Service Blueprint
K.Thirugnana Sambanthan, Professor, SIMS
A service blueprint depicts the entire service process on a map and shows the various stages of customer interaction with the service provider, and provides minute details of the service delivery processes, the tangible evidence of the service, and the people involved in carrying it out. Blueprinting helps in breaking up the service delivery process into a series of logical steps. Blueprinting can be used in either designing or redesigning service products.
Elements of Blueprinting
- Customer role
This element involves all the steps a customer goes through in selecting a particular service, purchasing it, consuming that service, and finally rating it. A customer visits a restaurant depending on the type of food he wants to eat and his financial position. He interacts with the service personnel in the restaurant and orders the food, he consumes the food and pays the bill, offers a tip, and finally he evaluates the whole experience.
- Onstage and backstage employee actions
Onstage employee action can be any activity performed by the service employee that can be seen by the service personnel. Onstage employee action may include the manner in which a waiter takes the order, the way he serves it.
Backstage employee actions include those activities performed by the service personnel, which are necessary to support the onstage service personnel. Backstage employees are involved in preparing the food for the customers, arranging them, billing the service etc.
- Support processes
A service blueprint maps all the support services, activities or processes that help the service personnel in producing and delivering the services. A hotel may provide training for its service personnel on the aspects of service creation and delivery. This training is a support process.
The steps involved in developing a service blueprint are as follows
- Identifying the process,
- Identification of the customer segment
- Mapping the customer’s view
- Mapping the onstage and backstage employee actions
- Identification of support activities,
- Adding physical evidence wherever possible in the service process
Thus the service blueprint is a classic process map and follows the phases set by the customer journey.
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