Lead Service Designer

This role is for one of Weekday’s clients

Salary range: Rs 400000 - Rs 1400000 (ie INR 4 - 14 LPA)

Min Experience: 1+ years

Location: Pune, Maharashtra, India

JobType: full-time

We are seeking an experienced and strategic Lead Service Designer to translate research insights into actionable service designs, implementation-ready blueprints, and fully operational service experiences. The role bridges the gap between research, product, engineering, and operations, ensuring that customer insights are converted into practical service architectures that are implemented, measured, and continuously improved.

The Lead Service Designer will own the end-to-end service design lifecycle, from interpreting synthesised research findings and designing customer touchpoints to developing comprehensive service blueprints, driving implementation, and validating real-world performance. The role also involves establishing service design standards, mentoring team members, and collaborating with cross-functional stakeholders to deliver customer-centric, technically feasible, and commercially viable solutions.

Requirements

Roles & Responsibilities

1. Insight-Driven Touchpoint Design

• Translate research insights into meaningful customer-facing touchpoints and service interactions.
• Ensure every designed touchpoint addresses a validated customer need or identified pain point.
• Evaluate digital experiences against usability principles and established design heuristics.
• Prototype and test touchpoints before incorporating them into final service blueprints.
• Ensure customer journeys and touchpoint designs remain aligned with research findings.

2. Service Blueprinting

• Develop comprehensive service blueprints covering customer actions, frontstage interactions, backstage activities, and supporting processes.
• Map the relationships between customer-facing experiences, internal operations, systems, and third-party dependencies.
• Maintain clear interaction, visibility, and internal support boundaries across the service blueprint.
• Ensure all service elements have the necessary operational support and clearly defined ownership.
• Keep customer journey maps and service blueprints aligned throughout the design and implementation process.

3. Service Architecture & Design Strategy

• Translate synthesised research insights into implementation-ready service architectures.
• Balance customer desirability, technical feasibility, and business viability when making design decisions.
• Reframe research findings into clear design challenges and actionable opportunities.
• Collaborate with product, engineering, operations, and business teams to validate proposed service solutions.
• Ensure service architectures are practical, scalable, and aligned with business objectives.

4. Blueprint Implementation & Delivery

• Own the transition from completed service blueprints to live, operational services.
• Break down blueprint components into actionable implementation activities and coordinate with relevant stakeholders.
• Assign clear ownership for customer actions, frontstage interactions, backstage operations, support processes, and physical evidence.
• Track implementation progress through defined stages, including design, owner assignment, development, go-live, and validation.
• Ensure customer-facing interactions are supported by the required operational processes, systems, and internal teams before go-live.
• Resolve implementation dependencies and coordinate with stakeholders to ensure successful service delivery.

5. Implementation Tracking & Service Performance

• Define and implement measurable performance indicators for live service touchpoints, linking each metric to the original research insight and intended outcome.
• Monitor live service performance against established targets and customer experience objectives.
• Conduct periodic reviews to identify service gaps, friction points, and underperforming interactions.
• Reopen and refine service components when performance does not meet expectations.
• Validate implemented services against their original design intent and drive continuous improvement.

6. Service Design Standards & Reusable Patterns

• Establish and maintain service blueprinting standards, quality benchmarks, and implementation-readiness criteria.
• Develop a reusable library of service patterns, frameworks, and design practices.
• Identify opportunities to standardise recurring service components across teams and projects.
• Review service design deliverables to ensure consistency, completeness, and operational feasibility.
• Mentor service designers and associates, strengthening their capabilities in research translation, blueprinting, and implementation.

7. Cross-Functional Collaboration & Leadership

• Work closely with research teams to translate quantitative, qualitative, and secondary research into actionable service design opportunities.
• Collaborate with product, engineering, operations, and business stakeholders to implement service architectures.
• Facilitate co-creation sessions with frontstage and backstage owners to develop practical service solutions.
• Lead complex, ambiguous, multi-system, and compliance-sensitive service design initiatives.
• Allocate work across the service design team based on project complexity, stakeholder dependencies, and implementation risks.
• Drive alignment across teams to ensure service designs are delivered effectively and perform as intended.

Requirements & Qualifications

• Proven experience in service design, human-centred design, design thinking, UX, or a related discipline.
• Strong understanding of service design methodologies, customer journey mapping, service blueprinting, and service architecture.
• Experience translating research insights into actionable design solutions and implementation-ready deliverables.
• Ability to design and validate customer touchpoints using prototyping, usability testing, and evidence-based design practices.
• Strong understanding of frontstage and backstage operations, support processes, system dependencies, and service delivery workflows.
• Experience driving service design implementation in collaboration with product, engineering, operations, and business teams.
• Ability to define service performance metrics and evaluate live services against intended outcomes.
• Strong stakeholder management, facilitation, communication, and problem-solving skills.
• Experience mentoring team members, reviewing design deliverables, and establishing reusable design standards.
• Ability to manage complex projects involving multiple systems, touchpoints, teams, and operational dependencies.

Must-Have Skills

• Human-Centred Design
• Design Thinking

Good-to-Have Skills

• Service Design
• Service Blueprinting
• UX Research

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

• Number of insight-driven touchpoints designed and validated.
• Number of complete service blueprints developed from research insights.
• Number of service architectures meeting customer desirability, technical feasibility, and business viability criteria.
• Number of service blueprints successfully implemented and taken live.
• Number of live service touchpoints instrumented and tracked against intended outcomes.
• Number of reusable service design patterns adopted across teams.
• Improvement in service performance, customer experience, and operational effectiveness.