In this article, I'm sharing 4 reasons why classical awards don't make it possible to celebrate the best Swiss Services and how, with the Swiss SDN, we are trying a more democratic approach to the creation of the "Best Swiss Services" award.

The initial idea

I've always wanted to celebrate the best services of Switzerland. And not only the best services of huge companies but also celebrate the cafés, your local dentist, a church or any other organisation that creates a lovely human service.

So I thought, let's create an award for that. But there is a problem with the way many awards are setup.

The problem I have with classical awards

Those who get an award are those who:

• Know that the award exists.

• Have the storytelling skills to tell a great story about themselves and create a good application.

• Have the time to create an application for the award.

• Have the money to pay for the application fees.

At the Swiss Service Design Network (Swiss SDN) we want to put Service Design on the map of Switzerland. But many companies that deliver great services don't know the term Service Design. So if we are organizing a classical award, there is no chance that these services would apply to the webinar.

And many of the most lovely services are made by people who:

• don't know what service design is, but still do what service design teaches

• don't know or care to create a story about themselves but instead make their clients happy

• don't have the time to create an application for an award, as they focus their time of delivering a great service

• don't have the money for an award application fee, because they're small

So what can we do to celebrate the greatest Swiss Services?

A more democratic award process

Instead of asking companies to submit their applications, we are asking the general population to tell us what local and national services impressed them the most.

Which means that companies don't have to do anything.

Companies don't win the award because they are better at storytelling.
They win the award when they did a great service.

How far is this idea?

At the moment, we are about 80% done with the research part. As usual, the last 20% is usually the most painful part.

Now the biggest challenges ahead are:

• Making sure the report and synthesis are accurate

• Creating good communication around the report and award

• Making an award ceremony

Who is behind this?

I'm pushing for this crazy idea with a team of volunteers and advisors.

The team helping with the analysis:

• Manon Philippin from Sondr

• Emmanuel Fragnière and Juliana Magalhães Cardoso from the HES-SO Valais.

The team helping with the communication:

• Romain Pittet from the SRRP (Romande Public Relations Society)

• Dany Cerone from Botte Secrète

How do we do that?

In a future article, I'll share more about how we set up the research part of this award. I'll share, for example, details about how we've used Pollfish, the mistakes we made, and how we analysed the data.