Introduction to Service Blueprint
Business Service Blueprint
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Right now, some organizations are trying to structure processes, reviewing their services and changes are being made in each department. Identifying pain points, removing unnecessary waste, and gathering feedback got from customers and stakeholders. Went back to their drawing boards to build from the scratch and pick up all the pieces and make it whole again. We have probably all been in that situation before, going back to restructure our plan, as an individual or as service providers. That’s what a blueprint is all about, creating a process or plan that will help in achieving a particular goal. However, the Service blueprint cannot be fully achieved or understood either as a UX designer or as a Stakeholder
Service Design
Service design is a process where Stakeholders/designers create sustainable solutions and optimal experiences for both customers in unique contexts and any service providers involved. it’s about breaking services into sections & creating a solution that suits all types of users.
Service design is about designing the big for a bigger picture, considering if your product is feasible, scalable, and financially usable.
To achieve the process developed during creating your service design, every organization needs a service blueprint..
What Service Blueprints
A service blueprint is a tool that helps teams understand how the customer sees or experiences a business’s service process. A diagram visualizes relationships between people, processes, and physical and digital touchpoints tied to a specific customer journey.It is a map that shows how all the different people, processes, technology, policies, and touchpoints fit together in the delivery of a service. Because they capture both the customer experience and the operational characteristics of a service, blueprints are particularly useful when used at each stage of the design process. When updated and maintained effectively as a design-led project progresses, service blueprints become an operational tool that provides enough detail to enable teams to analyze the current state (how things currently are), design ways of making things better, and keep improving their services. As a UX Designer, it guides your design decisions, and creates points of shared interactions between stakeholders, employees, and customers, to show where the customer experiences value.
Communicating a service intent is the main purpose of creating a Service blueprint, however, it is also an incredible tool for facilitating information and building consensus conversations among stakeholders and employees.
Why do organizations need a service blueprint?
Scalability and flexibility
Cross-functionality and knowledge transferability
Competition
Failure analysis
People Involved in the creation of an organization service blueprint
Stakeholders
CEO
Marketing/sales team
Design & Development Team
Customer Support team
Others
Benefits of Creating a Service Blue Print
Reminds employees how important it is to have a customer-focused point of view. Connects the ‘this is what I do’ employee mindset to part of a much larger process (‘how what I do impacts everyone around me)
Service blueprints help departments align behind a common goal, empower team members, and educate stakeholders about the experience as it exists today (especially where complications or redundancies often occur).
Establishes opportunities for continuous improvement. Map-base diagrams can point out weaknesses or failures that can be the basis of a process to be refined
As a UX Designer, it guides your service design decisions. Creates points of shared interactions between stakeholders, employees, and customers, to show where the customer experiences value
As a UX Designer, it helps in delivering a better experience for your users/customers
How to create a service blueprints
The process of building a service blueprint itself has many benefits. It’ll help develop a shared vision of the service process among everyone involved, identify complexities of the service that were never apparent, and understand the roles and responsibilities of the task owners. The development of the service blueprint requires a cross-functional team consisting of members from marketing, operations, HR, and in some cases, even customers.
You can simplify the process of creating a service blueprint by using online collaboration platforms like Miro, fig jam, Notion, etc. It enables you and your team to work on the same canvas with infinite space in real-time.
And using comments and discussion threads you can monitor feedback from stakeholders. There are many pre-made templates as well, and you can use them right away to start your project.
Identity the service process that needs to be a blueprint
Identify the customers
Map onstage/ backstage contact employee actions
Link contact activities to needed support functions
Review the blueprint, and share it with the rest of the team.
Service Blueprint distinguishes between onstage and backstage employee activities which are represented
Customer Actions: This component is central to the creation of the service blueprints and therefore is laid out first. It includes the steps, actions, choices, and interactions the customer performs while evaluating, purchasing, or using the service delivery process. These are displayed chronically at the top of the blueprint.
Onstage/visible contact employee actions: This component appears on the diagram after customer actions, separated by the line of interaction. These actions include frontline employees when they encounter customers face to face.
Backstage/invisible contact employee actions: This refers to the backstage and behind the scene actions taken by contact employees that are not visible to the customer. They include non-visible interaction with the customer such as telephone calls and other activities backstage contact employees carry out to support the onstage activities.
Support Processes: This includes all actions and interactions, internal services carried out by individuals or units (not contact employees) top support contact employees to deliver the services. There are not visible to customers.
Physical Evidence: This comes at the top of the diagram and represents the physical evidence of the service. They are typically listed above each point of contact. For example, the physical evidence of a face-to-face meeting can be listed as office decor.
Lines: Each component of the service blueprints are separated by a line. first comes the line of integration which represents the direct interaction between the customer and the organization, every time the line of insertion is crossed by a customer to contact an employee, a moment of truth occurs. This is when the customer judges the quality of the services and decisions about a future purchase.
Then the line of separation-all the components that come above this line are visible to the customers while the one that comes below is invisible.
The last line is called the line of interaction-this separated the contact employee activities from other support services and people. Vertical lines cut across the line of internal interaction.
Arrows: This represents the relationships and dependencies. A single arrow indicates a one-way exchange, and a double arrow indicates the need for an agreement from both parties or codependence.
Service blueprints vs Journey Mapping
Customer journey maps and service blueprints are two complementary methods used in service/ product design.
Customer journey maps visualize the customer experience across different touchpoints along with what they are doing, thinking, and feeling. It focuses more on the surface customer experience and reveals fewer service process details.
On the other hand, service blueprints offer a detailed look at the service delivery process across the different touchpoints, including the onstage and backstage contact employee actions.
Conclusion
Service Blueprint offers more information on the internal processes and support systems that deliver the service to the customers more than the experience of the customer.
Thanks for reading.
