A guide on What is a Service Blueprint?

It is not an easy task to design a plan for service providing and check whether the services you are providing or going to provide are effective. We use different good methods for mapping the service, and some are not likely to have good scope. So, you need to look for effective service mapping methods to design or redesign the activities to explore e customers' actions, employees' performance, and other activities behind creating a service. 

So, you will be going through different complex processes for any service-providing business. While looking for the best ideas for mapping out the services, the experts use the Service Blueprint method to get the best result over and over. Before you start working on this technique, you need to know what is a Service Blueprint and how it is effective in mapping the quality of services. 

What is a Service Blueprint?

Like blueprints of physical buildings and projects, the service Blueprints are the pictures that experts design to check the effectiveness of their services to their customers. A Service Blueprint is a diagram elaborating the relationship between different components, service providers or service receivers.

• You can map out services, whether they are with physical evidence or digital evidence. 
• A service Blueprint is a customer's journey map that is quite complex but is much helpful in tracking the drawbacks of the services, either in frontstage or backstage services.
• When you come to a Service Blueprint, you will understand its applications in different service-providing companies like Uber. 

After knowing what a Service Blueprint is, you can better understand how it can help you keep track of your customer services, know their likes and dislikes, and improve the services by considering the reviews. 

Important elements of a Service Blueprint 

When you are learning about a service blueprint, you must know the important elements of a service blueprint. You will have two basic types of a service blueprint which are:

1. Primary elements 
2. Secondary elements

Primary elements of a Service Blueprint 

The primary elements of a service blueprint are of much importance and play a key role in developing the map for the service. So, when you are looking to map out a service blueprint, you should first focus on the primary elements that are the base of making a service blueprint. The following are important key elements of a service blueprint. 

Customer actions 

When looking to map the services through a service blueprint, you should look for the customer actions. Now, you are curious about customer actions? Yes, it seems something different than what we mean by customer actions. Customer actions are the ways customers behave, like what steps they take to for the services, how they communicate and interact with the service providers, and what they expect from the services. These all things are categorized as customers' actions, also known as customers' journeys.

Onstage employee interaction 

After the customer actions, what matters most is the interaction of the onstage employee with the customers. Thinking of what is onstage employee interaction? Onstage or frontstage employee interaction is about the employees who directly interact with the customers either physically or digitally. Sometimes, the employees interact with the customers when they visit their store or outlet and serve them. In contrast, in other cases, the customers visit your website and contact you by asking questions about the service. 

Non-visible employee actions

Not only do direct interactions have value but non-visible or backstage employee interaction. Non-visible employee actions are not visible in front of customers, but they affect the customers indirectly. Non-visible employee actions are behind the scene, like a tailor stitching the clothes does not contact customers. 

Support processes for customers

Support processes are the customer support services that are not visible to the customer, like Email but serving at their best to ease the customer. 

Physical evidence 

Physical evidence is face-to-face interaction of the service provider with the customers. Somehow, you are providing him some living example of your service that the customer can expect to have. Physical evidence may include a decoration, the visible feature of a product, or the running of service with wonderful features to attract the customers to meet you live. 

Lines 

Lines may be of different types to let your customer decide about future purchases from your store.

Line of interaction 

The first line is a line of interaction that comes with direct interaction of the customers with the organization and them with the employees. It helps the customer decide whether he should own these services. 

Line of visibility 

The second line is the line of visibility, and it directs the customers with visible services and features of the products or services. 

Line of internal services 

The last line is the line of internal services that are not visible to the customer but indirectly influence the customers' decisions. 

Secondary elements of a Service Blueprint 

The secondary or secondly important elements of a service Blueprint are the following.

Arrows 

Experts use arrows the represent the relationship between the customer and the employee that tend to show the direction of the interaction. You can use single and double arrows for one-sided exchange of services or goods and correlation of agreement between both parties. 

Time

Some services allocate time. If you provide the services, then your service blueprint must follow this secondary time element. 

Emotions 

Some services are linked with customers' emotions, so you need to consider them as well. 

Metrics 

You can also add metrics to your service blueprint to track progress. 

What are the advantages of using Service Blueprint?

So, when you know what a service blueprint is and its components, you should know its advantages for a service provider. By using the service blueprint, you can enjoy the following advantages. 

We can find the things in the user interface. 

If you are using a service blueprint, you can easily identify the flaws or drawbacks of your customer's services. You can track the poor user interface happening due to internal management of the organization and make strategies for bringing reforms. 

We can bring optimization by eliminating the redundancy 

You can also find the areas where you need to optimization of the errors, fix the bugs, and bring the best of your services. 

It coordinates the work. 

It also helps you in the coordination of work by bridging up different departments and getting the goals. A service blueprint is a much more effective tool for sorting out the complex services and measuring the success of a department, and correlating it with other departments. 

Helps in decision-making deals

When you can track the poor user interface and discover the weaknesses of the department, you can easily make a fine decision about the respective service. 

It supports marketing internally and eternally. 

After understanding what a service blueprint is, you will come to know it's important to support the marketing internally and externally. As it identifies the opportunities for improving the services, so you can find the ways to improve the trend of marketing as well. 

How to make an effective Service Blueprint?

It not enough to know what is a service blueprint but you need to know how you can create a service blueprint for your business. The following steps will help you to create an effective service blueprint. 

Identification of service process 

First of all, you need to identify the service process to want to go through the service blueprint. By doing so, you make half of the work done. Experts reveal that most people do not know for what purpose or service they are going to use blueprint service. 

Categorize the segments of customers 

Different businesses have different customers who belong to different segments. You need to identify the segments of different customers so that you can let them categorize according to their needs and requirements for the services you are providing. 

Mapping of all employees' services 

Now start mapping the employees' services of all employees, whether they are onstage employees or backstage employees. Mapping of the employees' services will let you know where the operation is lacking and if you need improvement in the relevant department. 

Explore the impact of internal actions 

By enlisting different departments and their employees, you need to know the activities of all employees, whether they are internal or external. You even need to map the services of internal employees who are not in direct interaction with the employees. 

Add physical evidence

Now, add some physical evidence to let you decide what things the customers admire about your services and what they demand to improve or quit. 

Refine the diagram and share 

You can refine the diagram by adding the secondary elements like time and emotion and finalize it to share with your team members. 

Conclusion 

When you are selling the services or products, the customers are looking forward to the best services. So, it would help if you kept mapping the services to bring improvements with the time by learning about what is a service blueprint and how you can use it for betterment.