What is a Service Blueprint?

Right now, all over the world, there are organisations that are in the middle of transforming the way they work. Services are being reviewed and changes are being made in every department. Workshops are in full flow and teams are being engaged in activities to streamline what they do — unpicking processes, identifying pain points, removing the waste, and building back to be leaner and more efficient than before. There’s lots of talk about customers, but nobody has thought to involve them yet — although there are plans to get their feedback on the changes just before they go live. There’s a huge amount of activity taking place, but very little of it feels connected. Everything is happening in siloes and the transformation simply isn’t having the impact everyone thought it would.

We’ve probably all experienced this kind of scenario, or something very similar, at one time or another, right? Thankfully, over the past few years, the approach many organisations have chosen to take in order to transform how they work has been different. By taking a design-led approach, organisations have begun to understand that it is possible to achieve better outcomes for both customers and the business by breaking down silos — working horizontally across directorates, departments, and teams, to design new end-to-end services which meet customer needs and are desirable, viable and feasible. Wrapped up in this approach is an acknowledgement that customer experience isn’t simply about the destination — it’s about how you get there. Even when dealing with the smallest transactions, customer satisfaction isn’t only gained from achieving a goal, but in the experience of doing so.

Service design is key to enabling organisations to reimagine the way they work. Service design tools such as customer journey maps and service blueprints are horizontal by nature — cutting through siloed business functions to enable us to view customer objectives as a part of an interconnected end-to-end ecosystem. Often, the success of an individual business function is measured against performance in terms of the touchpoint they look after. However, customers encounter numerous touchpoints along their journey and often won’t realise, or care, that they each belong to a fragmented network of teams and processes on the business side — teams and processes that when measured in silos might be shown to be performing well, but when considered as a whole, often show this not to be the case at all.

Whilst a customer journey map can be used as a standalone artefact, the real power comes when elements of the customer journey are included as part of the service blueprint. A customer journey map is great at helping us understand customer experience by highlighting the emotions, value, and key moments in a customer journey. In contrast, a service blueprint is great at helping us identify the touchpoints customers use to engage with a service, as well as understanding the business processes and operational detail which sits underneath them. By combining the two, it is possible to see how the needs of the customer can often be at odds with the needs of the business. By adding qualitative data such as a customer quote or contextual photograph, it is possible to see in one frame of view what’s happening on the business side when a customer is experiencing joy or frustration.

In its most simple form, a service blueprint consists of two core elements — the ‘ line of interaction’ and the ‘ line of visibility ‘, as well as five distinct sections or swim lanes that sit around these core elements.

The Line of Interaction

Everything above the line of interaction communicates the customer journey. Actions that cross this line constitute an occasion where the customer interacts with the service through one of a number of touchpoints. Touchpoints can be a telephone conversation with a company employee, the submission of a form, or the sending of a letter or email.

The sections or swim lanes that sit above the line of interaction are:

• Physical evidence: These are the times a customer directly interacts with a service through a service touchpoint. This section provides evidence that a service exists. Touchpoints can be contacts instigated by the customer, for example, a feedback survey, or a contact instigated by the business, for example, a newsletter or payment reminder.
• Customer actions: These are the things a customer does to engage with a service. This section is populated by items from the customer journey map and should include elements that convey customer emotions including comments, quotes, and contextual photographs.

The section or swim lane that sits below the line of interaction and above the line of visibility is:

The Line of Visibility

The line of visibility sits below the line of interaction. Everything above this line is something that a customer can see (front of stage), for example, a live chat window or reception desk. Everything below the line of visibility highlights the actions a customer cannot see that are part of the service (backstage).

The sections or swim lanes that sit below the line of visibility are:

• Backstage actions: These are the activities that occur behind the scenes to support elements of the service being delivered front of stage. This section details the people, activities, and technology that a customer can’t see but play a role in delivering the service which is being received.
• Support processes: These are the activities undertaken by company employees who typically don’t interact directly with customers.

Sometimes a third core element in the form of an ‘ internal line of interaction ‘ can sit between the backstage actions and the support processes.

When creating a service blueprint, it is important to consider the level of detail required. If we zoom out too far, our blueprint could become too generalised to provide any real value. Conversely, if we zoom in too close, our blueprint could become too detailed. The sweet spot is somewhere in the middle, where we can include enough detail to be useful but not too much to become prohibitive to moving forward.

A service blueprint provides the structure from which we can plan the people, touchpoints, processes, and technology required to achieve a customer objective. It allows us to understand this from both a front of stage perspective (through the journey map which highlights the way customers experience a service), as well as from a backstage perspective (what happens on the business side — the things that customers don’t get to see). Because they capture both the customer experience and the operational characteristics of a service, blueprints are particularly useful when used at each stage of the design process. When updated and maintained effectively as a design-led project progresses, service blueprints become an operational tool that provides enough detail to enable teams to analyse the current state (how things currently are), design ways of making things better (blueprints can become a low fidelity prototype), move towards the future state (guide change), and maintain ongoing service delivery.

Service blueprints and the work to create them forms an essential part of a project. As a design artefact, they can be deployed at each stage of the design process to help communicate discovery, guide definition, prototype during development, and plan during delivery. I’ve used service blueprints throughout my service design career and have found them to be an invaluable tool, not only in the practical value they bring but also in generating buy-in from key operational colleagues that otherwise might be difficult to obtain.

Service blueprints shine an undisputable light on the realities of a business’s operations, that often cannot be ignored.

Originally published at http://simonpenny.wordpress.com on March 16, 2022.