What happens when people try to get help for a problem with their service that somehow falls between the cracks of two large service providers?

Apple TV is Apple’s answer to the entertainment streaming wars. It offers access to a wide range of content, mostly for purchase or rental, as well as a few eclectic movies and series through its own AppleTV+ studio. It operates around the world to Apple users. BritBox is another video subscription service, built in partnership by BBC Studios and iTV, both powerful broadcasters in the United Kingdom.

Although they are competitors, Apple offers BritBox as a subscription-based channel within its AppleTV platform. On the surface, it seems like a great proposition for both companies and people looking for entertainment. However, when actually trying to use the service, things get interesting.

Recently I took out a trial of the BritBox channel within AppleTV, and soon afterwards a key gap in their service support became glaringly apparent. For some reason, accessing the BritBox content didn’t work as advertised. So who could help with the problem?

Turns out, no one.

BritBox could only help with subscribers who signed up to BritBox directly. Their online support materials made it clear they would refer anyone who contacted them to Apple.

In turn, Apple indicated that any issues with the BritBox channel (within its platform), had to be dealt with by contacting BritBox.

This means that anyone trying to get help will fall into this gap between the two large service providers, bouncing back and forth between a few scant online help resources.

This suggests two really interesting things about how we understand complex services, especially those delivered through partnerships.

Firstly, the overall service is only as good as the combination of its parts. If either part fails independently, or there are gaps in their relationship, people will fall through those gaps.

Secondly, everyday people don’t understand complex services involving ‘behind-the-scenes’ business partnerships. And why should they have to? It probably isn’t fair to Apple, but they’re likely the primary service provider in this experience, and so the onus falls on them to support prople across the entire service.

However, both of these insights only come from exploring the experience from end-to-end and top-to-bottom, all the while probing for gaps in where the sub-services join together.

When companies band together to deliver combined services their sum can be greater than their parts - when they work well together. But it’s important to do the design research required to both plan the joins, and to check how the service operates in the real world.