Service Blueprint Template

About the Service Blueprint Template

Service blueprints are useful tools for understanding and designing a service experience – and finding ways to improve it. Learn more about them and start creating your own using Miro's free service blueprint template.

What is a service blueprint diagram?

The service blueprint diagram was first introduced by G. Lynn Shostack in 1984. Shostack wanted to find a way to visualize the steps that go into a service process, taking into account the customer’s perspective. Service blueprint diagrams make it simpler for teams to design new processes or improve existing ones.

To create a service blueprint diagram, map out each process and actor that contributes to the customer experience, from in-house contributors to third-party vendors. Service blueprint templates generally contain five elements:

1. Physical evidence, such as brick-and-mortar stores, websites, customer receipts, or emails.

2. Customer actions, like visiting your website, placing an order, or asking a customer service question.

3. Frontstage (visible) employee actions, such as sending confirmation emails or answering customer questions.

4. Backstage (invisible) employee actions, such as writing website content or filling orders.

5. Support processes, like third-party delivery systems or vendors who provide software or supplies.

When to use a service blueprint template 

Teams use service blueprints for a variety of applications. Many draw them up to make it easier to transfer knowledge across teams and to new team members. By clarifying roles and processes, you can reduce silos and inefficiencies. Service blueprint diagrams also allow you to compare your company’s services with competitors’, or to bridge the gap between how you want your service to function and how it functions currently.

Service blueprint template advantages

Service blueprints are scalable and flexible, showing as much or as little detail as you want, from overviews to complex steps. Team members working on intricate processes can easily lose sight of the bigger picture or how actions affect other departments, fellow team members, or customers. Once you zoom in on current functions, you can more easily diagnose and address issues and fill gaps.

How to create your own service blueprint template 

It’s easy to create your own blueprint template. Miro allows you to build, share, and iterate. Get started by selecting the service blueprint template, then take the following steps to make one of your own.

1. Start with a customer scenario. Whether you’re mapping an existing process or creating one from scratch, it’s crucial to start with the customer service scenario that you’d like to investigate. If you can, interview customers to gain a realistic perspective of the scenario.

2. Map out the experience. Now, plot the actions that the customer will take, in chronological order.

3. Build out the map. Once you have the customer’s journey mapped out, it’s time to build out the rest of the story. Lay out the processes, actors, support systems, and technologies that exist behind the scenes.

4. Dive into roles and responsibilities. Miro’s whiteboard allows you to customize your map with colors, visuals, and more. Use these tools to parse out roles and responsibilities. Specify lines of interaction, where the customer interacts with your service or employees; lines of visibility, where your organizational processes become invisible to the customer; and lines of internal action, where employees who don’t come in contact with the customer nevertheless step in to support the service.

5. Illustrate cross-functional relationships. Miro’s tools help you add more detail to your service blueprint by including arrows. Use arrows to illustrate relationships and dependencies that cross-cut various steps in the map. Most people like to use a single arrow to indicate that a role flows in that direction, while a double arrow means that two roles are interdependent.

Dive even deeper into how to make a service blueprint – and see examples – in our expert guide to servicing blueprinting.