#HOTEL SERVICE BLUEPRINT UPGRADE#

They’ve become popularized over the last few years as service design has grown as a profession.

In other words, it decreases profits too.Service blueprints were first described by Lynn Shostack, a banking executive, back in 1982 in the Harvard Business Review. You can add more staff to the process, but it is also a risky solution, since additional personnel raises costs and requires higher coordination efforts. For instance, you can drop production, but it should never be a long-term solution, since it causes a reduction of profits. Besides, you can interview employees and understand the difficulties that they are facing Ī second solution is decreasing input to the bottlenecked step.

You can eventually compare your workflow with competitors and copycat them.

#HOTEL SERVICE BLUEPRINT UPGRADE#

You can upgrade the related software to better fulfill the task or list all the processes that can be automated and replace people with technology. For example, you can eliminate redundant or excessive steps, usually the more simple a process is, the better.

Identify what causes a bottleneck: is it because of people (performers) or technology (systems)? Ī first solution can be increasing the efficiency of the step. Perform a bottleneck analysis by crafting a service blueprint as I’ve explained above Support processes: activities required to service delivery that don’t need any contact with customers. Line of internal interaction: you should divide the activities that require contact with customers from the ones that are carried out within the company. and Joe Wheeler in Ownership quotient: putting the service profit chain to work for unbeatable competitive advantage published in 2008 by Harvard Business School Press, successful businesses encourage positive employee attitudes to generate stronger customer loyalty Employees who fulfill operations in these two dimensions must have both skill-set and training for being in contact with clients. Every front- and back-stage activity is associated with one or more employees, so the organization must know what skill-set takes to cover the position. To better explain myself, we need to take a step back and understand why this dimension is so important. An employee identifies themselves with a name and profile image, and starts a direct conversation with customers who can reply with another comment. For example, I consider a Facebook post a back-stage interaction, instead a comment to that post is a front-stage interaction. An employee is still communicating to customers, but the latter can’t directly interact with the employee. In a digital business, back of stage interactions can be a website page, a blog or social media post. Despite the classic literature or Wikipedia, I prefer using the words “direct” and “indirect” contact to help online businesses define their front- and back-stage activities. Employees still have contact with customers, but it’s not direct (invisible contact employees).

What you put below this line is not visible to a customer īack-stage interactions: actions undertaken by a service provider which are not visible to customers. Line of visibility: you should separate front-stage and back-stage activities. They are very important, because they represent the direct contact points between a business and its customers They can be face-to-face encounters or online interactions, like social media comments, email/text conversations and so on. In other words, actions undertaken by a service provider which are visible to customers. In this way, you can attribute responsibilities and understand who has to make the first move to start the next step įront-stage interactions: visible interactions between customers and employees (visible contact employees). Line of interaction: you should divide customers actions from service provider ones. They can be flyers, mail, delivery vans, uniforms, notifications, websites and so on Ĭustomer actions: steps that a customer takes during a service delivery Physical evidence: all the tangible elements related to each step of the buyer journey that can influence customers perception. A horizontal orientation suits better for this purpose and, according to the specific need, you can eventually add the time necessary to fulfill each process Timeline: a business flow chart represents all steps in the buyer journey, that’s why it’s useful to add a variable of time.

Hotel service blueprint