Service Blueprinting: a Practical Technique for Service Innovation

In the article, the authors note that service innovation is less disciplined and creative than sectors, such as manufacturing and technology. Some reasons are due to the fascination with tangible technologies as a source of innovation, and an underlying belief that services do not have a tangible value. Many of the invention protocols used for physical goods do not work for human services. The practice of creating meaningful, memorable customer experiences has grown. The authors stress service blueprinting as a very effective technique for the service industry.

The term services refer to services rendered for customers, such as architectural services, financial, telecommunication, healthcare, etc. Services are dynamic and are provided over a period of time through a sequence of events. Service blueprinting can facilitate the detailed improvement of a single step in the customer process as well as the comprehensive overview of the entire service process. A big issue for managers is whether the company has the competence to manage the customer experience.

Organizations that are the most successful in providing new services prepare systematically through a planned set of stages with clear objectives. As new service development process moves toward actual implementation, the initial idea has to be made concrete so it can be presented to the client. Service blueprinting results in a visual rendering of the process and the organizational structure of a company, which is highly useful in the development stages of service development.

Blueprinting can be used to represent overviews of conceptual processes of specific support. There are five components of service blueprints: customer actions, visible contact employee actions, invisible contact employee actions, support processes, and physical evidence. Service blueprinting is a service innovation approach that is adaptable across many organizations because of its practical applications. Many firms realize the...