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The old days have gone. Not that we mind. But in large organizations, Customer Experience (CX) design projects are hardly ever single-track, one-off, or stand-alone nowadays. Streamlining the CX flow for an online product is often a matter of streamlining the CX flow of a whole bunch of products. Designing the CX for a website means designing for a whole ecosystem of channels and touchpoints. Things have got more complex.This post is about the work presented at The Web and Beyond (Amsterdam, 26 september 2012).
Organizations and companies that aim to introduce self-service to their products and services find themselves confronted with several challenges. To name a few:
- Many of their existing processes are not designed for self-service by end-customers but rather for use by “go-betweens” such as callcenter agents or intermediaries. Many existing processes need a redesign from a self-service perspective.
- Their digital future is multi-channel and cross-channel. Different types of customer activities (orient, buy, use, change, monitor, share) need to be facilitated via multiple touchpoints, on different channels. Sometimes these interactions run in parallel (e.g., an insurance can be bought both through a website or through a call centre). Sometimes they are meant to complement each other, such as an example in which to file a car claim with your insurance company, you first take pictures of the damage and perhaps complete a few simple steps with your smartphone app, whereas the rest of the (lengthy) filing process you do at home, through the website or the call centre).
- Customers have ever more devices at their disposal and want to experience your service via multiple channels, as well as (seamlessly) cross-channels too. Think of playing music or television services. You want your music and movies on all your devices. You want to be able to start watching a movie on your television, and continue on your tablet where you left off. Or vice versa. And at the same time, you want to be able to share your critique via social media. Making this a pleasant cross-touchpoint experience requires precise modeling and design.
- The more complex the service, the more stakeholders become involved. So good stakeholder alignment has become a real sine qua non.
- Many touchpoints are dependent on information and transactions with an extensive and complex systems landscape. Bringing technical possibilities and issues to light at an early stage can be quite a challenge.
Support in orchestration
Service blueprints map the interplay between customer actions, touchpoints, processes and front and backend systems in a service. In that respect, they do something that is exactly what’s currently and urgently needed: orchestrate stakeholders, systems, processes, and touchpoints. Gaining ever more attention in the field, they have started to become an indispensable step in the realization of successful digital strategies.
At Informaat, we’ve come to regard service blueprints as a true linchpin in different ways.
- We regard it as the link between service design and touchpoint design projects. A service blueprint is the final deliverable of a service design project, with which we can effectively brief touchpoint designers, providing them with a holistic view of the service.
- We’ve placed the service blueprint at the heart of a new generation of our interactive CX design platform, allowing the designer to explore parts of the service by easily zooming in and out different modeling levels.
Adaptations for digital services
We have worked with service blueprints to map the digital services in quite a number of projects over the last years. We have come to the conclusion that service blueprints are an essential instrument in important issues such as:
- Identifying important moments in a digital service.
- Simplifying existing processes for self-service.
- Orchestrating parts of the service across touchpoints and channels.
- Integrating self-service touchpoints into an existing systems landscape.
- Aligning stakeholders and their interests. Creating shared focus.
- Planning and management of change projects.
In the beginning we used the five-lane service blueprint introduced by Lynn Shostack (see below), which was meant to describe mostly physical services. Over the years, we’ve used slightly different formats, gradually working toward a format that better supports use for briefing UX designers working on multi-channel and cross-channel digital services. More specifically, we have adapted its basic format to acknowledge issues typical of multi-channel, multi-touchpoint digital services. For example, issues such as:
- Which dialogues or interactions are to be supported on what touchpoints?
- Where do dialogues re-occur?
- Where should the customer journey cross touchpoints?
- Where should dialogues be continued in a seamless way across touchpoints?
Our service blueprint facilitates taking a more holistic view of the service, enabling designers to take into consideration not just the one touchpoint they are assigned to work on, but also enhancing their awareness of dialogues taking place via other channels and touchpoints. As such, it becomes easier to judge where dialogues re-occur and where the service could benefit from similar designs patterns, ultimately supporting the efficient design of coherent and unified customer experiences.
Further reading about service blueprints
Lynn G. Shostack, Designing Services that Deliver, Harvard Business Review 62, no. 1 (January-February 1984), 133-139. Available at: http://tinyurl.com/8skpnfu
Mary Jo Bitner et al. (2007): Service blueprinting: A Practical Technique for Service Innovation, California Management Review, Spring 2008, 66-94. Available at DMI: http://tinyurl.com/8ggxohk
A collection on further literature and service blueprint examples is available at: http://tinyurl.com/d7kvyja
About the author
Susanne van Mulken is UX strategist and managing consultant at Informaat. In her daily work, Susanne designs online services and UX strategies for a wide range of domains including finance, insurance, telecoms, government, and climate control. In prior experience, she has performed academic research in – and is still enthusiastic about – the area of intelligent user interfaces.
Service blueprints (The Web & Beyond 2012, Amsterdam)
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