Becoming an experience champion with service design

MediaMarktSaturn is evolving from a pure product seller into a customer-centric omnichannel service platform. Such a restructuring also means doing things differently. MediaMarktSaturn wants to make the customer's shopping experience even more pleasant and personal. One way to meet this challenge and introduce new processes or services is the service design method.

What I like about service design workshops is the energy that is generated in the room. When people from different departments come together in an atmosphere of trust and develop ideas together on how to improve a customer experience, it's wonderful. I always call it a "nest of trust" where everyone can contribute their own ideas and enrich each other's ideas. This "yes and mindset" brings a lot and is simply fun.

Stefan Wörnle, Manager Customer Experience, Service Design at MediaMarktSaturn

Service design is based on many principles of design thinking

To become an experience champion, we need to know our customers' needs and the various contact points along the customer journey. Service Design uses many elements of the design thinking method and works in so-called sprints with the main phases of analysis/research, idea development/evaluation and implementation. In the research phase, for example, NPS surveys, customer inquiries and complaints from the contact center are used to try and understand what exactly is important to customers when shopping. The aim is also to find out what problems exist. This data is discussed in a series of workshops with representatives from different departments and employees from the stores. This creates a common, broad and in-depth understanding from a technical perspective. Employee concerns are also addressed here.

Many companies are still at the first stage of dealing with customer journeys

Digital transformation is not only shaping customer expectations to have an outstanding shopping experience, it is also changing the way customer interactions are researched, managed and optimized. To manage customer journeys and the associated customer experience improvement measures, MediaMarktSaturn relies on tools such as Conceptboard, smaply and, most recently, "TheyDo". The tool, which is being evaluated as part of a proof of concept, allows a number of so-called macro-journeys (e.g. the purchase of a washing machine) and many micro-journeys contained therein (e.g. the payment process at the checkout) to be mapped in hierarchies. Such a proof of concept demonstrates the feasibility and functionality of a project before it is developed further. The developed improvement ideas per journey and their implementation can also be managed in the tool and connected with interfaces to tools such as "Jira". It is also possible to integrate real-time KPIs such as the Net Promoter Score. When managing a large number of journeys and the associated improvement measures, the tool saves the teams involved up to 40% of their working time.

Service design sprints thrive on interdisciplinary teams working together over a defined period of time

Service design skills are in demand: service design sprints at MediaMarktSaturn are characterized by effective interdisciplinary cooperation between different departments. This approach makes it possible to react specifically to the requirements of the departments involved and at the same time brings the comprehensive knowledge of the project team to bear. This approach has already led to the implementation of successful projects in the areas of store processes, category management, sustainability, marketplace and many more. Given the importance of service design for the company, a comprehensive training program was launched in March 2024. Special attention is also paid to skills such as interdisciplinary expertise, customer orientation and customer journey knowledge when recruiting new employees.

What 'needs' or 'pains' does a customer have?

In collaborative workshops, the project team actively identifies customer needs, challenges and elements that trigger enthusiasm, thereby gaining a holistic picture from both the customer and employee perspective. A tried and tested tool is the customer journey map. It shows which steps a customer goes through. It also shows which needs and pain points customers or employees have on this journey. On this basis, potential for improvement is identified at each step, the so-called opportunities. Each opportunity is developed in a team to find a solution. The many ideas must then be evaluated according to their impact on the company and feasibility. Finally, after prioritization, a procedure is drawn up with the most important task packages and responsible parties for each workstream.

Shaping the customer journey with artificial intelligence

Modern tools also allow customer journeys to be created automatically directly from unstructured, qualitative data such as customer feedback. On the basis of this AI-supported framework, the project team then goes on to generate ideas for improving the customer experience. This partial automation can save a considerable amount of time. Now that MediaMarktSaturn has set up a secure test environment for the use of Chat GPT with Sandy, it is possible to try out the design of customer journeys based on detailed instructions. This innovation is also trained as part of a broad-based training program on service design at MediaMarktSaturn with 2 online training courses and a 2-day workshop.

Click & Collect - a result of a service design sprint

Customers can collect their online order from a store of their choice within 30 minutes if the goods are in stock there. The basis for this was a Group-wide roll-out of around 44,000 employee smartphones, including apps developed in-house such as "MyStore" and "Pick&Pack".