Better quality and customer experience through service design

The Finnish Enterprise Agencies renewed its business strategy in 2020, at the same time aiming to brighten its brand identity and improve both customer experience and the overall image of quality wherever the brand is encountered.

Among the main goals of the project was to identify the most critical points for improvement in the service, as well as the most important customer needs, in order to further improve service. For this reason, the aim was to approach the issue through service design.

To gain more customer understanding and improve the customer experience, comprehensive user information was needed. To this end, a service design process was launched with the following steps: research, brand redesign and website definition. Based on these steps, a completely revamped online service and a new version of the company start-up guide were designed.

The service design process began with target group interviews and keyword research. The research phase progressed with work on customer understanding and digital solutions, involving several stakeholders. The knowledge base was built piece by piece, with each step based on the previous one.

The main considerations were the following:

1. Brand identity was supposed to project credibility to all of the agencies’ stakeholders, local actors and future entrepreneurs
2. The content, structure and hierarchy of the online service should be based on key customer needs and be able to adapt flexibly to various user groups.

Based on information obtained from interviews, surveys, and workshops, we noted that none of the competitors evoke the human perspective, a personal touch, or genuine encounters. We created a brand strategy through which this insight guides both the brand redesign and plans for renewing the online service.

Workshops also helped in the realisation of exactly how Finnish Enterprise Agencies should be visible and help its customers along the path to entrepreneurship. With our stakeholders, we found and prioritised the most important aspects of the online service’s content and functionality for improvement of the customer experience for a variety of target groups.

A three-part development plan was drawn up for the online service based on the service design process. The main goal of the first phase was to redesign the site’s structure and content to meet the user needs identified during the research phase, as well as the keyword research. Renewed brand was introduced to the website and accessibility was improved.

Improvements were made to the structure of the new business start-up guide and its contents were made a part of the online service. This brought a much-needed interactive aspect to the guide.

Personal and digital interactions, their simplicity and professionalism are all at the heart of the final outcome of the project. People are at the center of everything.

The online service was launched in late 2020. According to preliminary analytics, the service seems to produce even better results: the immediate bounce rate has improved by 32 per cent, the average number of visitors to the site has risen by 29 per cent and the length of single visits has increased by 37 per cent when compared to the previous year. The number of customer contacts has also increased since the launch of the online service.