Service Blueprint

Representation of the service process, divided into perceptible (frontstage) and imperceptible (backstage) activities.

What is it about?

A service blueprint is one of the best possible methods to depict roles, activities and dependencies, as well as the entire service delivery process, already in the early idea phase.

The blueprint describes the blueprint of the service, the system architecture and the interaction interfaces.

Note

The focus should be on describing the core performance characteristics early on - too granular a presentation in the first step should be avoided.

What is being done?

The mapping of the ideal flowchart of a service is presented as a diagram with different levels. This visualisation makes it possible to show the flow of actions that each department and stakeholder must carry out during the process.

This easily illustrates the distribution of tasks and the degree of customer integration. The separation into front- and backstage activities makes it visible which performance and enthusiasm features are perceived by the users.

As a first step, a detailed description of the core performance characteristics should be aimed for. Here, focus is important and too granular a presentation should be avoided.

For optimal results, the creation of the service blueprint takes place in a team of stakeholders and persons responsible for the individual processes. The size of the team should be 3 to 6 people.

The time required depends on the objective and the process limits. Depending on the type and scope of the creation, 2 to 4 hours are required.

To illustrate all levels in the best possible way, a large wall is needed for the design - a whiteboard is particularly suitable. In addition, Post-Its and pens in different colours are used.

Service Blueprint - The Line of Visibility separates Frontstage and Backstage

Step-by-step guide

1. breakdown of the service levels

Divide the wall into different levels, each with its own horizontal line. Exemplary and individually adaptable templates can be used for this.

The following bullet points can be used:

Actions / User experience
Touchpoints
Actors involved
Perceptible activities (front stage)
Non-perceptible activities (backstage)

2. collect contents

Collect content and write it down on Post-Its / slips of paper. These contents are assigned to the individual levels step by step.

3. representation of the user journey

Display the user journey chronologically. Show actions and touchpoints in a separate layer.

4. description of the actual state

Describe the actual state and the respective actors as a process model. Here there is the possibility to highlight sources of error and problems.

5. perceptible activities (frontstage)

Document perceptible activities (front stages).

Representation of the processes between human-to-human
Representation of the processes between human-to-machine

6. separation frontstage and backstage

Draw a horizontal line between frontstage and backstage to show visibility.

7. imperceptible activities (backstage)

Representation of the backend processes
Representation of the support processes

8. identify potential for improvement

Identify optimisation opportunities, improvements for processes and elimination of error sources and attach them to individual points.

9. testing

Test, adapt and implement the service blueprint at all levels.

A Service Blueprint is best carried out with a piece of paper and a pencil in the context of a workshop

Further notes on the application of the Service Blueprint

Making the Service Blueprint a tangible experience

It is worthwhile to carry out the Service Blueprint created in theory as an example of a scenario that can be experienced. For this purpose, different team members take on the roles of those involved and play through all the individual process steps visualised beforehand. In this way, opportunities for improvement and sources of error can be identified.

Set clear goals

When creating a service bleuprint, it can happen that processes are depicted too broadly or too much time and space is spent on details. It is therefore important to set limits in advance and determine which specific processes are to be worked on.

Make individual adjustments

It is possible to add further levels to the Service Blueprint.

It is important that all layers are given comprehensible titles and a short description is added to them. This ensures that even people who were not involved in the creation of the mapping can understand and use it straight away.