How to Create a Service Blueprint

Yes. All right. Cool. Well, we can go ahead and get started now. Um, so quick overview once again of the rules. We are at the mercy of the technology, so if something goes wrong, hopefully we'll be back up and running very quickly. Um, please be respectful. All of our presenters have put a lot of time and effort into their presentations. And last but not least, just have fun, ask lots of questions, and get as much out of it as you can. So, without further ado, I would like to introduce Melissa and her presentation on how to create a service blueprint. So, I'm going to go ahead stop sharing, Melissa, and then the floor is yours. Hi. Yes. Uh, thank you so much for having me. Um, my name is Melissa Jamma and I work at um, LPL Financial as a product experience researcher, assistant VIP vice president. And today I'm going to share with you kind of the process I go through um when it comes to service blueprinting um which is something I'm really passionate about um as I feel like it can alleviate a lot of challenges within organizations and um streamline processes. So, a little bit about me. Um, I have four years of experience leading research in a variety of industries, most recently in financial technology and previously in online learning. I've uh freelance as a UX designer for a SAS company and a nonprofit. And I've completed over 20 discovery type research projects in the last uh two years. Uh several journey maps and a couple of service uh blueprints. And I got introduced to service uh blueprinting as a program manager at UCSD uh when I helped to streamline their um contract signing services. Um so that's where I uh found my passion for it because I saw how it can increase the customer satisfaction, address um inefficiencies in the processes and gaps even for the staff. And so um I've done that throughout my career since then. And what is service blueprinting? So service blueprinting is an extension of a customer journey map. And the journey map is uh specifically for your customer through a life cycle and what they're going through, what their experiences are, and the activities they go through when interacting with your company, your products, and your services. Um, and then the service blueprint goes uh deeper into the back end and the front end of how the customer is interacting with your uh staff and your teams and your products and also gives a little more insight into uh what's um happening that um is impacting the customer experience. Um and the blueprint is usually represented in a diagram. So um in swim lanes. So, we have swim lanes that are dedicated to the customer experience, to the staff experiences, and then we have arrows that connect the flow of information uh between all of the different um uh key activities and key teams that are involved in a service or a product interaction. Um and so my experience is that I've done uh two major uh blueprints so far. Um the instructor contract service blueprint um I've done and then also the financial advisor business model transition blueprint and I had a little bit of different approaches to both. So for the because I had um experience in both uh both of the roles involved in instructure instructor contract services, I was able to create the service blueprint independently. I did use survey data and field studies by um observing what instructors did, how staff managed the contract um signing process to um populate the the service blueprint. Um and so that was done more on an independent basis. When it came to the uh financial advisor business model transition uh the one on the right you it was a lot bigger involves over 10 departments. Um so I had to talk to subject matter experts to get their um their um expertise in their areas understand how information flows and get a bird's eye view. I also ha I interviewed uh the financial advisors that have gone through the experience. I reviewed process documents and then I held um three to four workshops to help to um document the business uh transition service. And what are the benefits of service blueprinting? Well, the benefits are many. Um one is to identify what those processes are especially if it's a very uh large um life cycle uh over a lot of time and across different departments. It also helps to identify who's involved, what the c what the customer's journey is and also helps to build communication and alignment between the teams and helps to um for during planning sessions like big room planning um sprints and stuff like that. Um and it can also help to communicate with upper management. Um, it also helps to uh focus in on areas that are causing uh customer pain points that you identified in the customer journey map and it can help you to see what those gaps are um more clearly. it can help communicate and identify what those uh teams are doing that could be um contributing to those pain points or gaps and then how can you um eliminate or reduce that. Um it also helps with innovation and creating something new. Um so when you are innovating a new technology or a service um you can see what is the current state so you can um improve the future state. And blueprinting can be helpful during all phases of the design process. Um and um as you can see in the diagram, you can use it um between when you're doing the exploratory phase, when you're doing the prototyping phase, or um when you're monitoring how your services or products are doing. And then so here's kind of an overview of the steps I take um to create a service blueprint. Um so first um always document the customer's journey. So we want to take an outside in approach. Um what is the customer going through? What are their key activities? What are their goals? And then you want to prepare your materials um and your stakeholders. So um meet with your team to identify who are the key uh players in your blueprint. What are the uh of that life cycle? And then you want to set up your workshop. So what kind of tech tools are you going to use? Is it going to be in person? Are you going to use um an online service? Um then you want to manage your workshop activity. So plan it out. Um make sure there's enough time to get everything done. And then you want to organize your blueprint and share and iterate. And we'll go through um each of these steps. So the first um step is to um document your customer journey. So you want to collect and synthesize uh the data that comes from it can come from various sources. So subject matter experts, customer interviews, documentation, feedback sessions, previous research, surveys. So you want to understand what is your customer's experience, what are their pain points, what their challenges, and kind of get a feel for what they're doing, how they're doing it. It's kind of like the five W's, who, what, where, when, and why. And then you want to kind of um bring your team along. if you ha if you're working with a team. So, what I found is empathy mapping can be helpful to kind of build alignment and communicate um with your team what um what those pain points are, what those challenges might be so everyone can uh be on the same page and understand. And also, you want to document those um challenges and pain points as best you can with as much detail as possible. Um, and then you want to start to document that in a journey map with the swim lanes, uh, the persona and the scenario. So, scenarios and personas can help anchor the team. Um, and it's helpful especially when you have a very complex um, journey like the um, financial advisor business transition because it's so uh, complex and there's so many layers. It can help to anchor the team and focus on the important areas. And then you want to document the customer journey which is the anchor of your blueprint and helps to have an outside in approach. So you really want to know like what are their activities, what are they doing and then you want to show what are their touch points like threat facing evidence they call it. Um like what are the technologies they're using? Uh are they communicating through email? Is it a website? Um and then uh the persona and the scenario optional uh but are helpful especially in complex um uh services. Then you want to establish a core team and you want to work with your team to identify who are the key players um in your blueprint and then you want to make sure you include them in your workshop and you can group them together. So if you have um certain uh folks that work together, they can be in a certain in a session and then you have other folks in another session who work together um which creates more synergy and help to answer questions um as they arise. And then you want to identify what are the goals of your blueprint. What is what are you and your team hoping to learn? Are you creating a new technology? Are you trying to improve the process? There's different layers and there's different altitudes. Um so dep will impact how much detail your blueprint will have. Um also key performance indicators like how will you know that your service or product experience is better um from what uh changes are going to be made. Um for example in the advisor transition it would be time reducing the time it takes to transition between business models. Um for the instructor um service portal um it would be um the u number of touch points or the number of um of uh interactions with the staff. So reducing that um would help to create more satisfaction. And then you want to set up your workshop. So you want to select your tools and your materials. So what I've used so far is Figma and Muro. Um but you can do it in person. You can use other types of technology. Um and you want to like oftent time in workshops you want to have it be live like a webinar or a workshop uh like with Zoom or WebEx. And you want to be prepared. So, you want to prepare your materials. Um, and what I have here is the part of the journey map, the customer journey map for the instructor contract signing blueprint. So, in the yellow I have their steps that they've taken and then I have the front-facing evidence um, which are their touch points with technology and tools. And then I have a timeline that I've identified. And then I have the the purple uh stickies at the bottom which are where the staff are going to fill out their steps and what they've done uh to support the um in this case instructor or your customer throughout their journey. And then you want to give them instructions. So for uh this workshop um I asked uh the the staff to write down the steps they take during the process. I also asked them to write down the systems and forms and information they use to accomplish the step. Um, and then what they think the advis uh or their customer is using during the step as well. And if they're not involved in that step, they can just put not applicable on the sticky note. So that way we make sure it's complete. And then you want to set up uh multiple sections of a board for each team. Uh for example, you have operations team on a section of the board. You can have sales on a different section. That way they all can have their own area of where they're filling out uh their sticky notes. And then you want to schedule your workshop and you want to send invitations um to the staff for them to document their roles. And you might want to consider hosting workshops over multiple days if you have a lot of people involved just to give them a break um and uh give them time between entering in information to uh think through what they're doing. And when you're holding your workshop, um, you want to have introductions and ice breakers so everyone can feel comfortable. I've done like, "What's your favorite food?" or something that's light-hearted so they feel um more connected to each other and more comfortable talking to each other. Um, and then beforehand, you want to share your research that you've done into the customer journey, the personas, uh, profiles and scenario. Um that way they can have time to digest the information um and ha uh you can answer any of their questions before they join. Um and also give them an idea of what what they're here to do and what the intentions are. And also if they're if they're new to the technology, you want to do some sort of a introduction or or warm-up so they can get comfortable with Miro or Figma or whatever tool you're using. Um and then uh you hold the workshop. So you give them time to complete the task which is to for them to document their process. Um and then you want to answer any questions, assign further uh actions or to look into anything that comes up during your journey. And then you want to um after you're done with all of your workshops or um in between them, you want to start to organize it and refine it. So an important part is um you know what is happening on the front stage. What are the employee actions and technology that your customer uh is interacting with that's visible to them and you want to organize that in that swim lane. And then you want to organize your backstage actions. What are the key steps and actions that your uh team is doing behind the scenes that's supporting your customer through their journey and what are those processes, forms, uh regulations, um whatever is uh important to your journey on the back end. Um and then you want to identify the um the flow of information. So that's usually done through those er arrows. So the arrows will help you to see where things are interconnected. Where is one uh one part of the journey starting and what's the next part of the journey of that flow of information? Um how are people and teams connected? And then you want to discuss what those fail points are. What are the gaps in the experience? Where are things uh redundant? If you see a lot of redundancy, do you see where are those pain points that you identified in the customer journey that are uh what are those um processes that are contributing to that and what are the tools and technology being used there? Um so that's all can be done as you're organizing it. Um and then you want to share your blueprint with the team. And so then this can be used to help to alleviate all those pain points that you identified during the customer journey and empathy mapping. It can be used uh for um securing funding for um technology to address those pain points, address those gaps and to ensure that your key metrics are being addressed um um throughout the journey. Yeah. So I kind of ran through that but that was my last slide. So thank you. Um, are there any question? Yep. Thank you so much, Mela. Um, if you guys have any questions, feel free to pop them in the chat. I'm not seeing any questions yet, but while we wait, Melissa, what would you say is or do you have an example of a time where you did this service mapping and what was like the best outcome that you ever had from that? Yeah, I think the best outcome was seeing the um the so for the advisor financial advisor business transition experience um they're building a advisor portal to handle those. So right now it's very manual and um it was really great to see those pain points that we identified during the uh customer journey being addressed. Um and also to see how um it was uh helping them to create uh wireframes and prototypes for this journey uh this portal that um were very efficient for not just the firm but also for the advisor and the staff that are involved. So I like that it helped to alleviate a lot of pain points while also meeting business goals as well. Um and then another part that was really satisfying uh was seeing how it was being used for big room planning and communication with teams because there was a lot of um there's a lot of specialization uh within different areas. So, it's helps to bridge those gaps in communication when you can uh see it visually because sometimes when we're talking, it's hard to see, you know, what uh what you're thinking and what I'm thinking, we think we're talking about the same thing, but we're not. And so, having that visual can help uh bridge that gap. Yeah, I think that's fantastic. And I know you mentioned using Mirro as a tool. Are there any other tools that you recommend or any other formats? I know we had like a that you explained like a flowchart, but are there any other formats that you think could be good for something like this? Um, I think mirror is pretty great. That's the only one I've used that in Figma and I um if you can do it in person that can be helpful if you can meet um I think just preparation is the best and being comfortable because I think if uh certain individuals haven't used the tool before they're going to struggle and so it helps them if you can give them a little bit of a uh like a way to learn it a little bit. So the simpler it is the better. Um for people who haven't used it before. Um definitely need uh like something with like video like a video chat. So like something like Zoom or WebEx because you want to have that human interaction as part of the workshop. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for answering those questions. Um, I'm not seeing any questions in the chat right now, but thank you so much for your time and for everybody watching. We're just going to take a brief intermission. So, thank you. Thank you for having me.