Service blueprints map out the relationship between various service components (people, processes, and props) and customer touchpoints. In this article, we answer the most frequently asked questions we receive about service blueprinting in our full-day course, Service Blueprinting.
1. How Does a Service Blueprint Differ from a Customer-Journey Map?
Think of service blueprints as a sequel to customer-journey maps. Like customer-journey maps, blueprints render complex scenarios spanning many service-related offerings. Blueprinting is an ideal approach to experiences that are omnichannel, involve multiple touchpoints, or require a crossfunctional effort (that is, coordination of multiple departments that all contribute to a user’s end-to-end experience).
In terms of the artifacts themselves, the biggest similarity between the two is the presence of customer actions. This “swimlane” (or row of actions) acts as a foundation in both maps.
Customer-journey maps and service blueprints can have common components. For example, if the two maps are based on the same persona and they have the same scope, the customer-actions swimlane will be the same in the customer-journey map and service blueprint. However, the other swimlanes will be different.
The goal of customer-journey maps is to better understand the end users’ journey. This journey includes their thoughts and emotions. In contrast, service blueprints reflect the organization's perspective and thus include frontstage actions, backstage actions, and support processes. The primary focus of a customer-journey map is to learn more about the end user, while the focus of a service blueprint is to document how the organization creates that experience.
Though the phases often align in customer-journey maps and service blueprints, the two visualizations reflect different perspectives on each phase. In customer-journey map, phase 1 (blue area) is viewed through the lens of the customers’ actions, thoughts, and emotions. In the parallel service blueprint, the same phase 1 is seen from the viewpoint of the company and illustrates what the organization is doing time to produce corresponding customer experience.
For example, imagine the above customer-journey map was about buying a car. Phase 1 in the customer-journey map would be research and discovery. The customer-journey map would tell us what users do (search online and visit car dealerships), how they feel (overwhelmed and excited), and what they thinks (“What do I want?” or “How much am I willing to spend?”). The service blueprint would highlight what the car dealership does during this phase in the customer-journey — for example. meeting and greeting the customer, uploading new cars to the website, and offering expertise and guidance.
For more on the similarities and differences between customer-journey maps and service blueprints (and other mapping methods), check out our article, UX Mapping Methods Compared: A Cheat Sheet.
2. What Is the Primary Goal of Blueprinting?
The most common goal of service blueprint is to give an organization a comprehensive understanding of its service and the underlying resources and processes — seen and unseen to the user — needed to make the customer experience possible. This comprehensive understanding can be used to:
- Discover weaknesses. A blueprint acts as a treasure map that helps businesses visualize exactly who is doing what, when. In many cases, the greatest insight offered by blueprinting is what the business is not doing and where it does not support its customers.
- Eliminate redundancy. Blueprints identify opportunities for optimization by providing a map of each actor and action that are part of the service. This visualization often surfaces duplication of work and highlights where internal processes can be streamlined (by having two actors collaborate or by consolidating actors and actions).
- Coordinate future changes. Blueprinting communicates vision and strategy for a complex service. The blueprint becomes a single source of truth across departments and disciplines. All parties reference the same visualization and thus can make informed, coordinated decisions that align to the ideal state of the service.
3. Who Should Be Involved in Service Blueprinting?
The composition of your blueprinting team should directly map onto the context, scenario, and goal of your blueprinting initiative. For example, the broader the scope of your blueprint, the more crossdepartmental involvement will be required. Think of your blueprint as a checklist; enlist a knowledge holder from each phase and from each swimlane, to ensure you have a well-rounded participants and you don’t leave out key parties.
This example blueprint scope covers the Discover, Try, and Buy phases and 4 different swimlanes. Therefore, your blueprinting initiative should include a knowledge holder for each cell of the resulting 3x4 matrix. Thus, stakeholders or team members from each of the internal departments that cover that aspect of the customer journey should be involved. From each of these departments, include knowledge holders and actors closely familiar with the end user, as well as frontstage and backstage actors.
In our recent service blueprinting research, we asked participants who they involved in in service-blueprinting projects. Our research indicated that fewer than half of the respondents’ organizations included senior leadership, customer support, marketing, and sales in their service-blueprint initiatives. This lack of collaboration is disappointing; it results in less effective initiatives due to lack of stakeholder support, limits access to valuable information from frontstage and backstage employees, and decreases buy-in and ownership. Service blueprinting should involve departments like design, research, product or project management, engineering or development, senior leadership, customer support, marketing, and sales.
When it comes to determining which specific individuals to include from each department, give priority to those with organizational pull or with a wide range of access to research or people. These team members can help transfer trust, insights, and buy-in to the larger organization.
4. What Kind of Research Is Needed for Service Blueprinting?
Service blueprinting is qualitative framework, and thus requires qualitative research. While quantitative data can be used as a layer to indicate scale and magnitude, the meat of the blueprint is derived from qualitative data inputs. Contrary to the research data for customer-journey mapping, much of the research needed for blueprinting is internal, and thus often fairly accessible. Once a baseline of customer actions is established for a given scenario, internal research can be gathered from organizational employees, clients, or third-party vendors.
Start by seeking out existing data from outlets like previously done customer or employee-satisfaction surveys, support tickets, or past interview transcripts. By identifying already existent data, you can create a research plan to fill knowledge gaps.
Supplement existing data with additional qualitative data. While attitudinal research like surveys and interviews is easy to work with, what people say doesn’t always match what they do. For this reason, aim for a mix of attitudinal and behavioral research (such as direct observation or contextual inquiry, user interviews, and diary studies).
Consider exploring a cognitive mapping interview format. Cognitive mapping is particularly valuable for blueprinting research as it surfaces and visualizes employees’ mental models.
5. When Should We Use Service Blueprints?
Service blueprints are useful throughout the product-design lifecycle.
Service blueprints can be used for various purposes throughout the design process.
For example, consider the design-thinking process. Blueprinting can be used during the Empathize and Define stages to understand the landscape of the service. Later in the process, it can be used as a way to ideate and prototype potential future changes to internal processes. Lastly, towards implementation, consider using the blueprint, as an artifact, to communicate the vision and goals of the ideal state of your service.
During the Empathize and Define stages use blueprinting to:
- Define a research plan by documenting what you know and what you need to know
- Understand employees’ current pain points
- Identify opportunities based on current process breakdowns
- Align and prioritize on which areas of the service to focus future time and resources
During the Ideate and Prototype stages use blueprinting to:
- Ideate and visualize new processes
- Prototype future changes before spending the time and resources implementing something that doesn’t logistically work
- Measure potential business impact from process changes
During the Test and Implement stages use blueprinting to:
- Track success and inform a the organizational roadmap
- Communicate changes across departments
- Break down silos and align everyone behind a single source of truth
- Benchmark changes over time against large strategic service goals
For more on when you can use your service blueprints, see our article Service Blueprinting in Practice.
6. How High-Fidelity Should My Blueprint Be?
The answer depends on the goal of your blueprint and where you are in the product-design lifecycle. The fidelity of your blueprint should mirror where you are and what you are trying to achieve; the earlier you are in the process, the lower the fidelity of your blueprint.
Service blueprint fidelity should increase as the design process progresses. During the early stages, focus on aligning understanding. In the later stages, focus on communicating a vision and setting goals.
It is best to start in a low-fidelity format (e.g., sticky notes on a wall), especially when you use a blueprint to understand and define gaps or pain points. As the blueprint begins to be circulated to others, it should take a higher-fidelity format. The high fidelity increases legibility, trust in the artifact, and shareability.
The map itself is simply a tool to share insights with others. Create a visual that will communicate why you blueprinted in the first place — the critical moments, pain points, high points, or opportunities.
7. How Long Does It Take to Blueprint?
The amount of time depends on the scope of your blueprint. This is because scope will largely impact various other factors, such as the number of people involved, fidelity of the blueprint, the amount of research needed, and stakeholder oversight.
When we conducted research to understand how practitioners use service blueprinting, we asked participants how long their most recent blueprinting project was. We asked them to distinguish between the time it took them to conduct research for the blueprint and the time it took to make the blueprint itself. We further segmented the data into two groups — those blueprinting a focused experience (3 or fewer touchpoints) versus those blueprinting an entire experience ( a broad, crossdepartmental scope including multiple touchpoints).
The majority of participants, regardless of scope, spent less than 1 month conducting research and less than 1 month creating the blueprint itself.
Almost half of teams creating focused-experience blueprints spent less than 2 weeks conducting research and less than 1 week creating the blueprint itself.
The majority of teams creating entire-experience blueprints spend less than 1 month conducting research and less than 1 month creating the blueprint.
When it comes to both scope and time invested, our suggestion is to start small, with a focused scope that requires minimal and accessible research. You will have the opportunity to become familiar with the method, as well as onboard others to the purpose and process of blueprinting. Measure and track the insights, changes, and benefits of the process. As you expand your scope, and thus require more resources from the business, you will be in a better position to create a useful blueprint: you will have an experienced team who is familiar with blueprinting, a previous blueprint to show stakeholders, and most importantly, confidence to lead and drive the initiative forward.
8. How Do I Sell Blueprinting to My Organization?
The most successful way to prove the value of any UX method to the business is a 3-step protocol:
- Involve stakeholders early and often. The earlier you can involve stakeholders, the better, for two reasons: First, they develop coownership early and, as a result, they will likely go out of their way to help the effort succeed. Second, they are more likely to believe in the output. Simply put, they trust the deliverable because they witnessed the process.
- Track success and use it as evidence. Just as we map the effect of design changes on our website, we should map the effect of process changes. Start with a small group and small scope and make a blueprint, then measure its usefulness. Poll your colleagues afterward — did they find it useful? Track how often you use it to communicate with others within the business. These numbers can validate the value when you ask for time and resources to blueprint from managers and stakeholders.
- Translate user needs into business impact. Our job is to translate the insights from our blueprints into business impact. Ask yourself: If we make this change, what will it mean to the business? Or: If we can understand this service breakdown, then how will it affect the business (time, money, resources, satisfaction)? When presenting why you want to blueprint to the organization, clearly identify and communicate the impact it may have in business-focused terms.
Conclusion
Service blueprints are companions to customer-journey maps: they help organizations see the big picture of how a service is implemented by the company and used by the customers. Service blueprinting is a qualitative framework used to pinpoint dependencies between employee-facing and customer-facing processes. Adapt the amount of time you spend, the stakeholders you involve, and the fidelity you work towards depending on your context and goals.
Share this article: