Editor's Note: Take a look at our featured best practice, Design Thinking (225-slide PowerPoint presentation). [NOTE: Our Design Thinking presentation has been trusted by an array of prestigious organizations, including industry leaders such as Apple, MIT, NASA, Ford, Boeing, Fujitsu, Syngenta, Palo Alto Networks, and Mercer, to name just a few.] Design Thinking is [read more]
Service Blueprint
* * * *
Service represents an intricate, multi-tiered procedure encompassing numerous individuals and technologies that collaborate harmoniously or encounter issues. In order to foster Innovation and enhance Customer Satisfaction, visualizing every step and participant, from customers to third-party vendors, is essential.
This is where Service Blueprints play a crucial role. Just as the name implies, the Service Blueprint assists in crafting a blueprint for the service process.
Service Blueprints serve as an extremely effective approach to Service Design. They enable organizations to visualize, analyze, and optimize their Customer Experiences systematically. Service Blueprints provide a holistic view of a service by depicting not only the customer-facing elements but also the underlying processes, interactions, and touchpoints that make up the entire service ecosystem.
Service Blueprint has emerged as one of the most precious tools in the toolkit of service marketers. First applied in the field of Service Design, the method was subsequently applied to analyze drawbacks in Operational Efficiency. Among the most extensively employed instruments, the Service Blueprint has been employed for overseeing Service Operations, shaping Service Design, and improving Service Delivery.
Service Blueprint comprises a practical process diagram that illustrates the service delivery procedure from the customer’s point of view. Typically, creating a Service Blueprint will have the following 7 steps:
- Differentiate activities, order, and relationships.
- Identify criteria, variations, instructions, guidelines, services, and stock.
- Depict extra lines.
- Determine line of visibility.
- Provide timeframes and identify responsible individuals.
- Identify failure points and waiting periods.
- Manage divergence and complexity.
A Service Blueprint process basically encompasses raw materials in the form of inputs, a process that transforms the inputs, and finished goods as outputs.
Let us dig a little deeper into some of the steps.
1. Differentiate activities, order, and relationships.
Regardless of whether a new process is being initiated or an existing one is being mapped out, the process is kicked off by examining the customer service scenario. The customer’s actions are organized in chronological order. Activities, their order, and the relationships between them are examined separately.
2. Identify criteria, variations, instructions, guidelines, services, and stock.
The next step involves identification and incorporation of criteria and acceptable variations, written instructions, operational guidelines, supplementary services, and stock for each stage into the service blueprint.
Identification is carried out after establishing a comprehensive customer service encounter and incorporating sections to the customer actions such as:
- Front-stage activities.
- Backstage activities.
- Support processes.
- Tangible materials.
- Timeframes.
3. Depict extra lines.
The extra lines are depicted next, e.g., the physical interaction line or the line of IT interaction, if necessary. When handling complex services, it is advisable to depict supplementary lines.
Interested in learning more about Service Blueprint? You can download an editable PowerPoint presentation on Service Blueprint here on the Flevy documents marketplace.
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80-slide PowerPoint presentation
What is Design Thinking?
* Design Thinking is a human-centered approach to problem solving and innovation.
* Design Thinking helps us to gain a deep understanding of customers' unmet needs and wants.
* It encourages creative consideration of a wide array of innovative solutions.
* It is as [read more]
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Design Thinking poster gives a detailed description of a Design Thinking process.
It is great as introduction to design thinking, an overview of a possible design thinking project, encouraging innovation and design thinking. Poster presents some typical tools for design thinking: Problem [read more]
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About Mark Bridges
Mark Bridges is a Senior Director of Strategy at Flevy. Flevy is your go-to resource for best practices in business management, covering management topics from Strategic Planning to Operational Excellence to Digital Transformation (view full list here). Learn how the Fortune 100 and global consulting firms do it. Improve the growth and efficiency of your organization by leveraging Flevy's library of best practice methodologies and templates. Prior to Flevy, Mark worked as an Associate at McKinsey & Co. and holds an MBA from the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago. You can connect with Mark on LinkedIn here.
