In my experience (and I recall Erik Flowers echoing this here on Medium) the problem of being a service designer, and why they/we end up focusing on research is that the actionable bits, the improvements, are owned by various product owners and the like, scattered around the business, doing the BAU, and the change they/we suggest is needed to improve the service may not be at all what they have in mind for their 2022 objectives (because it threatens their bonus?).

*Phew*

Apologies for the long sentence.

"Service designers" rarely have mandate to incur change unless they are delivery leads of a change programme.