Creating a service blueprint that supports internal teams to resolve potential customer issues and ensure an outstanding customer support experience.
Make it Clear have been working with Cambridge University Press & Assessment for over 7 years across a variety of UX, digital and marketing projects.
Cambridge Advance Online (CAO) is a new programme of short online courses from the University of Cambridge, delivering leading online learning experiences for professionals looking to advance their careers. CAO courses are designed and developed by the Cambridge Online Education team.
The challenge
Delivering outstanding customer support is vital for any organisation that wants to achieve a best-in-class customer experience. Cambridge University Press & Assessment wanted to ensure their internal processes to support customer issue resolution were defined, documented and teams were aligned ready for the launch of the new programme. Working with the teams involved in the delivery of CAO, we developed a service blueprint that mapped customer issues and the backstage systems, actions, and escalation processes. Creating a clear reference document which enables shared understanding for all teams involved.
Our approach
To kick-off the project, a workshop with stakeholders was conducted to uncover insights on current challenges, identify existing materials of relevance and align goals.
Working with internal stakeholders we validated, grouped, and prioritised anticipated customer issues which were then used as the basis for a series of remote workshops, each covering a different stage of the customer journey. These workshops focused on uncovering the necessary actions, touch points, teams, systems, and escalation processes for the potential issues of each journey stage. This even extended to capturing KPIs, timings and policies to ensure all relevant areas were covered to support actioning the customer issue. Workshop groups were composed of representatives from each team involved in the customer support journey. This is crucial to gain insights and feedback from those directly involved, enable voices to be heard and ensure smooth onboarding to changes in ways of working.
As the content was further defined and confirmed the fidelity of the service blueprint was increased to reflect this. Finally, this was visualised on a Miro board to enable the blueprint to remain a living document which can be continually updated and remain the single source of truth as the service evolves. To ensure any user of the service blueprint had a clear understanding of its use and purpose, we also created a walk-through video.
Business impact
The blueprint will be used by CAO teams to effectively implement, maintain, and review customer support processes as the service develops over time. As of February 2022, the first of the CAO courses have begun, we look forward to receiving feedback from customer support teams in due course.
Find out more
To see more on our tips for creating effective service blueprints check out our blog post “6 tips for service blueprints”.