Purpose
The Service Blueprint template is a very simple but powerful way to visualize the intangible nature of a service process. The magic happens when you put activities of relevant stakeholders of a service process, ranging from customers, front-stage staff and interfaces as well as (invisible) back-end process along a timeline. This timeline usually includes several stages of a service process such as "Attention", "Interest", "Desire", "Point of sale (POS)", "Delivery", "Usage" and "Disposal". For each stakeholder's activities, the templates provides dedicated swim lanes. Interactions or dependencies between activities, either of one stakeholder or across different stakeholders, can be marked with unidirectional or bidirectional arrows. It is that simple!
A challenge is, however, to find the "right altitude" for the description of activities. A very detailed breakdown of activities may lead to a very complicated visualization and a high-level description may not give you the insights you want to gain. Double-check after the completion of the first third of the template whether the results serve the purpose you aim for.
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Usage Scenarios
- Modeling as-is situations of a current service experience
- Creating future service experiences
Layout
Key Elements
| Element | Question(s) | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| Customer interaction | What do customers do to interact with our service? | Fill in activities of customers along the timeline |
| Physical evidence | What physical places or artefacts do customers encounter along the service experience? | Fill in brief descriptions of surroundings, places, artifacts (e.g. brochures, software, furnitures, shops) customers see or use along the timeline |
| Front-stage interaction | What do we do to serve customers, which is visible to them? | Fill in activities of front-stage staff or other systems (e.g. software) as interfaces between customers and the organization along the timeline |
| Back-stage processes | What processes are required to deliver the service that customers do not see? | Fill in activities that happen in the background, invisible to customers but necessary to deliver the service (e.g. automated generation of invoices) |
| Resources | What resources are required to execute the back-stage processes and deliver the service? | Fill in everything or everyone that / who is involved in the service delivery process |