on the other hand, I think it’s actually a good example of how service providers could do more work to protect people from mistakes. Let me explain…

You can’t design for someone to take initiative, to be warm in their interactions and kind with someone who’s fallen afoul of policies set at a corporate level. But you can create an envelope of permission for people to think outside the box to solve problems for customers. Or you can make sure you hire people that are determined and brave enough to give a great service.

Ethical behaviour isn’t a surface choice for a product or service. It isn’t something that’s just on a website, in a corporate press release or promoted in pitch videos for show.

In the late 1940s, the US Airforce faced a serious and mysterious problem: its pilots were losing control of their planes and crashing. Yet no human or mechanical error could be identified.

Design, user and experience research is often seen as a limiting factor in product and service imagination innovation. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Research isn’t about asking people what they need, but about exploring how they do things, how they think about products and services and how they work together. Throwing features into a product or service, without research, isn’t innovation, it’s guessing.

Last month I bought a box of the best pencils I have ever used. I go through pencils by the dozens, so this is saying a lot! They’re a joy to write and draw with – light to hold, clean to sharpen, smooth to write with, pleasant to hold (no splinters) and the graphite is easy to erase. They’re available at the supermarket and are ‘eco-friendly’. On the surface, the pencil designers have created me something that meets every need I could dream of. … Except …

What happens when people try to get help for a problem with their service that somehow falls between the cracks of two large service providers?

How do you change a transaction into something more meaningful? Add what is not machine-like. Add something human.