Implementing a customer-centric strategy through service design in financial organisations

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to explore how the application of service design can support financial organisations to implement their customer-centric business strategy. Design/methodology/approach: This explorative research leaned on a subjective philosophy of interpretivism and followed an explorative qualitative approach by applying in-depth interviews. An abductive mindset was used for theory development. Findings: The paper introduces a model that explains how service design can be used to implement customer-centric business strategy in financial organisations. The model explains the link between the business strategy and service design and highlights five principles of service design – namely customer-centred, co-creative, holistic, contextual and systemic – which guide designers and business developers when applying service design. In addition, customer journey represents an essential method of service design when aiming for a superior customer experience. Research limitations/implications: The research implications of this study relate to novel knowledge of applying service design to implement a customer-centric strategy. The paper encourages managers of established financial organisations to use service design to implement their strategy for a superior customer experience. Our results recommend the customer journey as a main method of service design for this purpose and highlight the prospect of making customer journeys at various levels across organisations. Originality/value: This paper contributes to literature by integrating knowledge about business strategy, customer centricity and service design in a novel way.