Principal Service Designer

About the opportunity 

You will take ownership of the Service Design capability at Gusto, managing a small team of Service Designers to evolve service design processes and methodologies across Gusto actively, and apply those processes and methods to identify and solve complex customer problems – linking people, process, and product interactions to create a holistic and exceptional service experience for Gusto customers.

Here’s what you’ll do day-to-day:

• Foster a high-performance, high psychologically safe culture that maximizes customer value creation and customer retention.
• Grow and develop the service design practice at Gusto – Build the frameworks, and approaches that can be deployed by teams across Gusto, including – custom documentation libraries to facilitate cross-functional consensus for service improvements, learning & development tracks for Service Design, and intake prioritization processes for Service Design efforts.
• Plans and leads service design activities to support strategic transformation initiatives as well as iterative improvements.
• Leverages design thinking to understand customer needs and evolve the customer experience.
• Develops in-depth understanding of customer experience using quantitative and qualitative insights.
• Partner with a variety of teams to concept, blueprint, and implement compelling service experiences that are cohesive, inclusive, and impactful.
• Collaborate with Gusto product development teams to ensure consistency across interface experiences across different user scenarios.
• Designs exceptional service moments.
• Plan and lead co-creation workshops with internal stakeholders to identify opportunities and design new service experiences.
• Communicate vision and concepts clearly and persuasively for a variety of audiences including executive-level, to create alignment and motivate action.

Here’s what we’re looking for:

• 12+ years of Service Design experience within a design agency or an in-house Design or Product team. Experience design, interaction design, or product design experience are a plus.
• Experience as a Service Designer in an at-scale tech company environment, where they work closely with a Design, Product, or Functional Leader (CX or Revenue) to design holistic and differentiated service experiences.
• Broad and comprehensive understanding of design practices across product, brand, and service.
• Proven track record of building differentiation, loyalty, and long-term business value by meeting users’ needs and exceeding their expectations.
• Proficient at capturing interactions and surfacing experience opportunities – you have multiple tools to help map out user journeys and end-to-end experiences.
• Experience leading cross-discipline teams and exemplify strong leadership.
• Comfortable (and excited by!) working closely with senior-level stakeholders and leadership – history of effective communication with all levels of management and company personnel.
• You’re able to plan, prioritize, and organize effectively and independently – working effectively with data and teams to focus efforts and choose the most impactful moments to design for.
• Able to proactively bring together groups of individuals to solve a problem and enable others to understand and execute the resulting vision with a service blueprint.