Many businesses find their customer service process develop and adapt over time without any systematic view or review of the efficiency or effectiveness in delivering the customer experience. Service blueprinting is a practical technique used to design or introduce service innovations. Excellent business performance needs the best possible service delivery process.
Exemplary customer service strategy as an ingrained company attitude
Today, more and more attention is being paid to the quality of customer service. Your business’ future is in the hands of your staff and the service they provide with every customer or client interaction. Excellence in customer service as an attitude needs to be ingrained in every area of your business, from top to bottom.
If your customers aren’t happy with the service they believe they are receiving from your staff, they will leave you – promptly and without a second thought. And you are giving your competitors an easily won competitive edge, because they will go straight to your competitor.
You need to nurture service excellence as an attitude engrained in every area and every person in your business. This requires more than having a streamlined customer service department or a slogan on the lunch room or restroom walls. You need to provide customer service excellence as a consistent, premium service supported by a service-oriented tone that drives your company strategy at every level.
Given the fickleness of customers this is an area in which you can’t be complacent. Start thinking innovatively around the best possible service delivery process you can deliver.
How to blueprint your customer service framework
Service blueprinting is a practical technique used to design or introduce service innovations. Blueprinting divides the service delivery process into two stages. The front stage, where customers and employees interact, and the back stage where employees perform tasks which aren’t visible to the customer. Actions at the front stage occur face to face between customers and employees. The backstage actions involve employees’ actions that are invisible to customers. An example of this is a telephone call between a customer and an employee.
Two other elements are support processes and physical evidence. Activities occurring here are carried out by individuals and business units who have no contact with the customer. However, these interactions and processes support the customer interactions. An example is an accounts department issuing an invoice.
The physical element is the top layer and represents the physical evidence of the customer coming into contact with the organisation.
How can you develop a service blueprint for your customer service principles? Start by Identifying key activities involved in your service offering, define the value chain before drilling down the process level, and then distinguish between “front stage” and “back stage” activities.
Then clarify front stage activities between customers and employees and back stage support and systems. Identify potential fail points, take preventive measures and prepare contingencies. The final steps are to develop standards for each activity’s execution, time for task completion, maximum wait times and scripts to guide interactions between employees and customers.
Why blueprinting is key to a successful customer service philosophy
To ensure sustainability and improve business performance, you need to have a customer service philosophy that is grounded in understanding your customers and your offering.
Service blueprinting is a practical and rational technique used to design or introduce service innovations.
It enables you to subject your service development to more rigorous analysis and control.
Developing a service blueprint is an active and fun process that can be used to bring teams together and to visually develop and communicate the service delivery process or service innovation. It is also a good mechanism to identify fail points and help solve service delivery problems.
Taking a proactive approach to (re-)designing your customer service process using a quality tool like service blueprinting can not only to identify problems before they happen, but also enable you to see the potential for other market opportunities
It leads to superior customer service, superior customer satisfaction and ultimately repeat business and competitive advantage.
