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What Is a Customer Journey Map, and What Is a Service Blueprint?
Both are pictures of the same customer path, drawn from two different sides of the counter.
A customer journey map shows the steps a customer takes with a business, from first noticing a need to coming back, along with what they do, think and feel at each step. A service blueprint keeps that same row of customer steps on top and adds everything the business does to make each step happen, split into the front stage the customer sees, the back stage they don't and the systems that support both.
The difference at a glance
| Customer journey map | Service blueprint | |
|---|---|---|
| Point of view | The customer's | The customer's and the business's together |
| What it shows | Steps, actions, questions and feelings | Physical evidence, customer actions, front-stage actions, back-stage actions and support processes |
| Key idea | Where the experience rises and dips | Where the work behind a step breaks down (fail points) |
| Typical question it answers | "Where do customers get frustrated or drop off?" | "Which task, handoff or system causes that?" |
| Who usually builds it | Owner and front-desk staff, from customer interviews and reviews | Owner and the staff who do each step |
| Origin | Customer experience practice | A 1984 Harvard Business Review article on designing services |
How to build both in one afternoon
- Pick one journey. Choose a single path, such as a new customer's first visit or a regular's rebooking, rather than the whole business.
- List the customer's steps left to right. Start before the first contact, usually a search or a referral, and end after the next booking.
- Add a row for what the customer is wondering. Write it in their words, such as "How long will this take?" or "What will this cost?"
- Draw the line of interaction under the customer's steps. Below it, write what staff do that the customer sees, such as answering the phone, greeting or explaining a price.
- Draw the line of visibility. Below it, write the back-stage work, such as checking the schedule, ordering parts or setting a reminder.
- Add support processes at the bottom. List the software, records and suppliers each step depends on.
- Mark the fail points. Circle each step that depends on someone remembering, a handoff between people or two systems that don't connect, and fix the one customers feel most.
Steps 1 to 3 are the journey map; steps 4 to 7 turn it into a service blueprint.
Why it works
Customers judge the whole path, not the single visit, and the research supports measuring it that way. In a McKinsey survey of about 27,000 U.S. consumers across 14 industries, performance across whole customer journeys was 32% more predictive of customer churn than performance on single interactions, so a map that shows the full path, and a blueprint that shows the work behind it, point an owner at the steps that most affect whether customers stay.
Sources
- Pulido, A., Stone, D. and Strevel, J. The Three Cs of Customer Satisfaction: Consistency, Consistency, Consistency. McKinsey & Company, 2014. About 27,000 U.S. consumers, 14 industries.
- Shostack, G. L. Designing Services That Deliver. Harvard Business Review, January 1984.
- Bitner, M. J., Ostrom, A. L. and Morgan, F. N. Service Blueprinting: A Practical Technique for Service Innovation. California Management Review 50(3), 2008.
Related reading: Service Design for Small Businesses: How Customers Actually Experience You · Mapping the Patient Journey at a Dental or Medical Practice · Where Customers Drop Off, Step by Step, According to the Research
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