What are they and how can they help?

Service Design is an approach where the end-users are the main focus and the customer experience is viewed holistically rather than concentrating on the individual processes that support service delivery. Blueprinting is an integral part of this as it is a visual representation of the service process and its key activities and detailed sub-processes and sub-systems These reflect the service delivery and share many similarities with other process modelling approaches.  

This is a useful tool in CRM as the focus for CRM is being customer-centred, by using service design it can enable you to concentrate on the customer/end user rather than getting sidetracked by the internal part of the process and how it impacts individuals. 

Service Design is not readily used within BCE but is more prominently used in Student Lifecycle Relationship Management (SLRM). This is mainly due to the fact that, for the majority of business engagement, there is no set customer journey and can differ from customer to customer and service to service.

The University of Derby, funded by JISC CETIS, developed a guide to Service Design and Blueprinting in both Higher and Further Education. Although they use the example of the student journey in this document, and as mentioned above there is not the same set customer journey in BCE activity. These principles can be applied to Customer Relationship Management in Business and Community Engagement providing they are adapted as appropriate.