Community Dental Services is a ‘referral’ dental service providing specialist care to patients most in need. Patients are referred to the service because they would find it difficult to receive their care from a High Street dentist, perhaps owing to a disability, learning difficulty or behavioural condition, such as dental anxiety. The dental team care for some of the most vulnerable in society. They pride themselves on being able to manage almost any dental emergency or condition.

Livework worked collaboratively with the dental team to understand and contextualise into operational service priorities the needs of patients and carers.

The dental team received training in the service design methodology. They distilled the customer insights into a new service blueprint. Livework provided coaching to the team to complete two service prototypes.

The team quickly became passionate about exploring new ways of delivering the service. Using the service blueprint, the team ‘fast tracked’ some of the ideas to meet the challenges of Covid-19.

The dental team used our customer centric design approach to explore new ways of delivering dental services.

The new service blueprint enabled the team to conceptualise change, continually explore customer needs and safely explore ideas in a highly pressurised clinic setting.

The team advocate for the service design approach to be rolled out to other clinics, and to develop a deeper understanding of service design in-house. Service design approach allows a company strategy to be informed by operational experiences.