What Is a Service Blueprint?

Written by Coursera Staff • Updated on

Learn what a customer blueprint can do for your company, from helping employees perform to enhancing customer service.

[Featured image] A UX designer is on their laptop looking at a service blueprint.

Key takeaways

A service blueprint is a diagram that maps out the entire process of delivering a service or product to a customer.

  • A service blueprint typically includes customer actions, frontstage actions, backstage actions, physical evidence, and support processes.

  • One benefit of a service blueprint is the identification of roadblocks and weaknesses within production and customer service processes.

  • You can enhance your customer service skills by gaining a deeper understanding of service blueprints.

Discover what a service blueprint is, including its components, benefits, and how it differs from a customer journey map. Afterward, enroll in Google’s Project Management Professional Certificate to learn the foundations of Agile project management, with a focus on implementing Scrum events. 

What are service blueprints?

A service blueprint is a diagram that maps out the entire process of delivering a service or product to a customer, from start to finish. Service blueprinting allows businesses to look at the entire process and operation to determine where it could be more efficient. 

Some people compare service blueprints to customer journey maps, but service blueprints are more comprehensive. A customer journey map is a diagram that shows how a customer interacts with a business, but a service blueprint takes that information and adds all of the behind-the-scenes and support interactions.

Read more: Glossary of UX Terms and Definitions

Service blueprint components

A service blueprint typically includes:

  • Customer actions: Customer actions are usually the most important part of a service blueprint. They include any type of customer interaction with your product or service, such as making a purchase or leaving a review. 

  • Backstage actions: These are all of the actions that happen behind the scenes and do not involve interacting directly with the customer—for example, uploading content to a website. 

  • Physical evidence: Physical evidence is anything a customer or employee may come in contact with, either physically or digitally. This could be an actual storefront, product packaging, website, or virtual shopping cart. 

  • Support processes: Support processes include anything an employee might use to do their job but that customers won't interact with, such as the computer programs used to create a website or the computer itself. 

What are the 5 stages of a service blueprint?

A service blueprint can visually depict the customer’s journey with your business, so when constructing one, it can be helpful to consider the following aspects of the customer’s journey as stages in your service blueprint. 

1. Attract: The first stage deals with how the customer becomes aware of your business.

2. Orient: During this stage, you help the customer understand how your business operates. You explain what will occur and how it will occur.

3. Use: You complete all of the actual work for the customer within this stage. You create the solution for the customer.

4. Retain: After doing the work and developing the solution, you may need to continue updating the project to meet your client’s changing needs, especially if the project is digitally based. 

5. Maintain: For the final stage, you want to ensure that the customer remains your client so that you can do more business in the future. You are working to maintain the relationship.

What are the benefits of a service blueprint? 

Service blueprints offer numerous benefits to businesses, brands, or organizations that depend on customers. Ultimately, it helps you understand the overall customer experience (CX) from their perspective, so you can make changes and decisions based on concrete information. Other benefits of a service blueprint include: 

 

  • Understanding the function of your employees

  • Understanding how your backstage and frontstage employees and platforms interact

  • Discovering any roadblocks and weaknesses in your production and customer service processes

  • Preventing you from wasting resources

  • Helping you come up with new services and products based on previous experiences

  • Eliminating redundancy and optimizing your processes and operations

Related terms

Explore our free resources for project management

Join Career Chat, Coursera’s LinkedIn newsletter, for weekly updates on in-demand skills, tools, and certifications in project management. Then, check out these other free learning resources: 

Accelerate your career growth with a Coursera Plus subscription. When you enroll in either the monthly or annual option, you’ll get access to over 10,000 courses.

Updated on
Written by:

Editorial Team

Coursera’s editorial team is comprised of highly experienced professional editors, writers, and fact...

This content has been made available for informational purposes only. Learners are advised to conduct additional research to ensure that courses and other credentials pursued meet their personal, professional, and financial goals.