Love IT Works

IT SERVICE EXPERIENCE

THE FRAMEWORK

The IT Service Experience (ITSX) framework is a continuous improvement process, a virtuous circle where feedback informs design and delivery of the IT service.

Each activity in the framework is shaped by contemporary human-centred design methods and tools, which are adopted and applied alongside existing service development methods.

Framework activities

The framework consists of 6 activities:

  1. Understand
  2. Define
  3. Map
  4. Measure
  5. Analyse
  6. Act

Each is positioned in an intentional sequence with the output of each activity becoming the input of the next.

01. UNDERSTAND

A service exists to deliver value to customers, made up of buyers and users. The purpose of the Understand activity is to become really clear who your buyers and users are, and for what reasons they need your service.

The outputs of this activity enable you and your team to have the knowledge and empathy of your customer types such that decisions about how to design or change the service are better informed. It also helps you identify where you will find your customers within the organisation such that they can be communicated with, researched, and asked for feedback on the service.

02. DEFINE

This activity is about defining the IT Service value proposition you offer your customers. Often services incrementally grow and evolve over time, and the overall offering and the form it takes gets diluted or fuzzy.

With a good understanding of your customers, you can better define the products and services you offer that deliver the value your customers need.

Articulating this offer in a clear and concise way provides a shared understanding for your team and your prospective customers deciding if it is your service they really need. 

03. MAP

From the definition of customer experience, the interactions between the products and services you offer and your customers is where the value is exchanged and the experience happens. Mapping enables you to be intentional about what the interactions are – what products and services, through which channels, and over the lifecycle of the customer discovering your service, through to using it and getting help with it.

Having the map enables the team to be clear how value is delivered, and connect the work they do individually with that value delivery. It is also a useful tool to inform the measurement of your customer’s experience.

04. MEASURE

This activity involves using your service maps from step 03 to define the measures that will indicate to you and your team whether your service is enabling your customers to achieve their outcomes in the way they expect, through the interactions with your products and services.

It is about measuring the performance of your service.

With measures defined, this activity then requires the appropriate data to inform those measures to be collected. Ideally as your capability evolves, monitoring the performance becomes automated and continuous.

05. ANALYSE

It is often quite straightforward to collect data on the performance of your service. However, there is no value in that data unless it is analysed and the insights from that analysis acted upon.

The Analyse activity enables you and your team to define and implement a straightforward process for systematically analysing the data you are collecting and derive insights from it. These then feed into decisions on how to improve your service.

06. ACT

Taking action on the insights from your analysis is the last but quite possibly the most significant and hardest activity in the process to complete. This is where the rubber hits the road, where planning, budgeting and implementing changes must happen to continuously improve your service.

You are already experts in developing and running your service, this activity is about a new data point informing the changes you will make. It requires ownership of any changes agreed, tracking of their progress to completion, but also to measure the impact of those changes – did it make the difference to your customer?


FULL CIRCLE

Completing Analyse and Act then brings you full circle to improve your understanding of your customers. If we have changed our service in some way as a result, perhaps the definition of the service offering needs to be adjusted, and even measures altered. As a continuous improvement process, these activities, their methods and tools are never static – they provide key artefacts to help you manage your service in a more customer-centered way. 

Once established within a technology function, be that a single service, a portfolio or across all of technology, it forms a capability that is self-sustaining, gently shifting behaviours, mindsets and culture to become more customer-centred.