What are the steps for creating a service blueprint?

My two cents

The way you create a service blueprint depends on what you are using it. Are you using the service blueprint to describe the actual state of a service, or are you using it to imagine a future state of a service?

Steps to describe the actual state of a service with a service blueprint:
  1. Research: do your research to understand how people really use the service and what employees do to make it happen (for example user and stakeholder interviews, observation, surveys, gathering quantitative data)
  2. Build a service blueprint: build a service blueprint that summarises how the service works with multiple stakeholders that share their expertise and use the previous research to ground the blueprint in data.
  3. Improve the service blueprint: present the blueprint to other stakeholders who weren’t involved yet to make sure all parts really fit the reality and improve it based on feedback.
  4. Make it shareable: make the service blueprint shareable within the company so that different work groups and departments can use it.

Steps to imagine the future state of a service with a service blueprint:
  1. Ideation: gather ideas about how the future or new service could work.
  2. Build multiple service blueprints: summarise the best ideas in multiple service blueprints that show different approaches
  3. Test the idea: use the service blueprint to test the service or guide the prototyping phase.
  4. Condense: based on the testing, choose the winning service blueprint and improve it.

What the AI answer

I've asked this question to ChatGPT, and here is the raw answer it gave me. Take it with a grain of salt.
Here are the steps for creating a service blueprint:

  1. Define the service experience: Start by outlining the overall service experience you want to design or improve. Consider the needs and expectations of your customers, as well as the goals and objectives of your business.
  2. Identify touchpoints: Next, identify all the touchpoints between your business and your customers, including both physical and digital interactions. These touchpoints could include phone calls, emails, website visits, in-store visits, and more.
  3. Map out the service process: For each touchpoint, map out the steps involved in the service process, including the actions of both the business and the customer. Be sure to include both frontstage (visible) and backstage (invisible) activities.
  4. Identify pain points and opportunities for improvement: As you map out the service process, look for areas where customers may experience frustration or where there may be opportunities for improvement.
  5. Design solutions: Based on the pain points and opportunities for improvement identified in the previous step, develop solutions to address these issues and improve the overall service experience.
  6. Test and refine: Once you have a draft of your service blueprint, test it out to see how it works in practice. Collect feedback from customers and employees, and use this feedback to refine and improve the blueprint.

Service Blueprint resources

You can find all the Service Blueprint resources I've created here. This includes courses, templates and a library of external links and resources.

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