We recently hosted the awesome Lisa Morris on one of our EX Space webinars talking all things ‘Service Design Blueprints’. There was lots of interest and people asked to find out more so we’re happy to oblige!
The diagram below is taken mine and Belinda’s book – EX By Design, where we go into more detail about this tool and its application:
The service blueprint serves as a visual diagram that illustrates how a service is provided. It enables you to map out the relationships between different service components, such as the people involved, the physical or digital touchpoints, and the processes to ensure that the service meets employee needs and business goals effectively.
It involves a detailed representation of a service’s delivery process, capturing both the visible elements of the service experience and the behind-the-scenes actions that support it. It typically includes several layers:
- Customer Actions: What the employee (in this context) does in the process of experiencing a service.
- Frontstage (Visible) Interactions: Direct interactions between the service provider and the employee, including physical spaces, digital platforms, and communication.
- Backstage (Invisible) Interactions: Internal processes and actions that support frontstage activities but are invisible to employees.
- Support Processes: Additional processes and third-party services that support the delivery of the primary service.
- Physical Evidence: Tangible elements that the employee interacts with during their service experience.
Why Use a Service Design Blueprint?
- Holistic view: It provides a complete view of the employee experience, helping you to understand every touchpoint and interaction from the employee’s perspective.
- Identify gaps: By mapping out every stage of the service process, you can easily identify gaps or pain points in the employee experience.
- Improve coordination: It helps ensure that all parts of the organisation are aligned and working together to deliver a seamless experience for employees.
- Innovation: Encourages creative thinking about how to solve problems and improve the employee experience by visualising the entire service ecosystem.
The service design blueprint is a great tool to use as part of you journey mapping process, the tools prompts you to add more context and depth to the experience you are designing. If you’d like to know how to use this tool and see a worked example for an onboarding experience sign up to The EX Space today (it’s free!) for instant access. Or just drop us a line to find out more about this tool, and how it can be used to help design employee experiences – we’d love to hear from you!
