Last Thursday, April 3, 2014, I attended
the Service Blueprint Workshop at
The Baruch SBDC and Field Center
The Workshop was presented by
Based on the description for the event, I was supposed to learn how to use “Service Blueprints” which are:
““tangible, visual documents that lay out where and how customers and companies interact. They facilitate companies to put themselves in their customers’ shoes to find out what’s working, what’s not, and what needs to be changed.””
If you follow me on Instagram, you will know that my first reaction when I walked into the presentation was
““Hey, I feel like I’m back in school! ;)””
There was even a handout!
So what did I learn at this workshop? I learned how to use flowcharts to evaluate customer service / customer relations processes.
- By using creating a flow chart of your current processes, you are able to visualize and eliminate inefficient steps that negatively affect customer service, your bottom line or both!
- The professor used some of the issues some of his past clients faced to illustrate how we should create and analyze our service blueprints.
- This is a VERY logic based process so if you want to implement it, you should definitely take the class.
- Doing this, however, will ensure that you are better able to evaluate the performance of your service processes based on metrics like:
o Capacity utilization
o Average waiting time
o Average number of customers waiting in line
o Inventory turnover
- For more evaluation metrics you can go to
1. American Society For Quarterly Control
2. American Production Inventory Control Society
Or find other benchmarks specific to your industry.
The Take Away
At first I thought this wasn’t relevant to me – after all I provide free legal services via the internet. But then the professor said (I’m paraphrasing):
““Everyone must be able to do this for the business you own or else you don’t have a complete grasp of what you are doing and so you are wasting your time.””
After hearing this, I took Prof. Veral’s advice and started to create on my service process flow chart in Word (you can also use Power Point). Is it easy? No! But it forces you to think about what you are doing in your systemic, logical manner.
So, I’d definitely recommend this event to anyone!
People I Met!
As always I love meeting amazing people at these events.
- Here I met April Patrick of Atypical Pictures, Inc. Talk about impressive!
- I also met a young man who is about to start an urban lifestyle store in North Carolina. He was just getting all his ducks in order before his launch! Good luck!
That’s it for this week’s “Event Review”!
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