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Welcome to our Service Glossary.
Some service centers work with AI-based software in order to be able to answer repetitive service requests automatically. The AI always continues to learn from the existing service data and later from interaction with real customers and can help service providers to expand and improve their own service portfolio.
The service activities in which there is no direct exchange with customers are referred to as back office. For example, the internal review of applications or inquiries lies in the back office of an organization.
see: Front Office
Brands communicate at every single brand touchpoint. This also applies to all service touchpoints. From the customer's point of view, every interaction with apps, websites, telephone portals, and forms is an interface to the brand. Even a personal conversation with a call agent is perceived as representative of the entire company. Accordingly, it is important to ensure brand-compliant language and tone at all service touchpoints.
Conversational AI refers to AI-based dialog systems, i.e., self-learning algorithms that can conduct dialogs with users. We are already familiar with conversational AI from everyday service in the form of intelligent voice assistants, chat, voice and telephony bots.
In a customer or user journey, all points of contact between a person and a service are recorded in chronological order. If a customer or user journey is recorded live, for example in a call center, all interactions of the employee can also be recorded in order to verify even better which internal processes have a positive or negative impact on the service experience.
Refers to the points of contact between an organization and its service recipients. These range from analog media (brochures, advertisements, notices, forms, etc.) to digital media (service numbers, websites, apps, email offers, chatbots, voicebots, etc.). Interactions with employees of an organization are also often perceived as a customer touchpoint, since the person represents the organization from the customer's point of view with their statements (e.g., service personnel such as flight attendants, clerks, etc.).
Especially in the use of speech-based services, an intuitive dialog is of great importance for a smooth and pleasant user experience. That is why service designers are concerned with the development of a user-centered and consistent dialog design.
An empathy map records how exactly a user interacts with an existing service product. Special attention is paid to what a user says, thinks, does, and feels during the interaction. Empathy maps help to evaluate existing service products from the user's point of view and to illustrate existing errors in a way that is comprehensible to other people.
An employee experience describes how employees experience the work environment or structures. Particularly in the service context, employees are under enormous performance pressure and high stress. An evaluation of existing service design therefore always takes into account the existing EX and tries to create improvements in the service process for customers and employees at the same time.
Frankensteining is when two proprietary concepts or designs are brought together without further customization, resulting in an irritating mix. This can often be observed in existing services: a company builds a new voicebot into one point of the telephone portal to relieve employees there. The voicebot is guided by voice, but the rest of the portal is still based on an IVR. For the caller, it is now unclear without further explanation how to navigate the portal.
The front office of an organization is in direct contact with customers, for example via telephone portal, email, chat or at a service desk.see also: back office
Gamification describes the strategic approach of enriching products, systems or services with game elements in order to promote and improve interaction with users. Game elements include, for example, competition with other players, scoring systems, and clear rules.
Gantt diagram
A type of representation of project processes. It is often used in project management to record not only the individual tasks but also their dependence on each other. For example, as long as a service touchpoint is not completely implemented, no testing with real users can take place. This dependency is recorded in a Gantt chart.
Human-Centered Design claims to place human perception at the center of all design work in order to design systems, products and services that are optimally suited to real users.
IVR is the term used to describe telephone and customer portals in which initial navigation to the right service agent can be made via key input. It helps users to specify their request and to be forwarded to the right service team.
Insights are the most important insights into the behavior and needs of users found in user research. On the basis of insights from the research, you can then start with the new or redesigned services.
Refers to the recording of all interactions a user has with a service. A completed journey map can help to discuss the design of a service and identify points of friction.
KPIs are used to measure progress in achieving one or more corporate goals. In the service sector, possible KPIs include, for example, the circulation rate in a telephone portal or the number of service products sold each month.
Learnability is an aspect of usability. A digital interface with excellent learnability provides users with tools that help them find their way around the interface and learn how to interact with it as they use it.
A mission statement keeps the company close to its current state. It describes in particular how and what a company is currently working on.
see also: Vision Statement
In service touchpoint development, a mockup is an initial sketch of all the content that will be included in the new touchpoint. Through the representation, the discussion of the touchpoint often becomes more concrete than without a representation. A mockup can vary from a simple 2D template to a clickable prototype, depending on the stage of the project.
The English "to nudge" means "to nudge". It refers to the moments when design decisions are made to nudge customers or users in one direction or another. For example, if you set a service option as default or make it easier to reach, there is a higher chance that service users will choose this option.
Describes the claim of an organization to offer every service required from the customer's point of view from a single source. Within the company, this often means that employees have to be trained in many different service areas and are also given the access they need to be able to advise customers on all their service needs.
A pain point is a customer's point of contact with a company that disappoints, deters, annoys or annoys him, and thus has a negative impact.See also: Pleasure Point
A persona is the embodiment of a target group. It is used in design research to evaluate existing products and services from the point of view of the most important target groups.To approach a persona, service designers:inside often try to capture it in name, appearance, daily life, personality, hobbies, age, needs and fears.
A Pleasure Point is a customer's point of contact with a company that excites, reassures, soothes, or helps him or her, and thus turns out to be positive.See also: Pain Point
In qualitative research, individual cases are examined in detail and in all depth. For example, the interaction of a single user with a software is recorded, analyzed and discussed in detail. Qualitative research provides deep insights from individual points of view.See also: Quantitative research
In quantitative research, a large amount of data is evaluated simultaneously and generally in order to be able to formulate statistically valid statements. It provides a good insight into a specific research topic.See also: Qualitative research
ROI is a measure that evaluates invested capital against return. Service design not only creates monetary value, but can often make a company's service touchpoints more rewarding. For example, an informatively designed website can ensure that fewer customers contact service agents by phone. This reduces the workload of service agents and cuts the company's overall expenses.
Service blueprint
A service blueprint summarizes all relevant service steps and offerings in a comprehensive diagram. It contains both the company's internal view of the service offered and the experience of the service recipients.
Discipline that deals with the user-centered (re)design of holistic service processes. Service designers evaluate existing or planned service experiences from the perspective of various users and identify the potential and possibilities of new approaches. For example, in voicebots, telephone systems, websites, forms and much more. Good service design is in the intersection of brand experience, user experience, corporate vision and change management. It increases customer satisfaction and at the same time helps internally to relieve the employees of an organization in the long term.
Stakeholders are all groups of people who influence a company in its activities or are influenced by the company.
Systemic consulting has its origins in systemic therapy, which does not only consider individual persons but the association of whole groups of persons in a holistic way. In Systemic Consulting or Organizational Consulting these approaches are used to accompany and support companies, administrations and organizations in numerous transformation processes.
TTS stands for Text to Speech, STT analogously for Speech to Text. These are AI algorithms that can convert natural human speech, for example the spoken input of an Alexa user with a measured confidence rate, into text (=STT). This text can then be used by other algorithms. TTS works the other way around and converts textual input into speech output. Both types of algorithms are used in voicebots and speech-based services.
The user interface is the graphical, haptic or acoustic surface with which a user interacts with a product. In most cases, user interface refers to the graphical user interface of a website, app, or similar. Acoustic user interfaces are used in voicebots, for example, where a user communicates with the software via voice input.
A user experience describes the interactions and the experience of a user with a product or service. Service design always works to holistically improve the user experience of a service so that customers enjoy using a service or service product intuitively and often.
A user story formulates the user's requirements for a digital product. Based on the user stories, programming teams can come up with suitable technical solutions for the formulated need. Thus, a user story bridges the gaps between user experience and technical requirements.
A vision statement describes the goals that a company wants to achieve in the future and why these goals want to be achieved.
see also: Mission Statement
VoC is a market research tool that combines collected and comprehensive customer feedback on various areas of a company. It is mainly used in product development, but is also applied in the evaluation of marketing, operational processes or crisis situations. What is special about this method is that both past interactions (customer experiences) and future situations (customer wishes and expectations) are evaluated.
Voice-controlled service
The better speech recognition and generation functions through AI, the larger the range of voice-based services will be. This group includes all service steps that can be activated, controlled and completed purely by voice interaction of the user. Prominent examples can be found above all in digital voice assistants such as Siri, Alexa and others.
German: verzwicktes Problem
A wicked problem is a problem that by definition is not solvable due to many different, sometimes conflicting claims, contradictory information and a constantly changing context. The definition of a wicked problem comes from Ritter and Weber (1973) and also includes the distinction from clearly defined, solvable problems: the so-called tame problems.
In service design, the wow factor is defined as a feeling of rapture at first contact with a new service product that far exceeds customers' expectations. For example, by anticipating their next service step, proactively addressing their needs, or seamlessly and intuitively integrating a new product into an existing service chain.
