In today’s world, the service economy is one of the essential branches of the economy for developed countries. We have tons of services spread worldwide and many tools that allow us to be more and more efficient each day.

In this article, we will be talking about one of those tools: service blueprint. There are many service blueprint examples that you have probably seen and just didn’t know what they’re used for. It’s a tool that is spread out in the service world.

It tries to create a visual representation of what happens from the start of the interaction between service and customers and what processes are happening during each moment in the customer’s journey.

The service blueprint template map lets you see different service components at each step. You can see some of the phases the customer participates in and some issues in the existing process that could be improved upon.

Customer journey maps are an essential part of making customers happy. We will accomplish that with this quick guide on the topic.

But before diving into the wonderful world of customer service, let us first focus on the software we will use in this environment. As usual in those cases, we recommend using Microsoft Office.

It is, after all, the single, most reliable program ever created for all office needs. You can create your projects or use some of the templates we’re about to provide later in this article.

You can transfer the files quickly, and most people can open them and work on them. It is also one of the most popular programs ever created, so most people already have experience with it.

Also, you can find Microsoft Office 2021 Professional Plus Key Retail Global for an affordable price these days. It’s not an unattainable software that only the wealthy can afford anymore. In this day and age, with so many competitors, the prices have gone down. At RoyalCDKeys, we have multiple different versions of this software that will surely suit most of your needs.

It’s a pretty good template for all your service blueprinting needs. You can see all the essential information, add or lose some parts of it, and overall – it’s a perfect tool for most potential uses. You can download this template for free at USDA.gov. 

In the end, though, you can easily create a service blueprint with most Microsoft Office programs, such as Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, or even PowerPoint. In the most basic form, it is the table you can insert and change whenever you want.

The main strength of the service blueprint is the table of contents, which we’ll discuss in detail in this article to create your service blueprint templates.

The most basic model of the service blueprint consists of the five most important components.

• Physical evidence
• Customer actions
• Frontstage or visible employee actions
• Backstage or invisible contact employee actions
• Support processes

Of course, there are some optional categories to create a customer experience specific to the kind of business you’re making.

Let’s go over now the most common elements of the service blueprint.

Physical Evidence

This lane will show you what the customers and employees are getting in contact with. This would be the location of your business, website, and elements on the frontline of your business.

Even though it may be the first lane in most service blueprint templates, it is added last in most cases.

Customer Actions

This element shows you what customers usually will do when contacting your service point. Whether talking to the service workers, visiting your website or app, or buying or selling something on your marketplace, it will show up in this lane.

Frontstage or Visible Employee Actions

This element will describe what is visible to the customer when interacting with your business. Whether a physical location or online space, it encompasses all the necessary actions that will be visible to the customers. It can be as simple as responding to them in the chat or more advanced, like literally performing the massage service.

Backstage or Invisible Contact Employee Actions

This is the flip side of what we’ve described before. Customers will not see all the actions done by the employees but will see the effects. It could be anything from the content on the website, seeing ads on social media platforms, or just finishing the service process in detail.

Support Processes

This is the “everything-we-don’t-know-where-to-put-goes-in-here” kind of element. It can be, for example, all the planning that went into creating customer service. It could be some additional elements that made it possible to run the service, like contacting the local vendors for supplies, etc.

The most common use of the service blueprint is optimizing the workflow and making the customers happier with the experience. It makes a pretty good case of it by presenting all the necessary steps in the customers’ journey in a visually understandable way.

Additionally, if some changes need to be made, it can provide you with some “ammunition” to convince the executive that some changes just have to be made.

You will also be able to share the knowledge you gained while creating the service blueprint. It can benefit you with further projects and in the run of the whole company.

Additionally, if done right, a service blueprint can allow you to compare the processes of the service you have introduced to those of the competition.

The company’s services are not that easy to track. As we’ve proved times and times in this article, an excellent service blueprint can get you ahead in the service processes and ahead of your competition. 

So, let’s see just how to create a service blueprint diagram that will show all the pain points and focus on the primary concern, customer satisfaction.

Create a Scenario

The most important thing to consider is creating a customer version of events in your head. To do so, you need to think about every detail the customer will go through to use your service.

You can also do real-life training to get into a customer's mindset or hire extras to tell you about their experience and what can be improved upon in your customer service scenario.

Add the Fundamentals of Service Blueprint

Now that you have your customer scenario, add some details we discussed. Frontage, backstage actions, support processes, everything we’ve analyzed before. How will the customer perceive its look, and how will the employees react to it?

Create Detailed Lanes

One of the most valuable elements of the service blueprint is the lanes that the customers and employees “walk on.” If you can map them out in a highly detailed way, you will see three lines cross each other:

• Line of interaction -  tells you how the customer wants to interact with the company
• Line of visibility - shows how the employee is visible throughout the process,
• Line of internal actions - lines of activity for all the employees who don’t interact with the customer.

You can also add arrows to see interactions between lanes and the employees. It will allow you to understand the dependencies between them and if the customer interacts with organizational processes.

As you can see, the service blueprint template is an excellent tool for getting ahead of your competition. If done correctly, it will show you the whole customer service process.

You can add or remove parts of this process to create the best possible customer experience. You will also gain the ability to analyze this process in detail and optimize it on many levels.

A well-crafted service blueprint will get you far, and it’s no surprise that it is used in multiple areas. Especially considering that it was created in the 80s and is still being used today.