Service Blueprinting VS. Customer Journey Mapping

Service Blueprinting VS. Customer Journey Mapping

Hello! ?? This is?Customer Experience Works, a weekly series sharing actionable advice to help you improve your customer experience. If you're new to our community and would like to improve the customer experience at your organization, click the?'Subscribe'?button above. Want to request a future topic? Let me know in the comments!


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.

  • A customer journey map is from the customer's perspective, and focused on their actions, feelings, thoughts and needs.
  • A service blueprint builds on that outside-in perspective and considers the inside-out requirements.

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.

  1. The customer visits the app on their mobile device.
  2. They make selections based on what they see is offered there, checking boxes.
  3. They see their selections in their shopping cart.
  4. They pay with a credit card and schedule a delivery date.
  5. They might receive confirmation communications and updates on their delivery.
  6. Then the groceries are delivered. The customer sees this as a success!

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.

  • The app requires backend technology and processes to ensure the information the customer submits is saved.
  • The payment process requires layers of security and banking technology.
  • The groceries must be selected by a human shopper, who requires scheduling and other layers of communication and payment options.

And on and on it goes!

?

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:

  • Physical Evidence
  • Customer Actions
  • Frontstage Actions
  • Backstage Actions
  • Support Processes
  • Lines of Visibility & Interaction

For the purposes of this article, let's focus on the three key steps toward building and using a service blueprint.


Service Blueprinting example
Image from

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:

  1. Customer Actions -- those actions the customer takes along their journey.
  2. Employee Actions -- those actions that employees take to directly engage the customer.

Some customer actions are independent of employee actions. Examples include:

  • Ordering directly from an app, like in our example above
  • Using a self-checkout system
  • Using a website or other technology

But many customer and employee actions will have multiple points of interaction. Examples of this include:

  • Customer support providing direct customer service to the customer
  • A sales associate manually processing a customer payment
  • An account manager reaching out after a sale to follow up with a customer

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:

  • Tasks employees need to complete behind the scenes
  • Systems and technology required to move the customer to the next step
  • Processes required to deliver the experience promised

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.

  • Share your blueprint with company stakeholders -- managers, operations, IT, etc -- to get everybody aligned to one goal around the customer.
  • Use it to create cross-functional teams who can clearly see how their role fits into the bigger picture.
  • Address the most glaring points of friction for your team and customers

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:

  • 32 minutes of video lessons
  • A service blueprint template worksheet
  • Two example service blueprints
  • A data-gathering checklist
  • A workshop preparation checklist
  • Certification upon completion


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.

Experience Investigators crane logo

This article originally appeared as Service Blueprinting and the Next Normal on ExperienceInvestigators.com .

Abbas Haider Ali

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

Debbie Hart

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.

回复
回复

要查看或添加评论,请登录

社区洞察

其他会员也浏览了