About A4Q Certified Service Designer

The need for organizations to continuously innovate and adapt their services to meet the ever-changing, and increasingly demanding, expectations of their customers is more of a challenge today than ever! A seamless service experience for the customer can have a huge impact on an organization's reputation, customer acquisition and retention and indeed the company's overall growth. Every step of the “change journey” for organizations must seek to co-create value with its customers and to co-construct the ser vice experience that aligns with the customer context.

Service Design is a field that encompasses this value-co-creation. It is a human-centred, iterative approach that incorporates the theory and practices of design thinking, customer experience analysis and business service design.
 

About the Scheme

The A4Q Certified Service Designer is a modular certification program. Each module within the scheme has its own inherent value as a certification and will add value to individuals seeking to develop and attest to skills in each of the respective fields. Full A4Q Certified Service Designer can be applied for by candidates who have achieved the three mandatory modules and one of the electives.

The duration of each exam is 60 Minutes (a 25% time bonus for non-native speakers can be granted). All exams are in Single-Choice format with 40 questions.

An Exam is passed when 65% of the answers are correct.

The A4Q Design Thinking, A4Q Business Service Design & CX Analysis modules are available now! The elective modules available later in 2022.

Target Audience

The A4Q Certified Service Designer certification is suitable for any change professional who wants to gain service design expertise and future-proof their toolkit including: Business Analysts; Business Designers; Product Owners; Enterprise Architects; Portfolio Managers; Program Managers; Project Managers and Business Change Managers. Design and UX professionals may also find this of interest.

 

The A4Q Certified Service Designer certification attests to an individual having demonstrated:

  • They have a portfolio of must-have service design skills and techniques
  • They have an understanding of the customer experience, mapping the customer journey across all platforms to build a better understanding of the value proposition from a customer viewpoint
  • They are able to analyze the business service offering, looking at services, systems and processes from a customer perspective

They can use innovative design thinking techniques to unlock insights and transform your business service.

 

 

"The job of a service designer, or the change practitioner

applying service design skills, is to analyze services holistically and

to design and improve an organization’s services, systems and

processes to better meet the needs of the customer and stakeholders."

Mandatory Modules

Business Service Design has an in depth focus on business systems, processes and services behind the customer journey, focusing on their impact on customer satisfaction.

Participants will be able to  demonstrate an understanding of Business Service Design principles, approaches and techniques.

The A4Q Business Service Design certificate assesses a candidate’s ability to:

  • The four thinking frameworks that combine to provide a powerful toolkit behind innovative, customer-centric service design: Systems Thinking, Service Thinking, Design Thinking and Lean Thinking.
  • Being able to explore the business services, their value propositions and the customer perspective.
  • Being able to identify where changes are required.
  • Being able to apply useful Service Design techniques to drive business innovation.

In the digital age, it has become critical to understand more about the organization’s customers and what motivates, delights and even annoys them.  CX (Customer Experience) Analysis is critical to business success. The A4Q CX Analysis certification looks in depth at the customer experience, and how an organization can transform its existing processes to offer engaged, responsive and connected customer experiences.

The A4Q CX Analysis certificate assesses a candidate’s ability to:

  • Tune in to organization’s customers, action the insights and add value across multiple touchpoints.
  • Analyze the organization’s view of CX; the difference between CX and UX and why it matters; customer gains and pains and organizational maturity.
  • Understand a seamless, positive customer journey with touchpoints across all digital platforms engages customers and improves customer satisfaction.
  • Understand key customer experience analysis techniques for effective business service design.

Design thinking is a creative, human centred approach to business innovation. It’s about applying the design mindset to business challenges, making sure solutions are customer-centric and focused on meeting the needs of all stakeholders.

The A4Q Design Thinking certification assesses an individual’s ability to:

  • Understand the theory and application of the Design Thinking creative and iterative process.
  • Investigate and resolve business challenges, identify options and test proposed solutions using the Design Thinking innovative customer-centric approach.
  • Empathise with the customer, unlock key insights, question assumptions, explore strategies and test ideas.
  • Find innovative and relevant solutions.

Please find further information to the A4Q Design Thinking exam here.

Elective Modules - Coming later in 2022!

The A4Q Business Service Architecture certification will focus on the service architecture and its component elements, within the context of enterprise, business and solution architecture.

Topics covered include architectural principles; service definition; value stream modelling and analysis; capability requirements and modelling; the T shaped professional; service measures and controls and a framework for service agility.

The A4Q Business Acumen certification covers the knowledge, skills, understanding and perspective needed to develop good business acumen.

Topics covered include types of business model; leadership and decision-making skills; the importance of a growth mindset for senior leadership teams; available business models and financial and data literacy.

The A4Q Business Design Consultancy certification covers the key skills required to deliver effective business design consultancy, including the consultancy lifecycle and service portfolio, the consultancy mind set, stakeholder engagement, investigation and negotiation techniques, and situation diagnosis.