With rapid technological advancements, fierce competition, and changing consumer behaviours, digital products need to keep evolving. This pressure often forces companies to speed up product releases, which can result in fragmented customer journeys, departmental silos, and outdated legacy systems. Service Design offers a solution, providing a framework to efficiently craft, innovate, and maintain cohesive customer journeys.
In this article, we’ll dive into the three key benefits of Service Design and why organisations should invest in mapping out their end-to-end customer journeys and supporting backstage activities and processes through service blueprinting.
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Why Map the Service Blueprint?
Understanding and optimising customer touchpoints across channels
Engaging customers effectively builds loyalty and trust, boosting retention and repeat sales. This requires top-notch touchpoints that offer engaging interactions throughout their experience with the brand. Many companies address customer engagement only after launching new digital platforms or rely on a fragmented understanding of the customer journey, leading to inconsistent experiences.
However, we've worked with many innovative organisations adopting a more strategic approach. One of our retail clients understood the importance of mapping touchpoints before launching their new Loyalty Program. They aimed to deliver consistent, seamless experiences that resonate with customers, sparking regular joy through personalised engagements, surprises, and interactive experiences across traditional and digital channels. The blueprint we developed was crucial in defining a clear gamification strategy throughout the journey, an essential part of their loyalty program.
Service design principles are essential not only for optimising customer touchpoints with new propositions but also for auditing and enhancing existing service journeys. An as-is blueprint can help organisations identify strengths and weaknesses in their touchpoint interactions, moving away from a function-by-function view of customer engagement and optimising the coordination of initiatives across various touchpoints.
Identifying silos and handoffs between different departments and subsidiaries
A service blueprint helps uncover silos and handoffs between departments or subsidiaries by visually mapping the entire service delivery process. It shows each step of the customer journey alongside the corresponding internal operations, revealing where departments interact or pass off responsibilities. This comprehensive view highlights potential bottlenecks, delays, or miscommunications that often occur at these handoff points, helping organisations reduce siloed behaviour and deliver more consistent experiences.
For example, BCA understood that to scale up through business acquisitions, they needed to transition from siloed work to interdisciplinary collaboration. By defining the service blueprint of their appraisal process across different branches, they identified bottlenecks, delays, gaps, and process differences, leading to improved coordination between teams. This alignment enabled them to enhance appraisal efficiency, reduce operational redundancies, and deliver a more seamless and cohesive experience for customers.
Spotting discontinuities and optimisation opportunities in the experience
Service blueprints are invaluable for identifying discontinuities and optimization opportunities within the customer experience. These discontinuities can range from disjointed processes to unclear responsibilities between departments, leading to customer dissatisfaction or operational inefficiencies. By mapping out each stage of the service delivery process alongside customer interactions, service blueprints visually highlight gaps or inconsistencies.
Collinson did exactly this while revamping their customer experience with a new proposition. They had to implement a sophisticated backend system involving cross-department efforts and address customer pain points caused by inconsistent processes across different channels. Mapping their as-is service blueprint allowed them to assess the frontstage and backstage efficiency of key experiences such as registration, sign-up, and booking. By visualising the entire service ecosystem, they proactively redesigned workflows, improved resource allocation, and implemented changes to enhance the overall customer journey across their web and mobile platforms.
"To me, the key lies in finding the right balance between a structured service plan and the unpredictable nature of human behaviour, to encourage creative problem-solving and improve the overall customer experience. By visualising this, we'll uncover pain points, gains, and huge areas of opportunity."
Bhavesh Vaghela, SVP Product, Technology & Innovation, Collinson
In summary
Through strategic Service Design Mapping, organisations not only refine their internal operations and service delivery but also significantly enhance the customer experience. As demonstrated by companies like BCA and Collinson, using service blueprints facilitates a more organised, efficient, and customer-centric approach to service design. Investing in this process helps organisations stay agile and responsive to customer needs, fostering long-term customer relationships and sustaining a competitive advantage. Service Design Mapping isn’t just a tool for operational improvement; it’s a strategic imperative for any organisation committed to excelling in today’s dynamic market environment.
Register for our 1-hour Service Design Mapping Masterclass on Wednesday 27 November.
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