How do you adapt and respond to changing stakeholder and customer needs and feedback in service design?

Salesforce did a study some time back based on which 73% of customers say a good experience is key in influencing their brand loyalties. To adapt and respond to one can do following. 1) Continuously gather feedback 2) Analyze and prioritize feedback. Prioritization is extremely impt. Often I have observed young budding product managers make design decisions based on assumptions/personal preferences, or fail to communicate changes to stakeholders.

One thing to keep in mind is to steer stakeholders away from solutioning at this stage. Many times stakeholders will come with their idea of a fix, which may or may not resolve the actual problem they are trying to solve. Instead focus on the problem they are trying to solve, then involve the right team members in developing the right solution.

While having a context is essential but the core success of cross/functional stakeholders depends on the ways of working. Therefore, crafting the Ways of working supplementing the Vision and Strategies is the vital element enabling the anticipated outcome. Perhaps, I would propose to have a section “Cross-Functional WoW Frame” defining the objective, cultural dynamics, diverse resources on partnership spirit of Co-Design, Co-build, and Co-Delivery at scale and speed translating to shared value and growth realization with embeded commitments of iteratively learning, adopting, and delivering with accountability.

We’ve heard that the most diverse teams are the most productive and successful and the same applies here. Empowering our people and bringing a multitude of the right (and necessary) perspectives to the table helps unlock new levels of success. Let’s face it; we don’t know what we don’t know! Structure approaches to group think and silent ideation and story boarding can help us progress concepts faster.

I've found affinitization exercises with the key stakeholder group to be extremely helpful in quickly gathering and prioritizing feedback. Here's how I do it: - Gather stakeholders for a working session - Ask them to provide feedback on sticky notes and post them on a wall (this can be done with virtual whiteboards if you can't gather in person) - one response per sticky note - Ask one person to group the stickies into like categories and then describe the reasons for those groupings - Ask others if they agree or disagree with the groupings and why. Probe and facilitate the discussion. -Then ask participants for the 3-5 big ideas for actions they need to take based in what they've learned This is a great way to build momentum.

This is a lockstep process. Most important is to not change key personnel during the journey. A shift in people is a joint decision.