Facilitating the practical service experience blueprint workshop to help teams visualize their service delivery, find areas that need attention, and develop a shared understanding to drive targeted improvements and strategic changes.
Client
ProService Hawaii
Release
Aug 15, 2024
Service experience blueprinting workshops help teams understand and improve their service delivery from start to finish. Recent workshops with the Healthcare Benefits and Implementation teams allowed them to visualize how they deliver services, spot issues and opportunities, and create a shared understanding needed for targeted improvements and strategic changes.
The "Practical Experience Blueprinting" method, developed by Erica Flowers and Morgan Miller, updates traditional approaches by changing the visual layout and facilitation strategy. This makes the workshop process easier, more efficient, and more applicable to real-world organizations.
In this method, I lead the teams to follow a clear sequence of steps across the top, outlining the end-to-end scenario creating focus and scope for the workshop. We stack different layers underneath each step, acting like a checklist to guide our discussion. As a facilitator, I guide the teams through each step one at a time, moving from left to right, and completed all layers for that step before going on to the next.
Heatmap overview of a completed blueprint.
Benefits of the Workshop
The blueprinting workshops for the Healthcare Benefits Team and Implementation Team offered several key benefits:
Shared Understanding and Alignment: The workshops helped participants develop a common understanding of the service experience and how the organization delivers it. This is especially helpful in organizations where different teams work in isolation.
Identifying Pain Points and Opportunities: The process effectively uncovered many important moments, pain points, and chances for improvement in both the customer experience and the processes behind it.
Highlighting Complexity and Dependencies: The heat map and detailed layers showed the complexity of certain steps and the connections between different teams. This visibility helps identify the root causes of problems and areas that need a comprehensive approach.
Generating Actionable Insights: The workshops produced specific lists of opportunities and pain points that can be used to create action plans for implementation. These insights allow teams to identify both quick fixes and broader strategic themes.
Foundation for Improvement: By mapping the current state, the teams established a baseline for understanding what exists today. This understanding is essential when planning small improvements or designing entirely new solutions.
Affinitized golden opportunities and themes identified in the Implementation Team workshop.
Blueprint Outcome Highlights:
Healthcare Benefit Team opportunity ideas included:
setting up systems to carry clients between teams
leveraging Salesforce
managing setups proactively
standardizing and refreshing tools
automating FormStack processes
digitizing to remove risk of missing fields
creating templates
Implementation Team opportunity key themes included:
empowering clients
establishing a single accessible place for client info and documents
smart scheduling tools
improving data quality and handoffs
increasing awareness of client activity
improving communication clarity
easier initial data collection
increasing success by reducing tasks, upgrading audits, and adjusting workflows
Workshop prep on the collaborative whiteboard.
Workshop Goals and Outcomes
For both the Healthcare Benefits and Implementation teams, the desired outcomes of their service blueprinting workshops were consistent:
To create a holistic view of the service experience to identify improvements.
To build an overview and gain team alignment with a shared understanding of the service workflow.
To generate actionable insights for service enhancements, distinguishing them from product backlog items.
These goals match the main purposes of blueprinting. Blueprinting helps us see the overall picture, document the entire process from start to finish, and ensure everyone on the team uses the same language. It also helps us spot key moments and issues, come up with ideas for improvement, and create clear actions we can take. Blueprinting shows how an organization delivers services and highlights areas where we can improve both the client experience and the service delivery process.
Definition of each color coded layer in the blueprint.
Workshop Methods Used
The workshops used several important methods from service blueprinting:
Collaboration Across Teams: We brought together a diverse group of participants. The Healthcare Benefits workshop had 10 people, and the Implementation workshop had 9. This teamwork is essential because no single person knows everything about the business.
Mapping Scenarios: We focused on mapping specific scenarios into clear, step-by-step sequences. For the first time, teams created detailed maps of their workflows. The Healthcare Benefits team outlined 40 steps, while the Implementation team outlined 24 steps.
Visible and Hidden Steps: We defined steps to show what happens at each moment, whether it's visible to customers (frontstage) or not (backstage). Many backstage steps were previously overlooked, and team members were unaware of each other's hidden work. This gave us a visual representation of all the work being done.
Defining Layers: We added various layers to each step to cover important details of service delivery. These layers serve as checklists for thorough discussions. Common layers include Processes, Policies, Technology, Roles, and Touchpoints. Other important layers include Questions, Notes, Critical Moments/Pain Points, Opportunities, Information, Metrics, Potential Pitfalls, and Rationale.
Heat Mapping: The complete blueprint acts as a "heat map" that shows complexity and highlights steps that need attention. We prioritize complex moments that require more resources and often have more pain points or opportunities for improvement.
Cost/Value Tagging: Our teams tag moments based on specific criteria such as High/Low business cost, High/Low error rates, and High/Low value interactions. This step builds on the approach created by Flowers and Miller.
Healthcare Benefits Team Blueprint
Healthcare Benefits Blueprint Outcomes
The Healthcare Benefits team mapped 40 steps with 10 participants. The blueprint identified a total of 91 touchpoints, 160 different interactions with software across 33 applications, 8 teams working in collaboration (including inter-benefits teams, external PSH teams, and outside partner companies), 15 strategic & tactical opportunities, and 126 identified pain points.
Key findings included:
Interactions: 19 visible interactions (including client, consultative, passive, and WSE-only interactions) and 27 hidden ProService steps.
Complex Moments: Steps identified as having the most complex moving parts included OBE Processing (Term Coverage & Enrollments PDF), OBE workflow (no PDFs), New Healthcare Form Data Entry, Annual performance review (Open enrollment), and Processing enrollment or waiver or auto-enrollment.
Cost, Error, and Value: Specific steps were rated based on these criteria. High Cost / High Value steps included Benefits SME joining Client Consult and Imp / Benefits consultation for NEW or OGRE business. High Value / High Error steps included Eligibility Review & Determination and Processing enrollment or waiver or autoenrollment. High Error steps also included SME Consult in Sales / IMP Process, Audits, and Ongoing Administration Agreement and Service - Process Change.
Dependencies & Collaborations: The team collaborates with inter-benefits teams, external PSH teams, and outside partner companies (carriers, insurance agencies, outsourcing fulfillment). They also spend time advising other teams as subject experts.
Systems & Software: The use of several custom databases indicates a need to address tech debt and scalability. Many different project tracking systems are in use, supporting feedback about difficulty tracking progress. Data collection methods vary, leading to a lack of a secure source of truth and repeat requests for sensitive client information.
Pain Point Themes: Key themes included Current System & Technology (Data Sync, System Integration, No Source of Truth, Tech Debt), Collaboration (L1 Support, Cross-functional Expectations and Timelines), Current Team Process (Requested Improvements, Manual Workflows & Tasks, Complex Configurations), and Brand Reputation (Not meeting Industry Requirements, Client Engagement & Expectations).
Opportunities: Ideas included setting up systems to carry clients between teams, leveraging Salesforce, managing setups proactively, standardizing and refreshing tools, automating FormStack processes, digitizing to remove risk of missing fields, and creating templates.
Implementation Team Blueprint
Implementation Team Blueprint Outcomes
The Implementation team mapped 24 steps with 9 participants. Their blueprint captured 38 touchpoints, 77 interactions with software across 18 applications, 8 teams working in collaboration, 91 strategic & tactical opportunities, and 110 identified pain points.
Key findings included:
Complex Moments: Steps requiring more attention included First Payroll Audit, Client Training, External kickoff call, Organic Growth (OGRE), Onboarding, and Test Payroll Process.
Cross-Functional Dependencies: Collaborations are required for accurate understanding of client needs, successful client training, launch, and handoff to service. Communication and access to technical experts are critical.
Systems & Software: The team uses various applications for sharing information, tracking progress, managing quality, and analysis. Scheduling and communication apps are key touchpoints, with pain points suggesting a need for smart scheduling tools. There's an opportunity to streamline processes and create a single internal source of truth for client information.
Opportunities: Key themes included empowering clients, establishing a single accessible place for client info and documents, smart scheduling tools, improving data quality and handoffs, increasing awareness of client activity, improving communication clarity, easier initial data collection, and increasing success by reducing tasks, upgrading audits, and adjusting workflows.
Pain Points: Key themes included Inconsistent data and documentation, Incomplete or rushed handoffs, Contract inaccuracies, Repetitive work, System limitations, Inefficient communication, Gaps in the audit process, Working differences, Scheduling difficulties, Client relationship strain, Misunderstanding of services, Incomplete data collection troubles, and Client onboarding pain.
Client-Focused Pain Points: Friction exists around data collection, system complexity, and misunderstanding service capabilities, leading to client strain.
Team-Focused Pain Points: Communication gaps, different working styles, and coordination effort cause extra work and distract from impactful tasks.
Internal-Focused Pain Points: Documentation repetition without consistency, difficulty tracking information across multiple locations (no single source of truth), and errors from rush projects and contract inaccuracies are issues.
The blueprinting workshops helped teams visualize their service delivery, find areas that need attention, and develop a shared understanding to drive targeted improvements and strategic changes.
Benefits gained:
Shared Understanding: The workshops helped everyone understand the service experience and how the organization delivers it, which is especially important when service delivery is divided into separate areas.
Identifying Problems and Opportunities: The process revealed important moments, problems, and chances for improvement in both the customer experience and the processes behind it.
Understanding Complexity: The heat maps and detailed layers showed the complexity of certain steps and how different departments depend on each other. This visibility helps identify the main causes of problems and areas that need a broader approach.
Actionable Insights: The workshops produced clear lists of problems and opportunities, which teams can use to create action plans. They can identify both quick fixes and larger strategic goals from these insights.
Foundation for Improvement: By mapping the current state, teams established a baseline for understanding what exists today. This knowledge is important whether they plan small improvements or create entirely new systems.
