Service
Blueprinting

Creating a unified vision and strategy for
customer experience transformation to fuel
organizational growth.

What is Service Blueprinting?

The term “service blueprint” refers to the visualized output of a structured, multi-phased process to analyze, understand, and map the confluence of the people, processes, and systems involved in delivering a specific service or experience.

Where customer journey mapping evaluates experience through the lens of the customer, service blueprinting applies an organizational lens to understand the operational assets and efforts involved in creating that experience. 

For companies looking to enhance their customer (or employee) experience through increased operational efficiency, more effective cross-functional integration, and stronger strategic alignment, service blueprinting provides a technique for identifying and resolving friction and capitalizing on strengths in these areas.

The process of building a service blueprint involves deep exploration into a specific service, workflow, or process that uncovers the critical moments impacting people, processes, and systems, and reveals common themes that underlie the root cause of problems.

 

Service blueprinting produces multiple high-value outputs, both tangible and intangible. The primary tangible output is the service blueprint itself, which is a visual diagram that maps the touchpoints, processes, and technology involved in service delivery from both the front end (what customers see) and back end (behind the scenes). This process also produces actionable recommendations on next steps. In some cases, a pilot, proof of concept, or rapid prototyping of a new process or digital experience may also be produced as part of this process. 

 

But the intangible outputs of service blueprinting—a common understanding of what “good” looks like for the delivery of a service; a unified strategic vision; cross-functional alignment on priorities, required actions, and target outcomes—are just as valuable. 

Service Blueprinting Outputs:

Why Service
Blueprinting?

Service blueprinting brings greater understanding of the customer or stakeholder journey through visualization of the interconnectivity of service, workflow, and process function. Service blueprinting mitigates confusion and fosters more open collaboration and unity among teams when they collectively analyze and map a product or service across multiple facets of the organization. This level of insight and clarity that service blueprinting delivers can accelerate the product development process, saving time in communicating what needs to be built, and clearing the path to create a simple prototype. 

 

Not only is service blueprinting a highly effective tool for creating an MVP (minimally viable product), but the insights gained can illuminate near-term opportunities to drive efficiency and reduce cost, identify new solutions, and help justify and prioritize initiatives.

Service blueprinting allow you to: 

  • Look at a problem from multiple points of view 
  • Visualize the process 
  • Map critical moments and pain points for both the customers receiving a service and the employees delivering it
  • Understand the root cause of issues and identify common themes
  • Define concrete problem statements and hypotheses 
  • Prioritize opportunities to address and where/how to invest in solutions
  • Mitigate risk of implementing change (financial and morale) 

The Tallwave Approach to
Service Blueprinting

Tallwave service blueprinting is an immersive, multi-phased process. Working closely with stakeholders, we analyze and evaluate current-state systems to accurately identify roadblocks to operational efficiency and uncover opportunities for service delivery transformation. 

 

Each of the six phases of service blueprinting builds on the next, uncovering and validating key insights at every stage.

01

Plan

We begin by working with you to define the business goal(s) you want to achieve, outline the critical questions to answer in pursuit of that goal, and establish the foundation of our project plan.

02

Discover

This phase is designed to gather the necessary information to construct the service blueprint artifact, as well as identify actionable insights through workshops, stakeholder interviews, and on-site interviews.

03

Create and validate

We translate our learnings, insights, and themes from the Discover phase into a comprehensive visual map. Then we conduct a collaborative workshop session to review, clarify, expand, and ultimately validate it.

04

Ideate

With a validated, detailed mapping of the current state, we hold a collaborative ideation session to generate actionable solutions to the challenges and pain points identified.

05

Recommend

We work with you to prioritize recommended actions and build a roadmap for implementation of solutions.

06

Build

We deploy a combination of integrated service capabilities, including program management, process and service design, rapid prototyping, and more to ensure the feasibility and effectiveness of solutions, mitigate risk, and inform implementation at scale.

Through deep exploration and detailed mapping of specific people, processes, and systems involved in service delivery, critical moments that impact CX are identified and analyzed, revealing common themes that underlie the root problems.

We take those findings, validate them, and pinpoint actionable solutions to optimize and transform the service, workflow, or process, positioning our clients for financial growth.

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