A service blueprint is a visual overview of the actions and teams involved in delivering a service. This includes the people, touchpoints, processes, and technology both frontstage (what customers see) and backstage (what is behind the scenes).
Mapping a service blueprint should be a collaborative effort and can help internal teams understand how their individual areas of responsibility combine to deliver the overall service.
Service blueprints can be a useful tool to support the delivery of a best-in-class customer experience. Designed with user and employee perspectives in mind, service blueprints are used to assess, implement, and maintain a service process. We’ve outlined the steps for creating an effective service blueprint below.
The process for creating service blueprints
The process of creating a service blueprint can be broken down into these 5 stages:
- Define the goals. For example, this could be to improve customer or employee experience, improve efficiency and understanding across teams. It’s important to identify which internal teams are part of the service and include representatives within the research and refinement stages. An initial collaboration workshop with stakeholders can be useful at this stage.
- Conduct research and gather information. This can include interviews with employees and customers, observations, site visits and gathering any existing materials such as journey maps or employee handbooks.
- Map the data. We begin by defining the blueprint stages. Following this we analyse the data to this often includes information such as: user goals and motivations, actions, touchpoints, emotions and pain points as well as internal teams responsible, actions, tools and pain points.
- Iterate and refine with stakeholders. Once data gathered has been mapped we invite stakeholders to review the blueprint, which provides an opportunity to fill any knowledge gaps and ensure all stakeholders are in agreement. It is important that this group is representative of the teams included in the blueprint.
- Visualise the Service Blueprint. Following the workshop, any additional information can be added or updated and the blueprint visualised following the organisation’s brand guidelines.
Learn how to create a service blueprint
Inside our guide ‘How to deliver outstanding customer experiences’, we’ve created a step-by-step process for anyone interested in creating service blueprints. The recommendations and insights are based on our research and experience working with organisations such as Google, Design Museum and Virgin Media. You can download the guide, free, below.
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