File 04 Service Design · Retail · Link Innovation
Why billing felt slow at India's most trusted jeweller
Tanishq - Tata Group's jewellery brand - knew its in-store billing was slow. Nobody could say precisely why, or which part of "slow" was costing them trust. A service design engagement to find out, from the store floor up.
- Role
- Service designer - led the engagement end to end
- Client
- Tanishq (Tata Group)
- Methods
- Store visits, staff & customer interviews, blueprinting
- Employer
- Link Innovation, 2022–2023
At a glance
- What it is
- A service design engagement for Tanishq (Tata Group) to find out why in-store billing was slow - and what "slow" was actually costing.
- The problem
- Everyone agreed billing dragged; nobody could point to where, why, or which delays eroded customer trust.
- My role
- Led the engagement end to end - research design, store visits, interviews, synthesis, and final recommendations.
- Method
- Store-floor observation plus interviews on both sides of the counter, synthesized into personas and a full service blueprint.
- Sharpest finding
- The worst moments weren't at the counter - they were upstream (no stock visibility) and downstream (payment confirmation, returns).
- The impact
- One vague complaint reframed into evidence-backed problem statements and How-Might-We's the business could prioritize.
Why "slow billing" is a brand problem
Tanishq's entire promise is built on trust: certified gold, ethical sourcing, jewellery bought at life's biggest moments. A billing experience that drags - or worse, leaves a customer unsure whether their payment went through - doesn't just cost minutes. It contradicts the reason people chose the brand. That framing shaped the whole engagement: this was never a queue-management problem.
Research from the store floor up
Desk research first - competitive analysis against Kalyan, Malabar, PC Jeweller, and Reliance Jewels, plus market trends (digital-influenced buyers, customization, the shift toward everyday jewellery). Then the real work: structured store visits with a questionnaire covering the full journey, and interviews on both sides of the counter.
- Staff interviews surfaced the operational reality: billing speed depended on which cashier you got; splitting a purchase across pieces slowed everything; certification checks during returns added serious time; festive-season demand hit with no extra counters.
- Customer interviews surfaced the trust gaps: payments deducted but not confirmed received, multi-hour fund transfers, no way to check whether a piece was in stock locally - and comparisons customers made unprompted, like a competitor's multiple billing counters.
From observations to a blueprint
The findings were synthesized into customer personas and a full service design blueprint - mapping the front-stage experience against the back-stage process, step by step, so the business could see exactly where in the journey delays and trust gaps occurred rather than debating impressions.
The blueprint made one thing visible that the complaint never captured: several of the worst moments weren't at the counter at all. They were upstream (no stock visibility before visiting) and downstream (payment confirmation, certification on returns) - places a "faster checkout" fix would never have touched.
Outcome
- A vague operational complaint - "billing is slow" - reframed into evidence-backed problem statements across trust, speed, and transparency, each traceable to observed moments in the journey.
- How-Might-We statements the business could prioritize and act on immediately.
- A future-scope direction beyond the fix: stock visibility, digital wallets, AR-assisted try-ons, and co-created designs.
Research conducted on-site at Tanishq stores as part of a Link Innovation engagement. Full research deck available on request.