Service Blueprinting VS. Customer Journey Mapping
Jeannie Walters, CCXP, CSP
Customer Experience Speaker, Trainer, Podcast Host, and CEO
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Architects rely on blueprints to understand structures and determine critical choices like where to bust down a wall. Experience leaders can use this same philosophy and approach with service blueprints.
What is a Service Blueprint? How Does it Differ From a Customer Journey Map?
Service blueprints are designed to map out the future experience for customers as well as the backend processes and systems to make the experience happen.
This might sound like a customer journey map, but there are a few distinctions.
The service blueprint conveys what people, processes, systems and communications are required to deliver on the best experience for your customer.
As an example, consider how a customer orders groceries using an app.
A customer journey map would show the experience your customer has or the experience you'd like to design. But those groceries don't show up magically, do they?
A service blueprint considers the customer experience, then drills down to the "backstage" events.
And on and on it goes!
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How to Build a Service Blueprint
There are several steps to building a service blueprint, and the best ones include nuance and an understanding of the entire end-to-end journey:
For the purposes of this article, let's focus on the three key steps toward building and using a service blueprint.
1. Map the Frontstage Actions
Frontstage actions are all about what the customer sees and interacts with along the journey. This includes experiences like ordering on the app, like in our example.
We can think of Frontstage actions as having two components:
Some customer actions are independent of employee actions. Examples include:
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But many customer and employee actions will have multiple points of interaction. Examples of this include:
It's helpful to track these interactions, and we can do so with a line of interaction, a literal line drawn on our service blueprint that helps us track where these interactions occur.
Here's a tip that will save you time: When mapping your frontstage actions, use existing resources -- like your customer journey map or Net Promoter Score (NPS) feedback -- as points of reference for your blueprint.
2. Map those Backstage Actions
What happens behind the scenes? Consider:
Backstage actions often include their own "Line of Internal Interaction." Employees might swipe a credit card and wait for approval from a system, for example.
In this example, the way the system works is not visible to the employee or the customer. But the success of failure of that system has a direct impact on the customer experience.
These processes that affect the customer without direct visibility are referred to as support processes.
Service blueprints help bring all of these points of potential delight or friction into full view.
3. Use the Blueprint to Create Solutions
Service blueprints are more than just documents outlining actions and interactions. They're tools which can remedy long-standing points of frustration -- not only for your customers, but for your team as well.
You can even use your service blueprint to train new employees as they're brought on.
Ready to Get Started with Your Own Service Blueprint?
I encourage you to take my LinkedIn Learning course — Customer Experience: Service Blueprinting — which includes:
Service Blueprints are the Perfect Complement to Customer Journey Maps
Just like journey maps, service blueprints are not about an artifact. They’re there to be a tool and resource.
Now is the perfect time to leverage these tools to do what’s best for your organization, your employees and your customers.
This article originally appeared as Service Blueprinting and the Next Normal on ExperienceInvestigators.com .
VP @ GitHub ($2B+ ARR) leading post-sales incl. Customer Success, Professional Services, Support, Renewals, Strategy, and CS Engineering orgs | ex-Twilio | ex-Segment | Investor | Advisor | Mentor
2 个月Great framing! cc Natalie Bradley Michael Goetz
MBA
2 个月Insightful
MBA
2 个月Love this
Expert Customer Experience Management Training ? Mystery Shopping & Business Assessments ? Event Services
2 个月Great points. As far as apps go businesses should either use a customer or hire a mystery shopper to use the app after it's developed. I see too many apps missing pertinent things that discourage customers.
Very insightful!