A transactional approach to service design hurts the most vulnerable.
Laces untied and shirt buttons half fastened, Dennis stumbled into his local library at 9 am to collect a roll of recycling sacks. They’d run out at the weekend, and Lynda had been reminding him to collect replacements for three days. He was late for a Zoom call and was in a hurry.
Stumbling towards the counter, Dennis greeted the duty librarian.
“Hi. I’ve come for some replacement recycling sacks. Could you help me, please?”
“Morning,” replied the Idris cheerfully. “We can certainly help with that. What’s your name?”
“Dennis,” he replied hurriedly.
Unfazed, Idris continued, “If you take a seat at one of our quiet booths, we can figure out how best to help together. Would you like a cup of tea? Milk? Sugar?”
“Uhhhhh, coffee, black, please.” On auto-pilot, Dennis took a seat in the quiet booth.
A moment later, Idris returned, coffee in one hand and a plate of custard creams in the other. “So, Dennis, what matters to you today?.”
“That they don’t break when I put tins in, I guess,” Dennis responded.
“You misunderstand me. What matters to you in your life?”
After a 30-minute back and forth, Idris realised no additional help was needed.
Dennis missed his Zoom call and forgot his recycling sacks.
One of the biggest root cause problems in public services
The story above never happened.
In 25 years of working in public services, I can’t think of a time when I’ve observed an interaction that was even remotely similar. Thank goodness.
And that’s because it’s illogical. The fictitious interaction shows someone trying to help a citizen by applying a relational approach to a transactional service.
Most requests in public services are transactional and are treated in a transactional manner accordingly.
The citizens’ needs are well-defined. I need replacement recycling sacks. I’d like to dispose of a fridge-freezer. I need to register the birth of my child.
Public services and the organisations that provide them attempt to optimise their services. Many try to understand citizens' needs from the citizens' perspective to help them complete the process as quickly and painlessly as possible.
The good news is that, in most cases, this works. The needs are understandable.
But in some cases, residents’ needs are less straightforward.
For the last two years, we’ve been working with Thrive LDN, a citywide public mental health partnership, to ensure all Londoners have an equal opportunity for good mental health and wellbeing.
The needs of citizens who seek help from mental health organisations are often complex and multiple. They may also be struggling with debt, finding sustainable employment, overcoming substance misuse issues or finding stable accommodation. These additional challenges may be the cause of, the result of or exacerbated by their mental health challenges.
Their needs are complex, and articulating them clearly might not be possible.
While few transactional services use a relational approach (as in the story above), the opposite is commonplace. Many relational services use a transactional approach.
Services that are relational at their core but delivered in a transactional way often fail catastrophically. People are helped in a siloed manner, referred from one service to the next while their needs escalate and go unmet.
This costs public services money and citizens unnecessary pain.
In our view, this is one of the biggest root cause problems in public services.
At least in Local Government, each year more citizens approach the council with a simple transactional need than with complex problems; more citizens try to pay their council tax online than those who need support from the homelessness service.
However, the time required and cost of meeting the needs of individuals with complex problems is exponentially higher.
Published in 2011, Barnet Council’s now famous graph of doom highlighted how the Council’s entire budget could be consumed meeting the needs of those accessing adult social care and children’s services.
Another example from Northumbria’s Changing Futures programme outlines the case The Two Million Sterling Man. This is Brian and who over 14 years, had more than 3,000 interactions with public services costing over £2m.
A different service design for residents with complex needs
What constitutes complex needs certainly exists on a continuum. And what constitutes complex for one person, might not for another. However, residents with complex needs need relational services.
Developing such services requires relational service design. This is fundamentally different from transactional service design.
Most approaches to improving services have roots in the manufacturing industry. The more recent and now standard service design manuals were developed, for the most part, in the context of digital and transactional services.
They do not differentiate how the design of a service must change depending on whether it is transactional or relational.
This differentiation is critical and the reason for us sharing the insights and practices. We will share different articles and together it will form a book.
Written by Dennis Vergne and Joseph Badman
© Basis Ltd. 2024