How a service design approach saved our client from a costly investment by revealing their challenges were operational, not technical.
Client details are private under an NDA.
Duration: 2-Week Engagement
Team Structure: Vendor design lead facilitating the client’s internal
team.
Consultative Leadership
Strategic Reframing
Client Trust & Partnership
A growing caregiving business was struggling with overwhelming staff workloads. The owner believed the cause was a fragmented ecosystem of disconnected applications, forcing her team to perform triple data entry. The initial request was clear: build a costly custom "bridge" application to connect their systems.
However, the symptoms pointed to a deeper issue. Instead of accepting the proposed solution, our team made the case for a strategic pivot. We proposed a short, diagnostic service design engagement to first understand the root cause of the problem. This decision was the project's turning point, saving the client from a failed six-figure investment.
"They had the integrity to tell us what we needed to hear, not what we wanted to build. That advice saved our business from a disastrous investment."
— Business Owner
The client was ready to fund a costly "bridge" application. I persuaded them to pause and invest in a short diagnostic engagement to ensure we were solving the right problem.
We facilitated a rapid service design workshop, empowering the client's team to map their workflows. The process was designed to help them uncover the root causes of their challenges themselves.
The workshop artifacts became the single source of truth. The process yielded a conclusive insight: 42 out of 45 identified pain points were process-based, not technical.
Armed with this co-created data, we delivered the difficult news: the software project should be canceled. This ethical recommendation solidified our role as a trusted advisor and gave them a clear path forward.
This project presented two defining consultative challenges that required direct leadership.
The client was ready to write a check for a technical solution and viewed our proposal for a workshop as an unexpected delay. The primary leadership challenge was to build trust rapidly and reframe the engagement. An honest conversation was necessary:
"We can build the app you're asking for, but I'm not convinced it will solve your problem. Let's first map out the real workflow to ensure we're investing in the right solution."This approach shifted the dynamic from a vendor relationship to a strategic partnership.
The workshop's findings were conclusive: the client's problems weren't technical. This meant delivering the difficult news that their core belief was incorrect and the project they were prepared to fund should be canceled. This required presenting the data with empathy, guiding them to the conclusion that the real value was in fixing their internal processes, not in building new software.
The core challenge was not to design an application, but to diagnose a complex service operation. Our discovery workshop identified 10 distinct staff personas and mapped their core workflows. We discovered that the Business Owner, as the organizational and operational leader, was the central node. Their primary focus on ensuring the "company culture and staff are healthy and thriving" meant that operational friction—like caregiver shortages, poor communication processes, and double data entry—ultimately rolled up to them. By solving for the owner's need for a healthy, scalable business, we could address the root causes of the entire team's challenges.
| Role | Core Job (JTBD) | Key Pain Point | Recommended Solution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Business Owner (Primary) | "Ensure the company culture is healthy and the team is thriving." | "No visibility into systemic operational breakdowns (caregiver shortages, scheduling conflicts, communication gaps) until they escalate into crises." | "Implement a simple daily dashboard using existing tools to track key operational metrics and redesign core workflows like client intake." |
| Family Care Coordinator | Be the 'closer and the keeper' for families. | Constant frustration from caregiver shortages and understaffed schedules, leading to poor communication and unmet client needs. | Create a standardized hand-off process between sales, coordination, and scheduling to set realistic client expectations from the start. |
| Caregiver Mentor | Onboard new clients and caregivers efficiently. | Manually re-entering the same client data across three disconnected systems, causing errors and delays. | Redesign the client intake process into a single-entry workflow using existing tools. |
The project's success was driven by the close, collaborative partnership established with the client's team during the workshop.
Our primary role was to facilitate the discovery process, creating a safe environment for honest feedback that empowered the client's own team to see their operational challenges and co-design the solutions.
The project’s focus shifted from a technical solution to a shared understanding of the root problems. The workshop artifacts (personas, journey maps) became the single source of truth that aligned the entire team.
The key governance decision was the recommendation to halt the software project. This ethical, client-centric choice solidified our role as a trusted advisor and ensured the client focused their limited resources where they would have the greatest impact.
The facilitated engagement identified that 42 out of 45 pain points were process-based, saving the client from an unnecessary and costly software build.
The project's lasting impact, however, was the new capability it created within the client's organization. The service design process was so successful that it gave them a new framework for problem-solving. The project didn't just deliver a diagnosis; it delivered a new, more effective way of understanding and improving their own business.
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