In this article, we'll explain the power of digital Service Blueprints and show you how you can create them with TheyDo and how they fit into your Journey Management System. We'll use a customer journey and the Solutions database to connect everything.

Using the steps and lanes introduced in this guide, you can create many different types of journeys. In this guide, we focus on the buildup of Service Design Blueprints. For an overview of all journey types, have a look at our guide on journey templates.

●    What is a Service Blueprint?

●    The benefits of Service Blueprints

●    Key Lanes of a Service Blueprint

●    Creating a Service Blueprint with TheyDo

●    Adding the Blueprint to a Customer Journey

●    Using Your Blueprint

●    Wrapping Up

What is a Service Blueprint?

A service design blueprint is a map that visualizes how different service components — people, solutions, (physical or digital), and processes — enable the steps in a customer journey to take place. As such, service blueprints often form the bridge between the ‘design’ and ‘technical’ experts in an organization. They help to create a shared vision on how journeys can be created that both delight customers while also being technically feasible.

A Service Blueprint starts below the customer journey in TheyDo

The benefits of digital Service Blueprints

Creating Service Design Blueprints in TheyDo is especially useful for a number of reasons:

●    All elements are re-usable. For example, any front-stage, back-stage, or supporting process you create using the solution feature can also be linked to other journeys or blueprints. That way, you create an overview of what processes are most key in supporting multiple journey processes.

●    All elements are trackable. You can assign ownership, channel tags, and more to any element you list in your service blueprint. For example, you can easily separate all supporting processes by who owns them, what channel they relate to, and more.

Blueprints in TheyDo therefore become interconnected maps between the internal organization and the actual customer experience.

Key Lanes of a Service Blueprint

Service Blueprints take different forms, but regardless of goal and scope, every service design blueprint typically consists of the following elements, we call Lanes:

●    The Customer Journey
Whether you only show the phases and the steps customers go through in their journey, or you journey has a lot of nuanced details and contains a ton of customer insights – every blueprint starts with the perspective of the customer.

●    Frontstage
The frontstage can be seen as your company’s physical or digital touch points with a customer. From filling in a form online, visiting a webpage or being welcomed by a person in store, it’s your Solutions that a customer directly views that make up for the Frontstage.

Some Blueprints split the frontstage human-to-human actions (like having a call) from human-to-device actions (signing up online) in two separate lanes.

●    Backstage
Steps and activities that occur behind the scenes to support the Frontstage interactions with a customer. Usually, these actions are handled by an actual employee (e.g., a Sales person checking your paperwork). Use the backstage to show what your business does but what your customer doesn’t see.

●    Processes
Internal steps, and interactions that support your employees in delivering the service. This element includes anything that must occur for all of the above to take place.

Creating a Service Blueprint with TheyDo

There are 3 ways to get started with a Service Blueprint. As explained above, a great blueprint is showing the internal organization in line with the (external) customer journey.

1. Start from scratch
   Simply build the customer journey and the service design blueprint step-by-step and lane-by-lane.

2. Use the Service Blueprint Template
   TheyDo comes with a predefined template for a Service Blueprint. The lanes, labels, and explanations are ready for you to get started.

3. Add the Service Blueprint lanes to an existing Customer Journey
   If you already have a Customer Journey in TheyDo, it’s easy to add lanes for every key element of a Service Blueprint.

Below we’ll show you how to add the Service Blueprint lanes to an existing Journey. If you want to make a customer journey first, here’s a quick guide to get you started.

Adding the Blueprint to a customer journey:

1. Add a new Solutions lane for the Front Stage
   From the swimming lane menu, select Solutions and rename the lane to Front Stage.

2. Next, create a new Solutions lane for the Back Stage
   From the swimming lane menu, select Solutions and rename the lane to Back Stage.

3. And third, create a new Solutions lane for the Processes
   From the swimming lane menu, select Solutions and rename the lane to Back Stage.

4. Add all the solutions one by one
   Using the menu, you can quickly find all solutions that are existing, or simply type a new title and hit enter.

5. You can specify solution content in great detail
   When you click on a solution, you can add different properties like Type, Status, and owner. This is powerful because you can create your own taxonomy. For example, you can set the Type for solutions according to the blueprint, like Front Stage, Back Stage, and Supporting Systems. Or you can specify what kind of solutions you have (i.e. forms, actions, automation).
   Note that Solution owners will receive notifications about changes around the solution they own.

6. Optional: split human actions from systems.
   Some of our customers like to split each of the 3 Blueprint lanes in actions and solutions. Sometimes there are human actions involved as well as systems. Adding a text lane to describe the actions is the easiest way to do this.

Using your Blueprint

A great Blueprint helps to align the organization to understand how it works together, to support any customer journey. With TheyDo you can now start to collaborate around the Blueprint.

1. Share your Blueprint
   From the top right menu, use the Share button to create a link that can be used to view the Blueprint from anywhere (no login required)

2. Exporting your Blueprint (and Print)
   From the top right menu, use the Export button to create a PDF version of your Blueprint. You can use the PDF to print in high-res too! Did you know you can filter out lanes to exclude them from your export?

3. Collaborating on your Blueprint
   The real magic comes from collaborating together on the Blueprint. Simply invite the right people in your organisation who are responsible for the different solutions in your Blueprint. Give them edit rights and together start improving the things that matter most.

Wrapping up

Service blueprints are the perfect addition to your journeys: they help see the big picture of how a service is implemented and used by the customers. For every solution you connect in the Blueprint, TheyDo automatically links the step from the journey it’s linked to. Ultimately, you can view all your solutions in one place and instantly see how and in what context a solution is experienced by the customer.

If you need more help setting up a workflow around creating and maintaining blueprints, our team is here to help.