ITIL® 4 Drive Stakeholder Value (DSV)

Your companion to the ITIL 4 Managing Professional DSV certification

Claire Agutter

• Publisher: ITGP
• Year: 2022
• Topic: Computer Science
• eBook ISBN:
  9781787783539
• Subtopic: Project Management
• Index: Computer Science

ITIL® 4 Drive Stakeholder Value (DSV)

If you've achieved your ITIL 4 Foundation certificate, you're probably planning the next stage in your ITIL journey and deciding which qualification to work towards. ITIL 4 DSV provides essential knowledge and capabilities for service management professionals, focusing on the engagements between a service provider and its customers, users, suppliers and partners, and how demand is converted into value via IT-enabled services.

DSV is one of the ITIL 4 advanced level modules that leads to the MP (Managing Professional) certification. The module is aimed at managers and aspiring managers at all levels, providing them with the practical skills to build effective relationships across the SVS.

An excellent supplement to any ITIL 4 DSV training course

The majority of this book is based on the official AXELOS ITIL^® 4: Drive Stakeholder Value publication and the associated Drive Stakeholder Value Managing Professional syllabus. It provides students with the information they need to pass the DSV exam, and help them become a successful practitioner.

This book is suitable for ITIL v3 Experts, ITIL 4 MP students, ITSM (IT service management) practitioners who are adopting ITIL 4, approved training organisations, IT service managers, IT managers and those in IT support roles.

The guide focuses on:

• The customer journey;
• Fostering stakeholder relationships;
• How to: shape demand and define service offerings, and align expectations and agree service details;
• Onboarding and offboarding;
• Continual value co-creation;
• Realising and validating service value; and
• Exam preparation.

A useful tool throughout your career

In addition to being an essential study aid, the author — a seasoned ITSM professional — also provides additional guidance throughout the book, which you can lean on once your training and exam are over. The book includes her own practical experience, from which she gives advice, and points to think about along the way, so that you can refer back to this book for years to come – long after you've passed your exam.

ITIL® is a registered trade mark of the PeopleCert group. Used under licence from PeopleCert. All rights reserved.

CHAPTER 1: THE CUSTOMER JOURNEY

In this introductory chapter, we’ll review a key concept for DSV – the customer journey. The content includes:

• The concept of the customer journey; and

• How to design and improve customer journeys.

ITIL 4 describes a customer journey as “the complete end-to-end experience customers have with one or more service providers and/or their products through the touchpoints and service interactions”.

Value streams and customer journeys

Figure 1 shows the relationships between value streams and customer journeys.

Figure 1: Relationships between value streams and customer journeys¹

A customer journey will always rely on one or more value streams from one or more service providers. A customer journey can include multiple value streams from one service provider, or value streams from different service providers.

A value stream can support multiple customer journeys. The customer journey includes value stream activities that are part of what is known as the ‘band of visibility’. There will be other value stream activities that are not visible to the customer, so these value streams don’t form part of the customer journey.

The customer journey isn’t always linear. It can involve moving around between different touchpoints, and repeated contact at some touchpoints. The customer might start in the middle of the expected customer journey, so the service provider needs to continually monitor customer journeys and improve its understanding of customer behaviour.

Think about your own customer journeys for the services you use every day. For example, a TV streaming service, or an insurance product. Where did your customer journey start? Has it finished? What value streams have supported your journey? You could think about new user onboarding, billing, customer service, etc. as examples of value streams.

Customer journeys are an important part of the overall customer and user experience. Customer experience (CX) is “the sum of functional and emotional interactions with a service and service provider as perceived by a customer”. User experience (UX) is “the sum of the functional and emotional interactions with a service and service provider as perceived by a user”.

The customer journey forms part of the customer’s overall perception of a service provider, along with other influencing factors like brand, reputation, previous experiences, etc.

Figure 2 shows the three aspects of customer and user experience.

Figure 2: Three aspects of the customer and user experience²

The definitions for both customer and user experience mention ‘emotional interactions’. This is an important point for you to consider as a service provider or in a service management role. In the past, we’ve not always considered the human element of service interactions. I’ve worked with organisations where there has been fierce resistance to change because the end users have an emotional attachment to a system they are using. It might not work very well, the new system might be a huge improvement, but I’ve seen a real sense of affection for older systems that can lead to a reluctance to change.

As service providers, we can focus too much on the facts (“Why wouldn’t you want this? It’s twice as fast!”) and miss the emotional elements. It’s really important to have proper conversations with end users and customers so that we have the full picture and can carry out our role more effectively.

Customer journey design

Customer journey design is based on these principles:

• How you deliver a service is as important as what is delivered.

• The overall journey is more important than each individual touchpoint.

• Understanding the customer journey allows providers to focus on maximising value, and on experiences over outcomes.

The ITIL 4 Specialist: Drive Stakeholder Value syllabus and related publication are based around the steps in a customer journey.

These steps are:

• Explore

• Engage

• Offer

• Agree

• Onboard

• Co-create

• Realise

Before you move on and learn about the customer journey in more detail, why not try creating your own customer journey map? You can use a product or service from your own organisation, or perhaps use Mortbank from the Banksbest case study. Note down what happens in each step of the customer journey, and refer back to it when we study the customer journey in more detail.

Customer journey key concepts

The key concepts related to a customer journey are:

• Benefits

• Stakeholder aspirations

• Journey mapping

• Personas

• Scenarios

• Maps

• Understanding the customer experience

We’ll review them one by one in this section.

Benefits

Understanding the customer journey delivers benefits for the service consumer and the service provider, as shown in table 1.

Table 1: Customer Journey Mapping Benefits
	For the service consumer	For the service provider
Facilitate outcome	Gain optimal service value and experience Get what you need, not just what you asked for	Identify and support service consumer behaviours and outc...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• About the Author
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: The customer journey
• Chapter 2: Targeting markets and stakeholders
• Chapter 3: Fostering stakeholder relationships
• Chapter 4: How to shape demand and define service offerings
• Chapter 5: How to align expectations and agree service details
• Chapter 6: Onboarding and offboarding
• Chapter 7: Continual value co-creation
• Chapter 8: Realising and validating service value
• Chapter 9: Exam preparation
• Appendix A: Banksbest case study
• Further reading