Service Design & Higher Ed Marketing

This talk was an intro to service design for higher ed marketers at Elements Web Conference at Penn State.

Transcript

1. HOW SERVICE DESIGN CAN TRANSFORM HIGHER ED MARKETING #econfpsu Ron Bronson
2. About Ron Play Cousins (Nordic Strategy Lab) Strategist at large. (Service design, digital, UX & product) Curator, Aggregate Conference (#GGRGT)
4. Enrollment management & traditional college marketing is a 1970s invention
7. HIGHER ED CONCERNS IN THE 1970S • How do programs better market themselves? • How do admissions professionals work with academics and administrators who don't have a marketing or enrollment background? • How do institutions adapt to shrinking budgets, reduced demand, and market pressures? • How do admissions officers better identify students who are likely to enroll? • How can cross-campus marketing teams better support and coordinate recruitment efforts?
8. “In many ways, recruitment strategies at today's institutions are the same strategies used in 1978, only complicated by a proliferation of digital tools.” - Jens Larson
9. According to a 2015 Inside Higher Ed and Gallup survey of admissions directors, 58% indicated their fall class was not filled by the traditional May 1st deposit deadline.
10. “The explosion of digital technologies over the past decade has created empowered consumers so expert in their use of tools & information they can call the shots. Hunting down what they want when they want it and getting it delivered to their doorsteps at rock bottom price.” -Harvard Business Review (Nov. 2015)
11. What is service design?
12. What is service design? A collaborative approach to creating service experiences from the customer perspective. Focused on quality, service design helps organizations gain end-to- end understanding of their services.
14. What is service design? • People focused • Research based • Iterative • Participatory
15. What is service design? • Tangible • Empathetic • Experiential • Cross-disciplinary
16. “Stress cases aren’t only about crisis — they apply when something mundane goes wrong, too.” Eric Meyer + Sara Wachter-Boettcher “Design for Real Life”
17. Components of service design • Frontstage • Backstage • Touchpoints • Service User • Service Provider
18. In service design, the end is just the beginning.
19. “Why do users or retention or revenue or click- through or likes or pages views matter? ...What are you trying to do for the world? What is the value that a person will get by using your product or feature at the end of the day?” - Julie Zhuo
20. Artifacts of service design • Service blueprint • Stakeholder map • Customer journey map
21. Service blueprint philosophy • Customer focused • Service experiences viewed end-to-end • Participants & stakeholders have clear understanding of CX and provide input to improve service innovation • Visual depictions help describe, conceptualize, and communicate CX beyond words.
26. “Innovation needs to be part of your culture. Customers are transforming faster than we are, and if we don’t catch up, we’re in trouble.”  — Ian Schafer
27. Good service design comes from watching people do things, not from asking them what they think.
28. What would the ideal state of service design look like for higher ed?
29. • People focused (the 5th P) • Designed with intention • Adaptable • Interactive
30. Journey experience
31. Anybody can build a dorm or copy a website. Creating a culture is much harder to replicate. Higher ed at its best does this well.
32. “Good strategy explains why we do what we do…Bad strategy muddles these things into a slurry that lacks sufficient consistency to be of use to anyone. The pieces can’t be seen for the whole. Adding more ingredients and blending more doesn’t make it better, neither does renaming it. …Redefining the objective once you’ve begun suggests you were never ready to begin in the first place.” -Tyrell Mayfield
33. Tusen Takk. @ronbronson ronbronson.com ron@rbsg.dk